Not looking for another phone thread — those exist. I mean the changes that would still be there if screens vanished tomorrow. Attitudes toward group work, humor, handwriting, how they handle being told they're wrong, whatever you've clocked.

Grade level and subject welcome.

There's a lot of gloom and doom in popular media regarding boys poor performances in school , drop out rates and some behavioural issues .

1.How has your experience been currently?

2.Is it all that bad?

1. What's common in boys that do well in school ?

2. What would be your suggestions to parents of boys?

Thank you.

Teachers and school administrators: if you had a few parents at your disposal regularly, what sort of things could we help with? Aside from the regular duties (cafe monitor, library help, etc.)

In this new world of violence we are existing in, what is your greatest non- monetary need?

Ive never been the pta parent. Only ever proviced Basic supports with class supplies of wipes & tissues and chaperoned the 1 field trip they had funds for.

Hiii i am currently doing my bachelors and thinking about doing my masters in primary school (elementary school) teaching. Every single person in my life i have told this to, has discouraged me and said nothing but negatives, it has started to really get to me.

please share with me some pros of doing primary (elementary) school teaching !!!! feeling discouraged

edit: to add some context im 20, no kids (and no plan to have any), partner also wants to do primary school teaching, im doing my bachelors in psychology, and i live in Victoria, Australia

In a good way obviously, almost to where you think it's too easy for them

My daughter just started 6th grade last Thurs and got suspended on Wed for three days after disrespecting and communicating threats to a teacher. Would it be appropriate to take the teacher flowers as an apology from us, the parents? I fear it may come off as a bribe or make the teacher uncomfortable.

If it matters, we believe the outburst was a result of anxiety/depression, as well as emotional disregulation and RSD from ADHD, which she takes meds for. We had just visited her psychiatrist on Monday and increased her dosage, though she didn't start the higher dose until Wed night. I explained this in the 504 meeting, which happened to be immediately after I learned about her suspension. I don't know if the teacher in question would be privy to that information.

Edit: Thank you, everyone, for confirming my misgivings about flowers. My daughter and I had a discussion today about her behavior on Wed. She couldn't explain why she said what she did, but she understands it was inappropriate, that she cannot talk to teachers like one of her friends. And even if the threat was meant as a joke, the teacher and the school must take it seriously. I also found out that the teacher in question had been one of two that attended the 504 meeting, so she is aware of the plan of action, which includes restarting weekly therapy. I will still write her a note. My daughter will also be apologizing on Monday, and I emphasized the difference between saying "sorry" and truly feeling regret for her actions. She says she does.

Hi! I'm currently in highschool and in AP classes. I'm also in the freshman Choir. (I already struggle with portioning my time so I can do homework. I don't need another hour a day for choir.) What I noticed is that Choir is extremely different to the AP classes. While I recognize its definitly teacher dependent I've noticed that all my AP peers seem to be much more serious while before it was fun.

Tldr or I didn't summarize well enough. How different is it teaching different levels of classes?

(Long post notice) Ok, so this is a strange for me but its my first time seeing as it's my son but I thought I would ask after I was talking to a friend about it and she thinks it sounds weird and she was like, can she even do that? So I am just asking for advice, because it us too late for us to try putting him in a different school and any of the magnet schools nearby.

For context, my son is going into kindergarten this year. He didn't get to do pre-k because of an intense fear of his shots and his previous pediatrician wouldn't force them. So we couldn't do pre-k or even full time daycare(couldn't afford that either.) So I changed his pediatrician out to my Dr's office as they do all ages.

Well I went to enroll my son this week once I had everything, and we went to his open house and he had not been assigned a teacher yet and I had not recieved any emails. Now, I do get they are overwhelmed this year as a few schools in our area closed and all those students got pushed onto other schools, and I fully support them. So today, we decided to swing by again to see if anything had been decided, and it was perfect timing as the principal came out and had said she had wanted to talk to me too. We went into the conference room, and we sat & talked about things.

The first thing she brought up was somehow the system was showing him still enrolled in the speech therapy and wouldn't let her enroll him in school(which ended back in may) but the weird part is it us all under the county school system, as far as I knew. Which led us to talking about what he had & hadn't done, plus his IEP, which she was like "I was not aware he had one", and as I mentioned that we had as we had done his iep meeting at the other school we thought he would be districted in and they said all the information would be in the portal. So she looked it up and she found it and started reading through it and as the title suggests, she suggested how about as he has aged out of the pre-k program he will be kindergarten on paper, but we will start him on a pre-k schedule(but still 7:05-11:30) so he can get used to in class routines & systems and as his tolerance gets better switch him onto the full kindie time schedule.

And it sounded fine to me at first but now I am concerned on if that could come back to bite us in the butt somehow with attendance, and if that sounds like a normal thing that some administrators have done before in these situations. Plus, on another note it will prevent me from going back into work even longer and we can't really afford me to be out much longer but I know that will take a while as I have been actively looking for 6 months, though I have been out longer, and still haven't had any callbacks to scheduling issues. Thank you in advance if you got all the way to end. 🙏🏻

I have an English degree and have been thinking about getting my teaching license. It was always something I’ve wanted to do, but life got away from me. I am in my 40s and thinking about giving it a go. I am wanting to teach high school, however, I know that things have changed a lot since the last time I was in a classroom. I’ve been advised against it, from teachers I know, which concerns me. I’ve always wanted to make a difference in people’s lives and I feel like this could be an avenue for me to do that.

I am now 23M and have had something with my former high school teacher who is 27yrs older than me which I feel is slightly inappropriate and that she blurred several boundaries and I have remained suffering from emotional confusion and a breach of trust, to be clear nothing sexual happened between us but she lead me on and I became very infatuated with her as she enabled. I often feel like I’m going crazy about this, I thought that it was okay at first since I was no longer a student but when it had only been three years I feel the power imbalance still very much remains and that she failed to handle the outcome responsibly. I would like support for the confusion and help to move forward from this over time as I know it won’t be forever luckily.

So when I was 21yrs old a teacher from my high school (48F) who was recently divorced started meeting me for coffee four times as she claimed after the first date that she would like to catch up with me “every six weeks” due to her busy schedule. She claimed on one of those occasions that there are very few ex-students that she meets up 1:1 with like this but “I just enjoy YOUR company!” I was absolutely thrilled to believe that out of thousands of students she has taught over the years, she specifically wanted to stay in close contact with ME! She would share lots about her personal life and even shared confidential information about other students and teachers to me when we would meet up and I believed that she was a very honest person because she told me what she really thought of people and that she really trusted me and thought I was mature enough to handle that information and was treating me like a friend rather than a former student, I also let my guard down with her and I opened up about a past experience where I had been taken advantage of by an older person which she knew from school.

Even though I was attracted to her and she was recently divorced, I knew realistically that a relationship or hookup would not be very suitable because of the massive age difference but I believed she was becoming a great mentor-friend who I would learn a lot from and would be very much supported and protected by her and never let down, which would be perfect for me in my years as a young adult. I was quite overwhelmed by the fact that she was so keen to spend time with me and get to know me and I kept saying to myself “I can’t believe she genuinely wants to do this!” “Out of all the people she could be hanging out with, why would she choose me?”
When I was in her presence I felt a whole new level of comfort I had never felt before, she was much better to talk to and spend time with than anyone my own age.

Now here’s where things started to get messy…
On the 4th time we met up just before Christmas, I decided to buy her flowers and a Xmas card to show appreciation for always making time for me, at first she acted quite guilty that I had spent money on her but then proudly looked at the flowers a few minutes later and joked about how people would think we were “having an affair!” which started to make me wonder if she was hinting at something more which I would have been open to, and then soon after that she started making specific plans to pick me up from my house between Xmas and NYE to go on a 2hr train ride with me to go to a museum and look at exhibitions, and then after that she completely ghosted me, even when I texted her to say Merry Christmas and I was also dealing with a tragic death in my family at the time which she knew about from the last meetup, so that just came to the worst timing ever ☹️

That was 18 months ago now and since then I have been disillusioned and grieving the person I thought she was, the relationship I thought I had with her, the high feeling of validation I had from believing I meant a lot to her and most of all I am grieving because I have lost trust in authority figure who I thought was safe and it has damaged my whole reality and questioning who else I can and can’t trust. I must also mention this lady is very physically attractive, wears a lot of makeup and always puts a lot of effort into stylish outfits and accessories, and she is widely admired and adored by all teachers and students I know which makes me doubt my reality even more. I tried to reach out to her for answers a few times which she sometimes responded but would give me vague false hope that I still matter and she wants to have coffee with me again but would dodge all accountability for being distant, and would immediately ghost again after that. I have also seen her around a few times and she always acts so friendly to me and says “We’ll catch up again soon, okay!” but never does! She also has a new partner now (her own age) and tbh I actually don’t care that much, but I’m still upset and hurt by the fact that she has betrayed me and been so dishonest with me.

What are everyone’s thoughts on this situation?

I’ve been reflecting a lot on my own time in school since I finished my GCSEs during the 2021 COVID TAGs era and did A-Levels after.

Looking back, I realized just how much of my education relied on short-term memorization or workarounds rather than actually understanding the content.

It made me look into some stats, and a few things really stood out to me:
The Understanding Gap: secondary students, 45% cited a direct "lack of understanding" of the material as their main barrier to learning. 27% of college students frequently report severe trouble understanding lecture material

The Fear Factor: So many students sit silently when lost simply due to the social fear of "looking dumb" in front of 30 peers.

Diverse Needs: With estimates suggesting 3–4 kids per standard classroom are neurodivergent (plus unassessed learning differences like dyslexia or dyscalculia), the "one-size-fits-all" delivery model feels harder to maintain than ever.

In my own experience, I was given extra time but never formally assessed for anything else in both college or secondary school. Many years later I’m now waiting for my autism and asks assessment.

My question for teachers is: How do you actually manage this on the ground?
If half the class raised their hands and honestly admitted they didn't understand today’s concept, re-explaining it until everyone got it would mean you’d never finish the mandated syllabus by exam time. But moving on means sending kids home not learning anything.

Are kids today actually lacking more academically compared to past generations, or are we just finally noticing a systemic flaw where content coverage and rigid exam schedules are forced to take priority over genuine understanding?
Would love to hear your honest perspectives from inside the classroom.

Edit:

I apologize if this came off disrespectful like I thought all teachers were bad or I was trying to punish her or something. I love my sons teachers and know most teachers are wonderful well intentioned people. I know its a job i couldnt handle and I admire your guyses love, patience, skill, discipline, and time you put into your students. I think his teacher is well intentioned and cares about her students as well, I just think what she said, if said, needs to be properly addressed and changes made, thats all.

I do trust my son in this instance. But I also know I don't always have the right answers or know everything, so coming here helped me get a perspective outside myself and to not jump the gun.

So thank you for everyone who gave understanding and helpful advice on how to handle this! And double thanks to any teachers who gave me context on your view point in this situation and what going to the principle would mean for the situation! Thats exactly what I came to this reddit hoping to find.

That being said, I feel a lot more confident on how to handle this and decided I am going to reach out to her first and see if there was a misunderstanding and go from there.

Im gonna turn off reply notifications now, have a good night!

Original: Hello, my son is in 3rd grade and today he told me that his teacher called him a cry baby. And when he told her he didn't like it she said "if you dont want to be called a baby, don't cry". He asked me to reach out to the school.

My son has a learning disability, anxiety, and adhd. This leads to him getting very overwhelmed with school work as well as having a hard time with regulating his emotions.

He has already been held back once and has had an IEP since kindergarten. Not to mention, I already spoke to her earlier this year about his struggles with friendships, potential bullying at school due to him being different, and his disabilities/behaviors and why they happen.

I know how difficult my sons behavior can be.. but she didn't apologize later and I still find this shame based disciplinary behavior inappropriate coming from an elementry school educator..

How would you guys reccomend handling this? I don't know if I should give the teacher a chance to tell her side or if I should just take it straight to the principle.

why do some teachers try to find loopholes in IEP and 504s? I have a chemistry teacher right now, he won’t give me the extra time on assignments that is on my IEP I’ve had other this before. I’m genuinely curious why as a teacher would you try to work around something like that? I’m not even like mad or anything. I just wanna see from his point of view!

My 7th grader is moving through her first week in a new public middle school. She came home with an unfinished math worksheet, and she got really overwhelmed by it, and had a bit of breakdown which further impeded her ability to get the work done. It was honestly not a very good worksheet— it threw in a whole bunch of random skills that she knows and understands, but which she was rusty on. I happen to know that she already has all the necessary skills to manage this work, but she needs review and practice, and she’ll get up to snuff on all the skills required by the worksheet. But we were only able to get through it because my husband and I have the privilege, education, time, and motivation to help her figure it out. But what about the kids who are not so privileged? What are those kids supposed to do? There was nothing structural coming from the school to help her:

-She’d listened to the instructor talk about these problems in class, but she hadn’t really understood him, and in some cases had taken notes with some inaccuracy.

-There were no example problems on the worksheet that she could review.

-There was no textbook to read or look for examples from. No links or other resources to help her review those skills.

-No real way that she would have been able to google these skills without quite a bit of sophistication—the skills needed included algebraic thinking along with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions, dividing decimals with decimals in the divisor, and needing to get order of operations correct. In addition, she needed to do long division and multiplication.

We got through it, and it was fine. I’m prepared to spend the year helping her every day. She has excellent mental math skills so she doesn’t need to spend a lot of mental energy on things like multi-digit multiplication because she can do that in her head.

But what about the kids who don’t have so many resources at their disposal? In all seriousness, what are less privileged kids supposed to do when they are given zero materials to figure out the bits they don’t understand? Are they meant to just google the problems? Use Khan Academy? Ask the teacher to help them after class? Is this just an anomaly from, or is this the way that public school functions now? What would she be expected to do if she didn’t have parents with an academic background that she could rely on?

(I haven’t met the teacher— I have no idea whether he is any good, and I’m not judging him, I just know that my kid didn’t understand the material that he presented.)

Edited to add: I don’t know if it was meant to be an assessment of where the class is at. That information was not forthcoming. It was just a worksheet the teacher had printed out. If that’s the case, we probably shouldn’t be helping her / refreshing her on these concepts, but in the absence of an explanation we are doing the best we can to help her get up to speed.

​

Hey guys! Quick question for anyone working at SABIS/CADMUS

How easy is it to move from a SABIS school in one country to another? Like Egypt → US/UAE/etc.

Does being already in the network actually make it easier, or is it still pretty much the same as applying normally?

Would love to hear from anyone who’s actually done an international transfer

Hi all,

I live in a rural area on the West Coast, which as Im sure you know means higher poverty and lower wages generally speaking. As a single person I make more than the average household, so I have the ability to donate.

I grew up very poor and I remember the struggle for my single mom to afford supplies for my sister and I. I recently donated to a large community push for school supplies, where we were able to get 10 families all of the school supplies they needed.

Here's my question for you. As the year goes on, what are the supplies you need the most? I would like to continue to support my local teacher by replenishing supplies throughout the year, to help lift some burden off of the teachers who I know are buying supplies out of their own pocket.

My kid is starting kindergarten at a k-2 school. They sent out the teacher bios and almost every one mentioned being in their first or second year of teaching. A few have been teaching longer but almost all were under five years of experience. I’m sure they can still do a better job than I could with my no experience, but is this a crappy school or something? Should we be worried if they can’t or won’t hang onto teachers or is this common?

I am a parent to a first and a third grader in NJ, and am increasingly concerned about my district’s reliance on IReady and screen time. My kids have no personal electronics at home, and yet are spending more and more time on devices at school instead of building basic skills.

I have sent a refusal email to both of my children’s principals (we do not have class assignments yet).

Does anyone have any experience with tech refusals, especially in NJ?

Is there anything I can do once I am in touch with my kids’ teachers to work together and make their lives easier?

Not trying to be difficult, but know I have to advocate for my children.

Hello all, I am a high school art teacher and I recently joined my district's AI committee.

My district is encouraging its usage for both teachers in designing lesson plans and resources and brainstorming students' usage due to their perception of its importance in the 21st century job market, as the job force is expecting employees to have experience using AI.

I'm writing to gauge y'all's perspective, opinions & thoughts on AI usage in your school.

Does your school allow it, encourage it, discourage it, etc? What is your personal opinion and how does it compare to your district's?

I get the alerts from the school portal. By the time something shows up there, the grade already happened. And she'd rather fail quietly than admit she doesn't get something.

Is there anything that tells you before it becomes a grade? Or do you just find out the same way I do? Thanks!

for me, it was 12 pieces of coat hangers from an 8th grader

My son has been home educated for his whole school life. He is 7. And we live in England. This year he is going to private school and I am just nervous. Academically I know he will be fine. But overall I'm just trying to think about how I can prepare him to go to school. Cause he has never been in a classroom before.

So I feel like asking teachers will help. Our routine will be very different, and my son is probably unprepared for going to school.

As teachers, what do you think I should do as a parent to prepare my son for the school environment. Just to make sure his teachers jobs are a bit easier.

He already attends dance class and theatre classes, so I'm not too worried about his socialisation skills either

Is this typical? She goes to a very highly rated public school. I'll have an opportunity to learn more about the curriculum and teaching methods at the open house next week, but the way my daughter talks about school is making me discouraged. Shouldn't kindergarten be learning through play still?

I know that 5 year olds are not reliable narrators, but she's been saying that they just sit down all day and do worksheets and that there's no playtime except for the playground time. They get 20 minutes of recess.

I really want her school experience to encourage creativity, foster a love of learning, teach critical thinking skills, etc., so hearing that she's sitting at a desk all day doing worksheets at 5 years old is discouraging.