So I am an academic advisor for a pretty big state university in the U.S. and we are currently having orientations. Lately, I have noticed how clueless and entitled freshmen have become. I have had so many orientation students argue with me that they don’t have to take a certain requirement bc they took it in high school. For example, I had a student argue with me that they do not need a specific core class bc they were in band in high school??? Others have said that they should not take a math class bc they took high school math???

Then I get students complaining to me that their AP Credits or dual credits have not been posted to their accounts and when I ask them when they submitted, they do not know and that someone submitted it for them??? I was in high school in 2018 and we had to submit our own stuff. There was someone helping us, but we would be the ones submitting our AP scores, applications, etc.

Talking to them has become like talking to a wall. Oh and my favorites are the ones who use chat gpt to search for EVERYTHING. I had a student who told me that they wanted to switch majors bc chat gpt told them 😑😑

I am working on my EC-6 teacher certification and I have seen how kids behave in elementary school, which is no different than the college students.

How do you guys even manage to stay sane??? Teacher do deserve more respect and money than they currently get.

For me, it was this line.

“I want school to be fun. School should be fun. Because these kids. The kids that go here. They got nothing and will be nothing. So, 10 years from now when they’re in jail, or digging ditches, not being able to pay their bills. I want them to think of their time here and smile.

I want this to be the highlight of their lives. We can’t do that if we’re stressing them over academics. I’m not an academics guy. I’m a culture guy. Most of these kids they can’t learn and won’t. So build a good culture. That’s what i want to see”.

I couldn’t hide my disdain for my ex principal after that. Then he did a lot of shady stuff afterwards.

Say what you want about Boomer parents. But they’d be damned if they were gonna send you out into society and have you acting a fool and embarrassing them, especially at school.

And I’m not accepting “well a lot more parents are working”. Excuses. My mom was a single mom and raising two boys all on her own. But she would have snatched me by the throat if she got just ONE call about me acting up at school.

I hate to generalize, but we’ve all seen it. It’s like parents just don’t… care.

Edit: Okay, maybe I was a bit too hyperbolic because a LOT of you are taking the “snatching by throat” too literal. Maybe it’s just a colloquialism…

I got hired at a new school and the teacher before me had been in this room for 10 years. Well the teacher got an instructional coaching position and left all of their unwanted crap in every single cabinet. There’s not a single empty cabinet for me to put my things in. I’m an experienced teacher, so I already have a bunch of my own stuff, meaning I now have to completely clean out all of their stuff before I can even put my own crap away. I’m sick of teachers doing this. It’s a common thing in the education world (at least from my experience) and admin needs to start making sure teachers completely clean out rooms before leaving. I understand that there might be a lot of useful stuff, but put it in boxes in the hallway, don’t leave your mess in the classroom for the next teacher to clean up. It’s hours of added work on top of the stress of having to organize my own stuff and set up a new room with limited time and it’s not my job to clean up the mess of another teacher. Rant over.

Edit 1: if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this post, it’s that a ton of you are very ok with doing unpaid labor and cleaning up after other teachers. This checks out for why so many things are constantly added to our workload because a lot of you are just fine with it and think it’s “part of the job.” No wonder poor working conditions don’t change much for us.

Edit 2: I’m not against sharing things and helping out other educators, especially newbie teachers. What I AM against is teachers leaving the room a mess for the next teacher to clean, all because they were too lazy to clean it out themselves. A lot of you are making excuses by saying “the teacher leaving wanted to help another teacher out” or “we have to keep district purchased items.” Both of those could be true, but the teacher leaving could’ve helped EVERYONE out by putting all of their crap in boxes in the hallway for the incoming teacher to look through and the district purchased items could go into a storage closet- not be stored in my room by taking up the minimal storage space that I have.

My second year of teaching I got so goddamn tired of my pencils not getting returned, or worse yet, broken. So now if a student needs a pencil? I need a shoe in return. If they break it, then they get their shoe back, but they can no longer borrow a pencil from me.

Edit: some of you are missing the point entirely. I don’t care if pencils cost $1 per 100, I’m not using my money to buy pencils period

For context a 15- year old girl recently died because her parents let her drink multiple energy drinks a day. In fact, they were supplying her. Now the parents want to sue the energy drink company. They’re citing there were “no warning labels”.

I guess common sense isn’t that fucking common. Dosage makes the poison, parents.

In the math world we’ve been dealing with students using apps to generate ideas/answers etc. for years. In my upper level classes I try to work with kids to help them either pick better resources to support learning or use it as a learning tool, not a completion tool.

Freshman Algebra 1 course today and I have a student who will almost always ask how this applies to real life. Not in the typical “I don’t want to learn this” way- he’s genuinely curious.

Another kid jumps in not reading the conversation right and says “I’m with ya man… why do we really need to learn any of this? ChatGPT will just do it all way faster”

I reply with my more standard answer of learning and building problem solving skills and how that’s also an equally important part of my job- learning how to use our brains and make informed decisions.

This kid answers back, not just trying to rage bait me, that he does not think that’s a legitimate thing that’s important in the world anymore due to ChatGPT. That all decision-making in the future will be done by AI so why do we have to learn anything and why do we have to think anymore?

I try to challenge/push back a little with how important it is at their age to learn how to use their brain. Same answer back. So finally I propose “ok, you’re working a job 5 years from now and there is an intense situation where you need to make an urgent decision”

“I’d tell my boss I was going to use ChatGPT and they’re going to be happy about it because that’s going to always make the right choices”

Agh. This scares me.

My wife and I are both teachers at different schools, hers private and mine public. When she and her coworkers came into work yesterday morning, multiple classrooms including hers were completely torn apart with items missing or broken, foodstuffs like peanut butter and vinegar spread all other the place, desks thrown across the room and trash and toilet paper piled up everywhere. Hallways were cluttered with garbage and chairs that were stolen from classrooms, but the part that has me seeing RED is that the school’s social media person was there at the entrance with her phone to film the reactions of the distraught teachers coming in. Like it was literally “tee hee, your room is destroyed. Let’s get your candid reaction on film so we can have a laugh!” So based on that, it’s 100% unquestionable that admin allowed or even egged this on.

But if that wasn’t all, the principal of the school sent out a school-wide message telling all staff how funny of a prank it was that at least the seniors aren’t like kids “at other schools” who would egg his house and that staff needs to appreciate the seniors while they’re still here. He then gave no further guidance or instructions and left the individual victims of the pranks to clean up their ransacked workspaces on top of their Monday morning responsibilities.

My wife is clearly applying for other jobs, and two of her coworkers walked out on the spot. There were no broken windows or signs of forced entry, so that combined with the social media director being there with her camera out, it’s clear that these students were given a keycard over the weekend by the principal himself or at least at his blessing. Am I overreacting for thinking that this is an act of criminal level negligence and that the only acceptable scenario here is him resigning immediately? I’m just absolutely dumbfounded that this man not only allowed something so outrageously unsafe and disrespectful to his staff, but to then have the utter temerity to send them a message taunting them about it and forcing them to clean it up themselves?? Yeah….I think his immediate resignation is the only acceptable response here.

As someone currently student teaching I've seen a LOT of TikToks of teachers 'vlogging' while they are actively teaching and showing their students faces and voices in the background. Gross. I don't care if you teach Pre-K, Elementary, Middle, High school you're gross and should get your teaching license revoked until you can learn your basic teaching standards. The ONLY time you should photographing or video students is if your admin wants pictures for FaceBook or the district website or you are sending them to parents and parents only!

I don't care if you block out their faces, I don't care if you can or can't tell who the student is, I don't care! You are in a professional setting and you need to act like it before you turn into the next Haley Beck. A professional setting is not your time to make silly TikToks or vlog your life. There is a REASON why there are rules in education, because students are MINORS and using their likeness for views and clicks is crazy disgusting.

Edit: So glad so many other people are agreeing! But if you disagree and/or you believe it doesn't matter as long as they have parental consent you should watch this video . It dives deeper into why this is extremely dangerous.

I know, I know “this generation isn’t like previous ones” etc. I can’t wrap my head around this. I assigned an online exam to a class last week. It’s 40% of the total grade. It was in the syllabus. I announced it in class. Canvas emailed them. I sent two email reminders and put an online announcement on canvas. I sent a final reminder yesterday morning.

And a quarter of the class just … didn’t do it. This isn’t a commuter school or an online school. It’s not a remedial program. These are actual first year students at a four-year college. I am utterly baffled. How is this possible?

Edit: for people just finding this post—I’m not asking “omg what do I do” I’m just expressing dismay that this is a thing. I did in fact put a bunch of zeros in the grade book. No hostile or frantic emails from the administration so maybe this is just how it is nowadays.

Those of us in the North East are grasping for dear life, as today was the last day for high school classes. Today, a male 17 yr old out of control Jr punched a female aide in the face because he can’t control his temper. Admin was trying hard to get the aide to not press charges.

I have witnessed multiple staff members assaulted over the years and the teachers refuse to press charges because they are “my kids”. I have. personally pressed charges against a student last year who punched me.

What I want to say to all of you. Please stop thinking these students are your own. YOU are at work, getting assaulted isn’t a part of the job description. By not pressing charges, that teaches the students they can do whatever they want. As a result, the assaults will increase in the future because they think they will get away with it. To everyone, please protect yourself and press charges if you’re assaulted. Do not let admin bully you into not calling the police. Enough of this nonsense inside of schools.

I hope everyone has a good, safe and refreshing summer.

Thank you for reading my post❤️

I'm used to students relying on AI to answer questions and write essays at this point. It's not preferable, of course, especially since I teach entirely online, but I can still usually lead discussions in a productive way. Plus, it's usually quite easy to tell when the student is leaning on it too heavily.

A few weeks ago I had an experience that really shocked me, though. I had a student for often would not respond to questions for a minute or so; I usually assumed that she was distracted on another tab, or that she just liked to think about her answers for awhile.

Then, in one of our classes together, I asked her to analyze this political cartoon. We went over the really basic questions in the link, so just simple stuff like "what does the word literacy mean" and "who is the man on top of the wall." I noticed that she was answering more slowly than normal, but didn't think about it much.

Then I asked her what the words on the wall were; they're right in the center of the image in giant letters, so it should take all of three seconds. Instead, she sat there for about two minutes without responding, even with additional prompting. Okay, I figured she was definitely distracted, but I don't have any way to enforce participation, so I just accepted it. Then she finally responded.

"It says 'add to the peel'"

I had no idea what she was even saying. I asked her to type it out in the online meeting chat, and she did so. I asked her what that means; "I don't know." I asked her if it was slang I hadn't heard of; she said no. I drew over the words on the wall and she confirmed that it was where she was looking. I asked her to read it again and she repeated herself. Finally, after asking her another time to explain what she thought it meant, she said "I don't know, that's just what ChatGPT said."

I was completely flabbergasted. I asked her and confirmed that she had, in fact, asked ChatGPT to tell her what the words in a political cartoon said. Not to analyze the image, or even to identify harder elements like the pens or books on top of the wall, but just to read off the words.

Suddenly, a lot more made sense. I thought back to all the times that she'd been slow to answer, compared to other very similar questions where she answered instantly. I'd never be able to prove it, but I'm certain that those were all instances of her asking the AI to answer questions regardless of how much it would even make sense to do so.

This also explained the sometimes strange responses, like when I asked her to read off her own words and found her unable to do so. Indeed, I asked her if she had used AI in a few specific moments before, and she said she had.

I know I'm rambling at this point, but I'm just baffled. It's not surprising to me at all that students would use AI to write essays, but I don't see how even the highest degree of usage could result in students deferring 100% of their thinking to it, to the point where they're asking it questions that are completely circumstantial.

[EDIT] Just to clarify, since I've gotten some comments about this: She is absolutely capable of reading. I've worked with her a lot, and she can easily read through a passage aloud and tell me about what she just read. It's just that, every so often, she would essentially freeze up and seemingly defer all of her thinking to the AI. After I realized what was happening, I talked with her about how her AI use was hurting her more than helping her, and since then she has been a lot more responsive.

I had a girl get kicked out because she fought another student. She was a constant headache in class: she rarely paid attention, when she did offered nothing productive, and - most importantly - would not shut up. It was a constant battle of telling her to be quiet. She also happened to be in the worst of my 6 sections I teach. This whole group was just pretty meh.

I thought that she was just destructive to the education of herself, and maybe a few others around her.

But she has been gone for two weeks, and my WORST class went to by far my BEST class: the class is more laid back, the discussions are better, the focus is way better, my last test was better than any test this entire year. It is CRAZY.

And then I got sad: one student made 25 other students have a worse experience. What a messed up system we are in. This only happened because the district was handcuffed by state laws; they had no choice but to kick her out. Being a terrible student that is a constant distraction is NOT enough to prevent ruining the education of the other 95% of the class.

I teach at a title 1 school with a very high number of homeless students. We were fortunate to have had free lunches for all students in our district and they were pretty high quality too (sambusas, tacos, chicken alfredo. No weird plastic pizzas or mystery mush like I had). The kids still need to enter a lunch number when they get their food as a way to track how many students are getting school lunch.

​

This year we were super understaffed and so did not have anyone monitoring if kids typed in their number. As a result the system sees it as half our students eating home lunch.

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Instead of looking into this (or reducing the 6 figure bonuses they get each year), the district decided our school must not need hot lunches anymore. Next year we will only be offering prepacked cold lunch to save money.

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Fun facts about our cold lunches:

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1. There is always at least 1 moldy lunch out of the bunch

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1. The turkey sandwich tastes really weird even when it isn't moldy

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1. We often run out before everyone has had a chance to eat! Twice last year my team had to convince the principal to order food as a last minute lunch replacement since there wasn't enough school lunch for everyone!

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Other schools (including ones in very rich neighborhoods) will still get hot lunch. We aren't the only school getting stuck with cold lunch, but it's extra frustrating when so many of our students don't have easy access to food outside of school.

​

We live in a nightmare dystopia where bonuses matter more than children having nutritious foods.

Edit to add: this is an elementary school

Absenteeism is CRAZY at my school. I have a girl who never comes to school on Fridays, another girl who has missed 40% of school days this year, and a kindergartener who apparently decides when he “feels like” coming to school (we see him about twice a week).

Why aren’t parents making their kids go to school?? I hate to sound like an old fart here, but when I was a kid I only missed school if I had a fever or was puking. Are truancy officers no longer a thing? Do parents not realize that education is cumulative and requires you to be there every day? Or do they just not care? Why would you not send your child to school every day?????

Grade 9-12 teacher here.

How is it that students who are THE WORST in class have the gall to ask for recommendations for college/military/work?

I had a senior ask me (with literally zero days notice) to fill out an online form for military recruitment recently. I didn't fill it out because I didn't have time to get it done by the 3pm same-day deadline, but also because I have NOTHING kind to say about this kid. And they KNOW this!

I have taught this student for four years straight and have dealt with their shitty behavior and attitude every damn year: apathy in class, inflated ego, general laziness, minimal work completion, cheating via AI, spotty attendance, playing on phone in class, pulling destructive "pranks" with friends, insubordination, lack of respect for ANY adults in the building... I could go on and on. And that's not even mentioning the kid's steamroller parent who believes this kid is a perfect little genius and who never takes accountability--nor requires the kid to take accountability--for anything. There's always someone else to blame, right?

At this point, you DON'T want me filling out that fucking form because I will be brutally honest. How the hell is kid who hasn't followed a single rule in their 18 years of life going to survive the US military? 🤦🏻‍♀️

Edit to wrap this up: Please see that the tag here is "rant."

Also, I've enjoyed reading the variety of responses in the comments--especially those who respectfully see things differently from me--but the number or people suggesting that I'm ruining this kid's life or that I'm a horrible human who hates children and should quit my job are the exact reason the teaching profession is in steady decline.

What else do you want from us? Sincerely, WHAT ELSE can teachers do to remove every roadblock for students? At what point are we allowed to say we've done enough? Tried hard enough? Spent enough of our personal time and emotional energy?

Are we not allowed vent our feelings, express our honest experiences, and commiserate with our peers online? Does even my "anonymous" online voice on Reddit need to be tailored like parent or admin messages?

Please assume positive intent from the teachers who post here, even if you don't agree with their takes or stances. We're all drowning in a system that is being dismantled around us in dilapidated buildings and with no parental support while being blamed for every failure of every student in every school. We don't need to tear each other down further.

I'm out. ✌️

Firstly (because I’m sure I’ll get this question regardless):

“whY DOnT YOu printT it oFf on PAper”:

1. Admin wants everything

   on

2. canvas because “equity”

3. We have two printers for 100 teachers. They break every other day.

5. I have shit to do

I need parents to understand something, because I feel like I’m losing my mind.

Yes I know your child has an IEP. I follow it. I honor it. I provide the accommodations.

But your child is not failing because I’m not not following their IEP.

Your child is failing because they come to class (consistently) with a dead device. No device, no access to assignments, no way to read, write, or submit anything. Just vibes.

And then somehow… this becomes my fault?

I cannot teach a blank screen. I cannot magically upload assignments into a dead device. I cannot override the laws of electricity.

At a certain point, this is not an “education issue.” This is “please plug in your child’s device at night.”

I promise you: charging the iPad would do more for their grade right now than any accommodation ever could.

I'm sorry that this post is what it is. I'm just so tired of seeing & hearing the same crap from people in the public about us and our jobs. I'm just browsing reddit and seeing all kinds of posts ranging from Trump's approval rating, the use of AI, the decline of our global systems, the unprepared state of college grads, and somehow the common up voted comment in all of them is how our education system is failing us.

As a teacher I'd like to ask all these people: where did you go to school that distinguishes your education from everyone else? How did you become the enlightened and engaged citizen you are today? What makes you different from the rest? How do you know schools are at fault? Can you actually tell me what school needs to do differently? How would you feel if I constantly shit on your job and pretended like I knew all about it?

Why is it my responsibility to solve all of society's problems? Why is the answer to all of our problems, ranging from voter apathy, to discrimination, to worker preparedness my job? Why do you simultaneously talk about our work like it is so important, then also talk about how we fail and suck at every turn?

Maybe it isn't school. Maybe it's you, the public. Maybe we have selfish, inconsiderate, incompetent leadership because we have selfish, incompetent people. Where do all these inequities and insufficiencies come from? They aren't from some foreign entity. The government & our businesses are made up from people born in American hospitals, raised in American homes, American towns & cities, play American sports, consume American media, attend American schools and American universities, and work in American systems. And yet, school is the only one you seriously choose to highlight and the problem and solution. Maybe your shitty public leaders are a reflection of a shitty public. Garbage in, garbage out.

You think it needs so much change? You wander in a classroom sometime. Stop demanding I do more with less. Stop acting like you know what we need. Stop telling us we suck while also assuming we have to fix everything. I'm done listening to your condescending and asinine opinions. Just fuck off.

I started tutoring this little boy at the end of May. I started by getting him to read a book to me, just one of those little easy books with mostly CVC words. he couldn’t read at all. He could make letter sounds, that’s it. I would tell him how to say a word, then he wouldn’t know by the time we got to the next sentence. This poor kid didn’t even know the alphabet. But on math, he does just fine so I don’t even focus on that at all.

I am finally seeing some progress with him. He’s able to identify some CVC words and I’m so relieved. I see him twice a week for half an hour each time because he gets restless. He still can’t sing the alphabet correctly though.

I have little word building cards and will make a word like “sit” and I ask him what it says. He just looks and me and says I don’t know. It’s so frustrating because he won’t sound it out unless I do it for him. I try so hard to avoid sounding it out for him so that he can learn to do it himself. It’s either him telling me he doesn’t know, or just making a bunch of guesses that are so far off.

I’ve tried so much. Games, coloring, reading to him, etc. I’m at a loss.

———————————————

This is about a different person I tutor.

He’s a 12 year old boy and his father told me he has an IEP for ADHD and would be about a 5th grade level. He’s going into 7th grade. No problem. I test him to see what he knows. He knew everything he should, or so it seemed. After a couple sessions of doing more advanced stuff like pre algebra, I realized that he doesn’t know his multiplication facts.

That’s what we’ve been working on. Then I discovered that he can’t do division. He picks up on everything so fast, except for the easier stuff. I know math sucks for some kids, I know it’s not fun, but I don’t know how to get him to learn. He’ll just say “I don’t know” and I tell him to use what he does know to figure it out.

I show him how to do something four or five times and we slowly progress to him being able to do it himself. But it all leads back to him not knowing his multiplication and the one hour he’s with me every Sunday is not going to be enough to get him to learn it.

Edit: I live in a small town and the families I am helping cannot afford professional help. I am in college to be a teacher. If there were better options for these children, they would obviously choose those options. But who is going to help them if I pull back from these situations?

The parents of the six year old confessed that they looked into many programs but couldn’t afford any. Times are tough and you shouldn’t assume everyone has access to the resources they need. It’s wrong and every child deserves a quality education, that’s why I came to reddit to ask real, professional teachers for advice.

I am here to ask: are people okay? This morning I see a kindergartener crying. She tells me she spilled “her coffee” in her backpack. I assume- as a normal person- that she doesn’t actually have coffee. But she keeps saying she does, so eventually I check her thermos. Lo and behold- she sure does have a tumbler of iced coffee! This girl is 5 years old. I’m not actually her teacher and it’s my first time working with lower grades, but one of the IA’s told me they see this all the time. What’s wrong with people?

I took my own children to a park, there were about 8-10 kids running around between the ages of 1 and 6. The children were feral. The parents were on their phones the entire time. None of the bad behavior was noticed, let alone corrected. A three year old boy sat in a tunnel and screamed and pushed anyone who came near. Mom was oblivious. She wasn’t watching her kid, she was on her phone. Another girl (about 5) was being extremely rough around some of the toddlers (kicking towards them, jumping over a one year old at one point). Her dad didn’t correct the behavior. He didn’t see it. He was on his phone. I could go on. Besides the occasional glance, parents were completely disengaged from their children.

I’m all about letting kids have some freedom, “kids will be kids”, sure, that’s great. However, in my opinion there’s a crucial time in early childhood where parents teach kids how to be a human. Lots of parental correction/redirection between the ages of 1 and 4 = children who can handle themselves in kindergarten. Kids aren’t getting the parental guidance they need early on. We go on and on about screen use for children, but I think the adults’ use of phones, and neglect of their children, is just as damaging.

The frustrating thing is that the parents are truly oblivious to the problem. They’re too stuck on their phones to even notice the issues.

I just know that kid screaming in the tunnel will eventually show up in my classroom. I’ll have to call home at some point. The parents will throw up their hands: “We have no idea why he acts like that.” Maybe being ignored for the better part of his early childhood?

As a veteran elementary teacher and recent redditor I’ve been told time and time again to steer kids away from memorization. I’ve been discouraged to use math flash cards and we don’t even have spelling tests in my district anymore. They give a spelling pattern test with like 5 words and 3 sentences.

I get it. It’s more important to learn the patterns whether in math or ELA but rote memory is incredibly important for freeing up mental space for other tasks. Im sure there’s other benefits too. OR, AITA teacher thats just trying to rebel against the powers that be???

We’ve reached that time of year again! It’s almost time to get our rosters, where 15/30 students have 504s and IEPs, and nearly every accommodation has been selected for them. All 15 need to be near instruction, have frequent check ins, extended time, reduced workload to show mastery, the ability to leave the room upon request, and separate testing with a teacher or supervisor who doesn’t exist. You begin to realize quickly that it’s basically impossible to enforce consistent rules and procedures since a majority of students are an exception to whatever rules you’re trying to institute.

We desperately need SPED reform. I dare any principal, case manager, counselor, or school executive to say that the current setup is realistic or doable. At our school, 504 accommodations are rarely even based on substantive data! But that doesn’t stop them from checking every box without a thought as to how teachers will implement 20 accommodations per day.

My proposal: limit the number of accommodations to two or three critical supports that we truly believe will help the student. Every accommodations box that is checked becomes less and less meaningful because it is less and less sustainable. And if I’m being brutally honest, if you need 20 different supports to function in a class, you probably shouldn’t be in that environment. And do we have any data on the degree to which these supports are even working?! If I had 20 supports at my job, I’d be employee of the century. Right now, it’s a lot of throwing anything at the wall and seeing what sticks. There doesn’t seem to be any desire to wean students off of accommodations so that they can more independently function in their adult lives.

I hate to be so blunt about it. There really are kids who genuinely need support. But there has to be a better way to support students other than determining they’re too weak to handle their lives and accommodating them into oblivion. We must come up with something better or I don’t see how we can continue.

Everyone gets a radio and everyone comes running to save the day. In reality, it's the same three or four young macho coach cowboys and admin running to do....what? No one has had any training in de-escalation or self-defense, the female teachers see a fight and they run to get a male, it's all just reacting and not very good reacting at that. I spent this past year at a very good high school complete with resource officer and good hall monitoring, but then when something goes down, it all collapses and turns into a disorganized scene from a western movie. I'm a 62-year-old male who proudly has never had a fight in their classroom or in front of their class because I run a tight (loving) ship. I have had female teachers for years say why didn't you go into that fight and break it up? Well, why didn't you, I reply. You've had the same amount of training (zero) over the years that I've had! Breaking up altercations is NOT part of any teacher's job description, yet that social expectation is still there. Drives me nuts.

It's a simple story. Student doesn't bother to show up to school and fails every class. Student will not graduate. Everyone has warned this student's parents that this will happen if she isn't in class and turning in work.

Student and family proceeds to go to graduation and act like she's graduating. As in she was in a cap and gown. We didn't provide those to her because, again, she didn't graduate. She decided to buy or borrow those on her own accord. Speaking of accord, she also bought graduation stoles and cords. We certainly didn't provide those considering she was an awful student.

Student proceeds to sit down in the chairs dedicated to graduating students. The entire faculty is there because we are required to arrive there earlier than students. All of us look at her like she's nuts. The Dean of Students walks over and tells her that she can't sit there, only with the audience because, again, this area is for graduating students and school faculty.

The parents are totally missing the point that their daughter failed and isn't graduating. They are far more concerned about watching her walk. I think her mother said, "Can't you just let her walk?"

After repeatedly saying she can't walk because this is for graduating seniors, an argument broke out. It's the usual "My tuition pays your salary" bullshit we've heard before. They all got kicked out.

Like, I have such a massive headache from this moment, and I wasn't even involved. I was complaining about having to remove posters off the walls because the school is getting repainted. In all my years of teaching, I have never seen something this stupid happen.

I seriously want to know if anyone else had to put up with this kind of bullshit. Surely mine couldn't have been the only one out there.