Hi teachers. It’s been really hard to concentrate on the readings lately. And there are just simply too many readings to do. But I don’t want teachers to think I’m lazy or don’t want to try. Is there anything I could do to amend or help? Thanks!

When I was in 9th grade (late 2000’s) our English teacher gave us an essay assignment. The question he had was, “How would you kill me”. We were supposed to describe, in detail, how we would kill our English teacher. I believe it had to be two pages.

I can only justify it as a tactic to inspire creative writing, but I think about it all the time as an adult.

Why would a teacher assign this? As a follow-up, have you assigned this/known someone that did?

eta: I think my wording has come off wrong (I was parroting what I’ve seen in other posts). Perhaps what I should have said is what are the more extreme accommodations students are able to achieve to help them? Does that make more sense? It’s not about trying to criticize them as it is understand what’s being provided.

Original:

I myself am not a teacher (although I do work for a school as part of their aftercare program), but I have seen so many posts about ridiculous accommodations. It’s confusing to me because I’ve had to fight so hard for even basic things like time and a half on tests or use of a four function calculator— I never got an IEP because I was “performing too well”, so I had to settle for a 504. What exactly are kids out there actually getting that’s so outrageous; or even more, gets followed?

Hi teachers. I am a parent asking about a situation in a first grade classroom.

If your class plays a game every afternoon at the end of the day and all the students vote on which game they play but the majority of the class always picks the same game but you as the teacher know it makes a particular student upset.

(The parent has identified that their child has rejection sensitivity and is working on outside resources but has no official formal iep/504 yet)

Would you continue to play that game and give it as an option or just push forward and do what the class decides?

One of the biggest problems with schools is that they often teach students to obey authority rather than learn how to question it.

There's a difference between teaching children discipline and teaching them unquestioning obedience.

A teacher should have authority in a classroom, but that authority shouldn't be absolute. Students should be able to ask why a rule exists, disagree with a teacher's opinion, point out when something is unfair, and refuse to accept an explanation simply because an adult gave it.

The problem is that schools often treat questioning as disrespect, disagreement as disobedience, and independent thinking as a challenge to authority.

How many students have the guts to stand up to their teacher when they are wrong?

My sister told me one of her teacher made a student cry (she was too much, as my sister told me) because she wasn't paying attention in the class. I get that the student need to be reprimanded, but does it have to be extreme.

There was a skit where a new teacher entered the class, introduced himself, and ordered (very angrily) to a kid to go outside. The kid did. Scared enough not to ask questions. Later the teacher asked if his behaviour was ok. The students replied it was not.

But no one said anything. Not a single student, not even the accused. And it is actually true in many schools.

One of my own teacher said not to question the teachers authority.

Is this what the students are being thought? In the name of obedience and discipline? Of course, children need boundaries. A teacher asking students not to disrupt a lesson is different from a teacher demanding that students accept every opinion or instruction without question. Some instructions are necessary for safety, fairness, and learning.

The goal of education should be to teach students when to obey, when to question, and how to recognise the difference.

As teachers do you agree with this? Is this same in your countries (I'm from India)? Or do you think students need a little ridigity with discipline?

The latest season of Sold a Story was released this morning. The podcast that brought the Reading Wars to the mainstream is now taking a look at Direct Instruction for Season 2.

Many teachers hate it. The research shows that it works. What do you think? Are the scripts stifling? Does it remove your autonomy? Does it give you the head space to notice student misconceptions?

Hi!
I’m a current university student who really loves biology and politics. I’ve been stalking r/teachers a bit… and things seem BAD. Especially in the US, where I think I want to teach.
I think I’d really enjoy teaching, especially through labs in biology and collective learning—very much designing novel teaching methods, ect, ect.
What I’m curious to know is if that kind of control is often given to teachers, especially at first. Additionally, whether it is even worth it to go into teaching right now with all the BS going on in our schools right now.
Thanks!

hello! i am a senior in my BA program for history. i want to go to grad school to get my MA but not sure if getting it in teaching/education is my best bet or keeping it the same as my current major would look best on job applications (teaching is my current goal, but could see myself getting into archival/museum work)

thoughts? advice?

I saw an advertisement on Facebook (lame, I know) for a virtual reading program geared towards improving reading comprehension for grade-school kids. Has anyone heard/seen anything like this? I realize this may be a stretch, but it’s worth a try. Thanks!

Hi, I'm a student of an online school, and recently I've been having trouble enjoying AP World History. While studying the subject (mainly reading the textbook and taking notes), I feel very bored and find it a bit "useless". I also do not feel invested in it, and think that it will heavily impact my grades in the future.

I've tried to imagine it all into a story, but still find it difficult to get invested and find myself not learning anything at all.

What advice can you give me to make it more entertaining to study?

Thanks!

For me, I love a Friday test day. I get to sit back and chill. Get some stuff done, take it easy. Great way to end the week.

Hey the title pretty much sums it up but I am pretty confused by the feedback I just got from my professor. I was looking through why some of the points were deducted from my essay and under the format section she took points off because I was missing the "required banana sentence at the top of page 2". I am super confused because I don't even know what she means by that but looked through the rubric again to make sure I didn't miss anything and I can't find anywhere that she said something about a required banana sentence. Is this some kind of special sentence structure or something or is this a test to make sure I am paying attention to her feed back? She has never done something like that before and even if it is a typo I can't think of anything else she might have been trying to say which makes me think she might be using AI or something to grade my paper. I reached out to her but if you know of anything like this any feedback would be great so I can fix my paper sooner than later.

Hi everyone,
coming from a family of K12 educators, I'm trying to understand how do you design individualized instruction today? What does that process look like, what do you use, and what makes it harder than it should be?

Happy to answer any questions in the comments.

Why is it that teaching is one of the most burnout prone professions in the entire country despite not working with people that are in danger, that are dying, or that are dead and yet teachers seem to be "shocked" about it as if they "step on landmines "? How could an entire profession with a known hazard that relates to the supervision of children allows itself to function? Does those teacher lounge gossips where teachers talk about how they use prompts on chatgpt to make classroom posters answer this problem?

When a wildfire happens, every firestation comes together to talk about what happened. When a family dies in a homicide, law enforcement officers do their investigation to make sure the case is closed. When there's a crash that happened with an ambulance, the company reviews the timeline of events to see whether policies and procedures are followed.

Despite the reality of teaching having been associated with burnout and turnover, it seems bizarre that so many educators that are aware of burnout being a reality of the profession, are going to reddit to ask about how to address it despite majority of them being credential. How could an entire profession that has a awareness of this reality feel the need to outsource help on addressing this problem? I do not recall forensic technicians being "surprised" the ways teachers are surprised by burnout when they deal with their case. Maybe it's the toxic positivity that many teachers hold on to just to depend on  their identity so they can be there "for the kids " 

I recently tried plugging in a paper into chatgpt with the instructions and rubric and asked it to do a detailed check to see if I met the requirements of my assignment, for it to explain it's reasoning, and provide any critical feedback. It worked well.

I could see this being used by teachers as an initial grading pass. Have you tried it?

Hey everyone,this post is about my brother . He has an iq of around 70 and struggles with education. His future seems bleak cause we don't know which path to pursue and he hasn't shown any particular interest in any field. Further I would say the environment at home isn't the best now that he is in the tenth grade the stress of board exams and him not putting apparent enough effort has got the BP high around the house . I am not educated enough about him cause my parents don't tell me much just the snippet that the last time they went to a neurologist,the doctor said he showed signs of depression and anger cause he isn't able to keep up with kids of his age . He has had a history of bullying . He doesn't put any visible efforts towards his education and that's caused a lot of screaming in the house at him and he's reached the threshold where hes starting to treat it as noise . I don't know how to help him .

like have you seen a kid pretend to be like the tv guys from skibidi toilet or something

shes not really a counsellor i just have to see her once a week because (TW) i said i didnt want to be alive anymore.
The first time, it took 2 weeks to follow up and i got set up sessions.

The second time, i explicitly said i didnt want to be here. This was after our first session but she wasn’t really listening to me and didn’t ask any follow up questions.

My friends reported me today (with consent) to another teacher who takes mh very seriously.
All i know is they said the teacher was shocked at how my thing was handled and would sort it.

Will the lady be mad I told someone else? Well, I didn’t.
But i hope the teacher doesn’t say anything to the lady for her to not like me.

Hi All,

Given the events of what happened today in Oregon, I wanted to check on my child’s elementary school teacher. If these events rock me as a parent, I can’t imagine how the person who is responsible for my child at school feels. I don’t want to be overly intrusive, but want to make sure she knows that I see her and appreciate her for choosing this profession. Would it be weird to offer her a gift card to use however she wants?

My school has these desks that also act as whiteboards. I was curious what yall thought of them ^^

Short version: What are reasonable accommodations for a student that has a reading objective on the IEP in regards to needing to read for other subjects?

Context/long version: I have a 2nd grade student that has had an IEP since age 4 for developmental delay. Last year, a reading goal was added to the IEP since she was struggling to encode/decode words. The developmental delay resulted in demand avoidance so accurate testing for dyslexia wasn’t possible although I suspect that will be an eventual diagnosis.

Her most recent progress report states that she is making great progress in reading and can now decode a reasonable number of commonly used one syllable words. I am so proud of the progress she has been making. She is working so hard.

In social studies, they have started using a note catcher style study guide. I am still unclear on if the notes came from the book or during instructional time and if the sentences were verbatim the same as the note catcher or if they were to find the information themselves. She was unable/unwilling to complete the assignment. When I asked her about it, she says there was a lot of reading and spelling that she didn’t know.

I don’t know why I had not thought of it before today but I would bet money the struggles she has on her assignments is because she isn’t reading or spelling on level. She’s incredibly bright and can answer practically every question once it’s ready to her or she can dictate the sentence. Is it standard to apply reading accommodations if there is a documented delay?

And a related question is how is it fair to have the same reading fluency assessments? She can only read 20 commonly used words a minute. She is obviously going to fail any assessment that requires 20 words of a story in a minute.

How do you inspire children about what to write. My children get math, they are good spellers, decent with grammar, and are reading lovers. But deciding what to write? Especially if its a prompt about something they don't see from that perspective, it's a blank. Sometimes there are starter sentences to help, but my children don't want to use them because it feels like cheating to them? I get their feelings, because the hardest part about writing IS the thinking part. Writers block and all that. Any tips?

I'll be finishing up my PhD in a couple of months and I had the thought to invite some of my grade school teachers that had a huge impact on me when I was their student 15+ years ago. I'm certain they would remember me, but also not sure if it's odd given I haven't communicated with them in so long.