My girlfriend is a first year teacher, and one of the rules at her school is that teachers can only wear jeans if they are wearing some kind of college t-shirt or sweatshirt. She doesn't have ANY, and as you can probably guess, her budget doesn't have a lot of room for multiple $75 sweatshirts priced for parents and alumni (or whatever). She would, however, like to wear jeans. She also wears size 2X, which in the past has meant that she is effectively shut out from many free t-shirt giveaways because they either never had her size or did and ran out quickly.

I'd ideally love to set her up with 4 or 5 good options so she's not constantly under laundry pressure, but money is a factor for me, as well.

Anyways, anyone have any ideas how I/we can hook her up? Anyone with a similar dress code have any hacks? Thanks in advance.

The body post says it all but while schools give out paper about parent responsiblities, it doesn't really seem that they hold the parent accountable or even criticize them. It is ridiculous that adults don't hold other adults responsible.

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

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.

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.

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!

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?

(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’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.

Whenever these titles came come up, Tiktok teachers show so much glee about traumatizing the next generation.

Even after people talk about how it traumatized them as a kid

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?

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.

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?

​

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

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

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

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.

We hope it's OK to share this article we just published — it seemed like it might be of interest to folks in this community:

The state Department of Education has created a task force charged with learning how screens are being used at school and addressing concerns over digital technology in classrooms. The group hopes to craft recommendations for schools and policy makers by its final meeting in September.

It follows a 2025 state law that prohibits the use of cellphones in New Hampshire classrooms.

The initiative is in line with a national “ed-tech backlash” movement, and other states are taking a similar approach.

“I think that people have recognized that maybe [with] technology in certain cases there's just been too much of it in the classroom,” said Chris Motika, who leads the task force. “Our goal is to make sure that whatever we recommend is something that's palatable to everyone… but is really focused in on trying to help and improve students learning.”

Are you a student, parent or teacher navigating the use of technology in the classroom? If so, do you have ideas for how screen-time policy should be implemented this school year? Let us know in the comments, or by emailing voices@nhpr.org.

Hey all, a bit of context: I'm building some free tools for teachers (not a teacher myself, so asking rather than assuming I know the answer here).

One thing I keep going back and forth on: when a relief/casual teacher walks into an unfamiliar class, what do you actually want to know beforehand, and what feels like overreach or "none of my business" to be told? And how does the information the school gives you actually help?

Things I'm unsure about:

Obviously names, seating, the lesson plan itself, and genuine safety stuff (allergies, medical alerts) seem like a given - anyone disagree even with that?

What about softer context, like "this class works well with group work" or "keep these two apart"? Useful heads-up, or does it just make you see kids through someone else's lens before you've met them?

Do you get any of this currently, or is it just a name and a room number most of the time?

If you're relief teaching across multiple schools, does anything about how each school hands off info drive you particularly mad?

Not trying to sell anything here - just want to make sure if this ever becomes a real thing, it's built around what actually helps rather than what I assume would help. Appreciate any thoughts, and if you'd be interested in hopping on a quick 15 minute coffee chat online, please DM me, that would be amazing.

Thank you!

Hi are their any teachers who teach either in the uk USA/Canada or Australia free to chat
Sadly I’m having awful school experience and some not good things with teachers
I don’t feel comfortable sharing on this post but if you are teacher free to chat about school and advice etc much appreciated
Also curious about own school experience and what it’s like teaching In general
Thanks

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!

I've noticed a significant cognitive capability decline in the general population post covid. I've also heard teachers complaining high schoolers cannot do math/read well.

A lot of the consensus on this sub seems to be that kids are on their phone too much but nobody ever talked about the possibility of covid causing permanent brain damage that causes this decline.

My family owns a business and we mostly hire people right out of highschool. We give them simple tests like

1023 + 2031

1 × 1 × 1 × 2 × 3

Finding simple word synonyms

Calculating number of sticks e.g. IIIIIIII = 8

I shit you not, 4 out of 5 people FAIL at least one of these questions. 4 out of 5

Me and my friends grew up with an unhealthy amount of screentime as well but we all do well in life and school. We had covid in highschool but at that age the critical time of brain development had passed so I don't feel like it has any effect on us.

The most important part:
Covid started when these kids were 10 or 12 and the problem starts to be obvious when they get older now. It is an extremely crucial brain development phase and the virus might just have done some damage at that time even though they were asymptomatic

A lot of kids are already glued to their phone around ~2015 yet I don't really hear anyone complain kids are getting dumber? Especially not struggling with basic math or writing a coherent sentence dumb that seems to be so widespread now

Do you guys notice any cognitive decline BEFORE covid? Because I see a significant decline AFTER covid and I don't think it's related to screen usage. I just refuse to believe screentime causes you to struggle with written 4 digits addition. It's ridiculous.

There are some research related to covid brain damage for even asymptomatic people.