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The one thing that requires zero effort is shutting the motherfucking hell UP during a lesson, but my 8th grade students can't seem to make it happen, so I separated their desks yesterday afternoon and pointed all of them forward, and they'll no longer be engaging in group work.
Edit: Because we have a bunch of Dunning-Krugers in this comment thread, I will clarify.
I've been teaching for 18 years. This is my 6th year teaching 8th grade. I have four classes with more than 30 students, and a full third of the students in all six classes won't stop talking. This is not an incompetent first-year teacher saying this. This is not a jaded, about-to-retire teacher saying this. This is not just a paycheck for me. It is my vocation and I take it seriously. I earned a Bachelor's in education and a Master's in math education; my K12 students generally love my classes because I am knowledgeable and make math fun to learn, and I always get the highest evaluation scores for the undergraduate classes with students regularly saying "I always used to struggle with/be afraid of/hate math, but [teacher] helped me get my first A/B ever in a math class."
The entire school...from the teachers to the administrators...knows what I know about this group of 8th graders, that the behavior of one-third of them is beyond the pale. None of us has had a set of students like these before, and none of us has a great solution. So we are just going to take away all privileges and give them back slowly over time once they've shown that they have earned them.
It's not just that they talk to much. It is that it is a third of every class, that they make it impossible to teach the two-thirds who are capable of being decent students on any given day, that they take pride and literal pleasure in being disruptions, that they have little shame or humility and thus no impetus to allow their teachers to teach, that phone calls home are fruitless, that we have little recourse as far as the administration is concerned and have to keep them in class, that I am autistic with auditory processing disorder and can't understand what a kid right in front of me is saying even with me putting my ear right next to their mouth and them repeating their question three times...
So please save armchair teachering because you really, really don't know what you're talking about.
Shocking that the offspring of a species that became the dominant species on this planet exactly because we evolved nearly effortless communication and social traits would be inclined to be social with other people.
Not saying you're a bad teacher, you just fighting an uphill battle against our natural instinct to be social creatures in an education system that does everything it can to ignore that kids generally do like and actuall do need to be social for healthy development.
I've been teaching for 18 years. Every year before this one, things have gone relatively well. They talk a little, I quiet them down, we have a lesson, time is embedded in it for group work, and I tell them I'd like 85% of their conversation to be about the assignment. Most kids are decent. A few are superb. Some do jack shit and I struggle all year to get them to do anything. And about 5% of the students cause problems and make it harder for their classmates to learn, but they get dealt with.
Not this year. Four classes of 30+, and in all six classes a full third of the 8th grade students can't see beyond two seconds from now. My shit is getting stolen, students leave their binder in their locker when they're supposed to bring it to every single class in the building, and their entire purpose in any given moment is to say/do/destroy whatever they can to create laughs/anger/shock in someone else, who could as easily be right in front of them as they could be on the opposite end of the room. A third. Of each class. And it is relentless. The teacher next door to me had her interactive TV display destroyed by a kid yesterday...the screen is completely shattered.
Every teacher that shares these kids is having the exact same issues across the board. So we are presenting a united front and shutting it the fuck down.
Oof, that sounds rough. Are these the kids got hit hardest by the pandemic lockdowns? If so, maybe there's a glimmer of hope that this is an aberration and next year will be a bit more 'normal ', if you can get through this year with your sanity intact. It's got to be rough on the kids too, the ones who aren't causing trouble must still be struggling to deal with itm and the ones who are just sound desperate.
I enjoy teaching, or at least, transferring knowledge and experience, I'll do it to pretty much anyone who sits still long enough, and I've been told I'm good at it, but you couldn't pay me enough to teach a classroom full of kids all day, so you have my respect for that.
Good luck, and I hope things get better for the kids and teachers everywhere.
Are these the kids got hit hardest by the pandemic lockdowns?
The prevalent theory among my colleagues is that it was something about the age these students were during virtual learning (ages 9-11) that may have been the deciding factor in why they are comparably so much worse behaved that any class of students before or after them, but I couldn't say.
I enjoy teaching, or at least, transferring knowledge and experience, I'll do it to pretty much anyone who sits still long enough,
Samesies. I love teaching, but sometimes I really dislike "being a teacher" because of the lack of support or any attempt at understanding what actually goes on inside the classroom day-to-day by admins, parents, or community members. I am good with mentoring a couple students each year and going them overcome their issues. But I don't have the capacity to do it for all 50+ kids who are making it impossible for the other 120 to learn.
Good luck, and I hope things get better for the kids and teachers everywhere.
Thanks, preesh.
whatever happened to failing grades and detention?
or just bring back the dunce cap and the ruler and make em stare at the corner
It sounds like a combination of Covid years being bad for student development combined with school districts on shoestring budgets not having enough teachers on hand done they can't get enough teachers to take a vow of poverty.
That sounds a lot like the k-8 class I grew up with from 1999 to 2007. We were rowdy, constantly got in trouble, constantly interrupting class. We got in trouble so often that for our 8th grade year we lost both our New York and Washington DC field trips. Ours is the only class that either of those trips were taken away. Substitute teachers always reported back horror stories of what we did while the teacher was away. Desks and seat assignments were constantly moved around to separate the disruptive problem groups to little success.
Not sure if you meant it this way, but this comes off as a pretty flippant take on humanity's evolutionary history and psychology as applied to a middle school classroom. There's a lot more going on than just humanity's supersocial nature.
Of course, we're social animals lol but within that reality, we have largely been able to communicate effectively and engage in learning. What the original commentor is saying is that those kids, apparently one third of each class, are severely lacking in any functional communication skills and framework.
Throughout our species' history, we have developed efficient ways of communicating and learning. These kids mentioned are not trained to consider (or, in some cases, are completely oblivious to) how their communication and behavior is perceived by peers, teachers, and concerned parents and bystanders. As was stated by @radicalautonomy@lemmy.world, many kids think/care only about how their actions and words are perceived by their target audience. That has always been part of the learning process, but I see it has become more prevalent and somewhat louder/more pronounced in older kids than it has been in the past.
I see a lot of factors feeding into this, but I think most of them boil down to the increased isolation and anxiety experienced by teens and preteens, today, and the lack of exposure to/familiarity with efficient, substantive, respectful, and effective communication.
Growing up is confusing and frightening enough, and, now, these kids are exposed to a lot more information that's increasingly curated into smaller and smaller sound bytes and memes designed to highlight outrage, anxiety, and disillusionment.
I think a lot of the "brainrot" culture we see today stems from young people wanting to communicate nonsensically as they are desensitized by the sheer amount of similarly coded content and communication they are exposed to. I grew up with other ways to shut off my brain and deal with the anxiety and inherent loneliness that comes with growing up and finding more of a sense of self, but these kids don't have the same breathing room as I did.
To your last point about education systems fighting against social behavior, I actually see the opposite. A massive amount of studies and practices have been implemented on how best to utilize the double edged sword of our social nature. Nearly every professional development training or meeting I go to deals with encouraging positive social interactions and discourse. I think if you look to schools and districts that actually walk the walk of education, you'll see a lot of progress.
Edit: I also want to say that a lot of these kids are really searching for ways to make sense of their confusing world and when they are presented with alternatives to unwind and even learn communication skills, a lot of them absolutely LOVE it. I run a biweekly D&D group for my 7th and 8th graders and one of them even refers to it as his "therapy" lol one of the best compliments I've been given and all the more meaningful considering kids are often such harsh critics.
I'll admit I certainly came off a bit more sarcastic than I was intending, and it's been a good while since I've been in grade school, but times of entire classes of students just fully misbehaving have existed before and will likely exist again. I remember even back in the early to mid 2000s the class I was in caused a lot of major problems for my teachers throughout the years to the point that in our 8th grade year, our class was the only one in in years to lose the privilege of going on our New York and Washington DC school trips and the only one in years after to lose those class trips.
Many of the kids were flat out obnoxious jerks and we didn't have an excuse of "we had multiple years of virtual learning to stunt our development" to lean on.
Believe me I feel sympathy for these kids going through one of the many recent once-in-a-lifetime mass human tragedy events. They're in a tough circumstance, with teachers trying to do their best in a criminally underfunded education system, after living through the collective trauma that was the pandemic
My intention, albeit sarcastically, was pointing out that our hard wired desire to be social is generally a good thing and what has given us a huge advantage over other creatures amd it takes effort to avoid doing what comes effortlessly to ir species. For as much as teachers want to and do make a huge difference in kids lives, the overarching structure is not actually geared to help teachers do their jobs best. There is so much administrative bloat and inefficiency and funding that goes to the top of the structure that gets in the way of teachers being able to focus on teaching their students and provide them with the tools and material necessary to educated kids.
By which metric are humans the dominant species on this planet?
Dominance over the food chain; dominance over the environment; dominance over where other species (and their own) are even allowed to live; dominance over the genetics of other species, etc.
Dominance over the definition of the word dominance even
None of those is a metric, how do you measure dominance?
How are we for example dominating the food chain compared to mosquitos?
the fuck is your point here?
Oh I get it, you're either just a moron, or your being purposefully dense and wasting all of our time responding to your drivel.
The one thing that requires zero effort is shutting the motherfucking hell UP during a lesson, but my 8th grade students
Hate to break it to you, but for 8th graders shutting up takes effort.
Used to be one of those 8th graders. Can confirm. My inability to shut up was hilariously inconvenient and consequential
Hate to break it to you, but this is my 6th year teaching 8th graders and my 18th overall, everything from elementary school through college, and I know more than you...namely, how these 8th graders this year are very, very different from any other group of students any of the 8th grade teachers this year have ever experienced.
I know more than you
[x] doubt
The fact that this class has more difficulty focusing shows that it does take effort, and your earlier classes were more successful.
You mentioned class sizes of 30+ this year, were they that large in the past? That size class is way too large and lends itself to chaos as it is hard to keep them all engaged.
[x] doubt
Sorry, where did you get your two education degrees from again, and how many years have you been teaching?
You mentioned class sizes of 30+ this year, were they that large in the past? That size class is way too large and lends itself to chaos as it is hard to keep them all engaged.
I am new to this school, but the teachers at the school who had 8th graders last year have confirmed their class sizes last year were the same, but the student's were not nearly as unruly. The 7th grade teachers who had my students last year have some classes in the 30s this year and last year, and they have confirmed that this group of 8th graders were also hell on wheels last year, but that their 7th graders this year are much more well-behaved.
Hahaha now I see why I was always the quiet kid people were worried about.
I was too afraid to talk and it was much easier being off in my own world inside my head.
Apparently that hasn't changed much.
Same, for me it was exacerbated by classes forcing students to be quiet.
Teachers are heroes. I’ve got your back. You rock.
My class was like that, except it was K all the way up through 12. Every year, the same problem kids, and nothing could be done about it. Every year, at least one teacher quit because of my class, rumor has it that one of the high school teachers committed suicide because of us.
Good luck.
I'm on the spectrum so I'm not sure if you're joking... But if you're not, wow.
I am autistic as well. I am not joking. More details.
User name doesn't check out.
You let your 8th graders sit together at all?
Damn, school has changed a lot in the past
Oh god 20 years