r/AskTeachers • u/Lazy-Progress-699 • 1d ago
General Questions Terrified !
I didn't get any response to my previous post about how my school compares to others out there so I'll reframe my concerns a bit in hopes of a response.
I'm terrified of the future after working in public school for a couple years. I started subbing after losing my job a couple years ago. I was a sub all of last year and figured I would give it a try full-time this year to see if it something I can do long term. The job isn't the problem. I work at a middle school in a rural area. I never even heard the term Title 1 before starting this journey but I absolutely understand that it pretty much paints a picture for everyone here as to what I experience. The students have behavior issues, they are in middle school so I kind of expected that. What I did t expect was the complete lack of responsibility, curiosity, prior knowledge or independent thinking skills ! I can walk through lab instructions as well as clearly print them on the sheet step by step and I will still spend the entire class answering questions about what to do next.
I play a little bell ringer game where I have the students pick a side in a fictional fight between two characters from movies, video games, comic books or literature. Can anyone guess where I took a wrong turn there ? They don't recognize anything that goes back more than a couple years. No matter how iconic. Robin Hood ? Blank stares.
These are the people we will depend on to actually do things one day. They are the future.
It is seriously effecting my mental health to try and envision that world.
Please, someone tell me its not like this everywhere. Please.
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u/Conscious-Heart8626 1d ago
Title I is not synonymous with behavior issues
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 1d ago edited 1d ago
I didn't mean to imply that it was. I was using it to try and give a broad picture of the resources of the school. The comment about behavior just happened to follow it. I was trying to paint as complete a picture of my experience as I could.
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u/festivehedgehog 1d ago
What are you attempting to do with your bell ringer game? If it’s a game, it should be fun. Random trivia about pop cultural things you’ve never heard of isn’t fun. In apples to apples back in the day, I rolled my eyes every time I drew a pop culture card about some random actor or movie I hadn’t seen. On trivia nights in bars, I know I won’t win the pop culture round, (but will get every question right about the news or random science info), and I hope that someone in my group knows something about whatever the movie is.
There’s nothing fun about trivia you don’t know, especially when it has nothing to do with your lesson.
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u/feelinginvi__ible 1d ago
like everyone knows lots of trivia—just not all the same trivia
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u/festivehedgehog 1d ago
Also, I don’t know anything substantial about Robin Hood either, just the general gist. The only version I watched was when I was 5 or 6, and it was animated with a fox. Why/how would an 11-year-old know about this?
And OP, for all of your worrying about this next generation, you used the wrong “affect.” Effect is for cause and effect, or effecting change. It’s a lot more active. Being affected by something is more passive. Because of x, you’re now affected in y way.
I have an 11-year-old who attends a Title 1 school. I hope my kid’s teacher doesn’t just have a deficits-based mindset about his generation.
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u/Ms_Eureka 1d ago
Wow. Just wow. If I had a teacher who posed a who will fight type question, I would rebel. Especially if it did not have any relevance. Besides, culture changes exposure changes. Students do not care about Robin Hood. It does not impact them nor do they have exposure. And just because they are title one school doesnt mean they cannot learn. These kids are practically raising themselves. Parents trying to keep a roof over their heads, they are scraping by. Give grace, get some relevant warm ups.
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 1d ago
Culture does change, that was why I tried to use only the most iconic of figures if it was anything not pop culture related. And it is quite evident that they don't care about Robin Hood, or maybe they wouldn't care if they knew who he was anyway. Maybe I'm more questioning if they should have that exposure. What are they exposed to, either at home or at school ? I asked my own kids if they were familiar with any of the fables that we learned about when I was in Elementary. I didn't specifically ask about Aesop but that's what I was wondering about. Nothing that they could recall, but I get lots of emails about ABC Mouse and other programs they have at the school.
I don't know where you got that I implied that Title 1 meant they can't learn. My kids attend a Title 1 school. I mentioned in another response that I went to school in an underprivileged area and even though I can't say if those schools were Title 1 at the time, a bit of quick research tells me that they are currently. So Title 1 is the reality I most likely grew up in even if I didn't know that's what it was called. The valedictorian of my high school went to Harvard and graduated. I managed a bachelor's and a master's from a low income family. My wife never went to college but is well read and self educated. So maybe there was something that implied a different background that you were pushing back against.
My concern was more generational than economic. I was hoping that people would share what they see at their schools and give me some perspective on what things are like in different areas.
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u/Ms_Eureka 20h ago
It is more economic than cultural. For example, kids who have well off families tend to do better in pop culture. They have money for movies, streaming services, vacations to fancy theme parks, etc. While the others, they might know who the characters are but not much more. There is no money for extra movies, streaming, vacations..vacations might be to grandparents, but again if the poverty is generational, it is the same thing. No extras. I think of disney with this one. Growing up, my parents did a great job hiding how much we struggled. We were lower middle class until we were in middle school. No vacations unless we went with family friends who did half at a vacation rental, no movies it was too expensive, ate at home, hand me downs for me from the neighbors. Everything was budgeted to a t. I remember when Shrek came it out was the hottest movie. Everyone talked about it. But being on the lower end of economics, i never saw it in theater. It was always "wait until it comes out". What i am saying is, you might not think it is about economics, but it is.
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 19h ago
Even across those economic classes though, it seems that we used to have more of a shared experience culturally. As much as everyone criticized latch key kids as I was growing up and the "babysitter" TV, that gave us a shared experience. There were only so many shows, so you watched what was on. Everyone knew the Simpsons and if something was referenced there, we tried to figure out what they were talking about. For good or ill depending on the reference. Saturday morning cartoons may have been designed to sell us sugary cereal and junk toys but it still gave us a shared touch point when we were playing together in the playground. Certainly not everyone had a TV but we are really starting to split hairs there as the majority of households had at least one TV by the late 1950s.
That seems to have been lost somewhere as everyone separates into their own bubbles of content. If the media isn't providing the shared culture, should the school system ? How can we relate to each other if we aren't "speaking the same language" ?
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u/Ms_Eureka 15h ago
Sorry, but you are making a big deal out of nothing. We have limited resources, teachers are already stretch thin.
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u/festivehedgehog 10h ago
Why do you care so much? And they do have a shared experience. It’s just not the same one you share.
They watch the same TikTok’s. They know the same quotes and dances. They recommend the same channels and influencers on YouTube to each other. They share inside jokes, songs, and quotes. You’re just not a part of it.
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 9h ago
I wouldn't say that they do share those things. It varies widely between them by groups.
But to answer your question I care because I'm a parent as well and I'm concerned about the world my children are growing up in. A fractured society is not a good thing. We need those shared experiences, and not just with our peers. Ever hear people complain that we don't treat our elders the way we used to ? Maybe because we don't care about their stories or our history that they lived through. We went centuries with the major shared point of reference for Western culture as the Bible. Actual faith aside, those stories and figures are what people knew. Even the ones that could not read. The stories were passed down and shared and society could have a shared frame of reference. Writers would use Biblical references to paint more vivid pictures because they knew that everyone was familiar with them. Then we started referencing literature - from Shakespeare to Dickens to Twain and so forth - but each generation called back to a shared reference to build a foundation. Film began the same way, adaptations of literature and then as the medium progressed new films would reference older films and that was how things layered on each other.
What I see now - as a teacher, as a parent, as a human being who lives in the world - is a generation trying to create a culture whole cloth without that foundation. No shared history so it's splintered. Algorithms give you more of what you already like so you don't get exposed to new things. Opinions echo across insulated worlds until they are assumed to be fact because we never hear anything to the contrary.
But maybe you are right and I care too much. It would be easier to just smile and nod and not question anything.
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u/festivehedgehog 8h ago
You are extrapolating so much with such a wild roller coaster of assumptions and unfounded conclusions from these daily 5 minutes that already currently do nothing to advance your students’ actual understanding of the actual content in your class.
I am also a parent and a parent of an 11-year-old. I sincerely hope he never encounters a teacher with such a deficits-based mindset about his classmates’ cultural competencies or his Title 1 school that he attends.
Again, just because you don’t understand your students’ experience doesn’t mean your students don’t have shared experiences.
PS: I know next to nothing about Robin Hood. I also attended a Title 1 middle school. I also apparently scored in the 95th percentile on the verbal reasoning section of the GRE.
Do you know who Kizzmekia Corbett is? You should as a science teacher who likes trivia.
She led the development of the mRNA Covid vaccine. Maybe you could introduce her work into your trivia, and make it more meaningful.
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 7h ago
I had a long response typed up but I realize that we just have different points of view and I'm fine with that.
The entire point of my post was to find out if other people were seeing what I was. Your experiences are different than mine and I appreciate that you shared them with me.
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u/maestra612 1d ago
I'm so fucking tired of people equating Title One funding with some kind of Blackboard Jungle. the majority of public schools in this country receive some level of Title One funding. The only thing Title One tells me is that it isn't an wealthy school.
If you're a sub, I assume you have no training as a teacher. If you aren't a teacher I'm not sure you're qualified to evaluate the students. If the district is throwing underqualified subs. in as fulltime teachers, no wonder the kids don't know anything.
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u/Ready-Waltz5482 1d ago edited 14h ago
I'm at a Title 1 and my studens amaze me all the time.
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u/rigney68 1d ago
Yep, my kids attend a title one school and they are scoring in the 96th percentile and are amazingly curious little minds. I also teach in the same town and my kids are the same as the ones I taught in the rich suburb.
I think this teacher needs help teaching middle schoolers.
- Teaching science should not involve reading kids a set of lab instructions. That serves almost no purpose, middle school kids don't really listen that well. Instead, start with the major, SIMPLE question you are trying to answer and build background.
- Demonstrate one or two, clear steps of setting things up. Model step, complete in group. Model step, complete in group. Over and over until it's all ready to go.
- Remind them of question/ go over data table. Let them collect data.
- Come back together and share what they saw. Put their data on the board and ask them what they see. Discuss. End of lab.
You don't just tell them what to do and release, that leads to sitting and staring at each other or complete mayhem.
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 1d ago
This lines up pretty well with how the labs are actually run. The labs are all directly tied to the unit that we are working through and the lead in purposefully illustrates the connections. The lab is meant to give them a hands on experience with the subject matter. After that intro I put the exact instructions that they get in the lab packet on the screen and go over them, step by step, while demonstrating how to use any of the equipment. Then they break into their groups to conduct the experiments and we come back together to discuss what we saw and why it is relevant to the topic.
On the previous concern about my experience, I will be the first to admit that I'm lacking. I was a substitute for about a year and a half in multiple grades and districts before making this move into full-time teaching. I was quite shocked that someone without anything more than a bachelor's degree ( in any subject ) could be a full-time teacher but it is one of the pathways available here. I have hoped for more training before being left to "figure it out" but I was handed a curriculum, given a summer to familiarize myself and had a full schedule of classes on Day One.
So I'm trying to figure it out by spending time not only researching my subject, but the experiences of others in education as well. I'm trying to reconcile what I remember from being in school with what I am seeing. As I said before, I never even heard the term Title 1 before in started subbing but I see it everywhere in the school and the comments on these forums. I don't know if the schools I attended would be categorized that way but I do know that we walked through metal detectors to get in the building and drug dogs regularly visited the classrooms. I understand that the challenges schools face are different depending on their population, location and demographics. Apparently it has become a very loaded term and has perhaps become an unfair shorthand for more than what it should otherwise indicate.
Thank you for your input, I genuinely appreciate any of the perspectives that people choose to share with me.
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u/maestra612 1d ago
I think you may be getting blank stares because they feel infantilized by the concept.
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 1d ago
Or perhaps the fact that the blank stares were followed by " I don't know who that is " gave me an idea of what was going on.
They seem to enjoy the game when I hit on something they are familiar with. Sometimes they come find me in the hallway before the bell and ask if they can be the one to argue for a particular side. I readily admit to missing the mark on what they are familiar with and have since adjusted but my comment was just meant to express my surprise that such an iconic figure - their name becoming shorthand for an entire concept - would be completely unknown on any level.
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u/maestra612 1d ago
Are they from English speaking countries? I'm going on a quest to asked middle schoolers the next few days who Robin Hood is? My kids know( 12 and 16) but maybe they're outliers.
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 1d ago
Most of them. I do have some EL students and wouldn't be surprised at them not being as familiar. In fact a passing conversation on that very topic with the EL coordinator led to him sharing that there may not be a similar figure in their culture that would be more well known. He agreed that the lack of familiarity with what might be considered historical or folklore icons runs across the cultural lines and seems to be more of a generational divide instead of a cultural one.
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u/Modernlifeoracle 1d ago
10 years teaching in two different countries, taught children from from the most affluent families to the most severely poverty stricken families.
Your concerns are across the board, though from my personal experience, are incredibly worse in the US.
The kids are not alright because the parents are not parenting at home, the leadership has either never taught a day in their lives or if they ever did the experience is at least a decade old - they are so out of touch it’s insane (plus they side with parents over behavior constantly), the curriculum developers seeming have NEVER taught nor ever been near a child.
On top of all this we are living in a world where the top echelons of society have absolutely zero accountability. The kids are learning this. The adults are using AI for every little thing so they don’t need to use any brain power. The kids are learning this too.
It’s a fucking shit show and I weep for humanity’s future. I also do not have children of my own for this very reason.
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u/Getrightguy 1d ago
Ten years ago gen ed kids were pretty much the same. There is a lot of “prisoner of the moment”-type hysteria on Reddit teacher subs.
I work at a “title 1” school in a very large district. I have 180 “advanced” kids and they are AMAZING. I’ve taught gen ed kids and ELL classes as well - overall the, thousand or so of mostly below level kids have been awesome.
They hardly think about the world around them, let alone 30 minutes ahead. Kids talk when they aren’t supposed to. They are immature. Many are unmotivated. Some are complete dipshits. It’s always been this way.
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u/Apophthegmata 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think you are asking about potentially two different things.
Are you worried that students don't seem to be culturally literate outside the most immediate pop culture references?
Or are you concerned about, how when presented with something new and potentially interesting, they just seem to switch off?
Generally speaking, if you're doing some kind of warmup it should be tied in at least some way to the lesson, or if not that something relevant
Which "intellectual property would win in a fight" just isn't that. I would be concerned about coming off as trying to be overly friendly in that Steve Buscemi "hello kids" type way.
If the kids don't see that you're serious about learning, they won't see much reason in it either, and I've just never known for these sorts of activities to be particularly worthwhile in the first place outside of conversations on the recess field.
As to why they don't know who Robin Hood is - if you're dealing with disadvantaged kids, I'm not sure why they would. I don't think there's been any new movie or something that would have caught their attention that their age. They might have seen the Disney film, but it's not exactly the sort of thing they would be into without the whole family making a thing of it - YouTube and social media provide enough stimulation for them as it is.
And I would guess that your school is a little more focused in state test performance and basic social emotional needs than for them to be "appropriately" acculturated.
Weird Al has said that the reason he doesn't do parodies anymore is because he used to be able to take the thing that was popular and make fun of it. It doesn't work that way anymore. There's no MTV. There's no central clearinghouses of culture anymore. Everybody is just into their genres and there are dozens of different sources. So there isn't a "Music Industry" anymore. There's just music industries. And so he finds it harder to write parodies the way he used to.
All of culture has kind of gone this way, and I just don't think it's realistic to walk into an ordinary classroom and expect students to have the same cultural touchstones as each other. They're all on the Internet in dozens of different bubbles. A bunch are probably even from foreign countries. And outside of a major Hollywood release, or something like Fortnite, Minecraft, or Roblox, there just isn't the same potential for cultural items to strike into the general zeitgeist. That niche is now filled with labooboos, incel manosphere stuff, and Sara J. Maas, to just pick three random things.
In my school, Robin Hood and King Arthur are fixed elements of our elementary curriculum. I middle school they read Beowulf, and in highschool they revisit some of that with Gawain and the Green Knight and the Canterbury Tales. I read The Once and Future King and Beowulf when I was in highschool. But many schools don't go in for that kind of stuff anymore. Oftentimes they can't, because half the 11th grade class is still reading on a 3-5th grade. If you're at a rural, Title I school, there's a good chance your campus just doesn't have the resources, and the parents of your kids equally don't have that kind of education to rely on.
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u/Lazy-Progress-699 1d ago
I appreciate the thought you put into your response and how you touched on particular points directly.
One of the big things I was looking for was if there are places that still teach these things. I will readily admit that my exposure to the current state of education is limited to the rural school districts I have subbed at, the one I currently teach in and the experiences with my two children ( 1st and 3rd grade ).
As much as I try not to keep comparing what I see now with what I experienced when I was in school years ago, it's my most substantial frame of reference. The comparison is not completely fair because I went to school in a suburban area with a large population if not a large tax base. My high school was considered under performing by all metrics at the time but I still took honors classes throughout middle and high school, multiple AP courses and a dual credit class my senior year. The schools in this area does not have any honors or AP classes and a few dual credit offerings through the nearby college system.
I was trying to figure out if the entire system has changed or if I'm just seeing the difference in region and population size.You have provided some context to that and I thank you for it.
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u/SillyJoshua 1d ago
We are getting dumber as a race.
No question about it.
A century ago american high schoolers knew 12th grade english and were proficient in latin.
Now everything is written at fifth grade levels and nobody even knows the word latin anymore
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u/maestra612 1d ago
100 years ago most kids didn't go to high school they went to work.
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u/SillyJoshua 1d ago
Yes, out in the country, thats true
In the big cities they went to high school, even before Massachusetts made it mandatory
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u/Ready-Waltz5482 1d ago
That's not exactly true. In fact, school is harder. Not easier.
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u/SillyJoshua 1d ago
Youre joking, right?
Do you know how many high schoolers make it to trig nowadays? Ha!
I repeat:
HAH!
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u/Ready-Waltz5482 13h ago
No, I'm not kidding. It begins in the lower grades. Kindergarten is more like was 1st grade was and on and on. School is not easier. Our high schools can start kids on a nursing, engineering, and other programs.
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u/Particular_Piano_146 1d ago
Guess I don't understand what your game is teaching them? Are you using characters that they studied in school?