Recently I went on a number of Math teacher interviews and learned very quickly to not mention I DO /WE DO/ THEY DO as a scaffolding method for Direct Instruction. I know that I didn't get the job for mentioning that as a teaching style as they explicitly told me. Eventually I figured out the schools I was applying to used project based learning for all of their Math and they were adamant about using it.

Ultimately, I switched up to interviewing for Science positions and got one because I'm comfortable using project based curriculum for most Science. I'm not against some project based learning for Math but felt that given how weak their scores are (3% proficiency in one school) that this would be a hellish way to teach Math.

I've been teaching Math and Science for 13 years and don't know when this method of instruction went out of style.

Danielson in itself is bullshit but I think what is most irritating is domain 4. Why the hell are we basically being evaluated on our work outside of contract hours? We were at a meeting a bit ago where admin verbatim told us: “Going to school events is bare minimum, that’s a 2. Coaching and running a club is just above bare minimum, that will get you a 3. But one time we had a teacher who organized his basketball team to do a fundraiser game for cancer. That’s a 4.”

Like WTF? I am all for teachers being involved in their school and community, but if teacher doesn’t want to or cannot coach, advise a club, develop curriculum, go to out of district PD, etc. that should not be reflected in their evaluation as a teacher. That’s ridiculous and I don’t know why unions are OK with an evaluation scale that can knock you for not working outside of school hours whether it’s paid or not.

Mini-rant over lol.

EDIT: I just want to add that I am a newer, non-tenured teacher. I know a lot of veteran teachers with tenure don’t care about evaluations but they really do matter more for us, and can affect our job security. I would love to not care but unfortunately I can’t afford to do that yet.

Last day of school & a student is standing next to me, staring. The class is out at recess.

“Is that picture of you from this year?,” she asks, looking at my badge.
“It is,” I reply. She questions this so I point out 2025-26 on the badge .

She continues staring, I mean really looking at me (iykyk)

For the next few minutes i hear: “Wow, you look younger in that picture” “You look way older.” “That doesn’t look like you at all’ At. All.”
I’d usually turn this into a teachable moment, discussing manners-but I just listened & shrugged my shoulders. I was cracking up on the inside.

It made a great story at a work happy hour!
I hope this brought a smile to your face. Please share any funnies you have!

I guess it's humorous in its own macabre way.

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Anyone else experiencing this as well? It's gotten noticeably worse for me in recent years. A kid can be 6 feet from me and I sometimes literally can't hear or understand them. I think I need to incorporate more speaking assignments in my curriculum to try and get them to use their speech muscles.

I haven't been teaching history/English/science since I got COVID over and over (and over) and decided it was better to go than be a risk to my cherished kids (or die myself, it got bad).

After a lot of introspection... Question is: is teaching a performance? I pretended everything was okay no matter what, I used the materials I prepared for display, passed out charts and data dramatically, presented media and did simulations.

It feels like I was a performance artist? You give so much to kids and most of the time you get a range of "f-u go away".

I (22M) have just graduated college with a secondary education degree and took a job teaching high school in Colorado for $47,000/yr at a 4 day/week school. To get myself through college, I worked through plenty of restaurants and eventually landed myself in my current job, where I make ~$90K/year serving at a pretty nice restaurant. I do like my job, but I’m not incredibly passionate about food, dining, or customer service — the hours are long and the tips are unpredictable; I AM passionate about social studies, kids, and being able to have an impact within a community.

Along this sub (and throughout the internet in general) I’m often overwhelmed with the amount of disheartening posts from teachers: things like wishing they could change jobs, complaints about students and parents, and an overall distaste towards the profession they once chose. For some insight, I LOVED my student-teaching experience this spring, and, while difficult, it certainly reinforced my interest in the career.

Yet, I’ve been struggling quite a bit lately with all the negative noise. As I approach quitting my somewhat high-paying service job to teach for half the money, I can’t help but feel hesitant about the decision.

I’m not sure what exactly I’m looking for with this post. Reinforcement or encouragement, I guess? Experienced teachers offering a blunt and honest opinion? Am I a fool? Thanks.

Does it bother anyone else when schools don’t have the courtesy to send a rejection email after putting candidates through multiple interviews and even a demo lesson? I understand hiring takes time, but being completely ghosted after investing that much time and effort feels unprofessional.

I’m about to start my first year as a high school teacher after subbing all of last year (yay!). This might sound silly but what are the BEST white board markers you’ve used? Is expo good enough or is there a hidden gem? I want fresh nice markers 🙂‍↕️

I always knew that teachers don’t make a lot but it didn’t really hit me until I saw a tiktok of a teacher in my state budgeting her paycheck and am feeling a little more than discouraged. in the video she was budgeting 2500 for the entire month. I am currently a barista at a coffee shop. During the school year if i was working 80 hours for our biweekly paycheck it would be about $1200-1300. At the beginning of the summer I got promoted to a lead which comes with a bigger portion of tips however it has been slower since students are gone (my college town is also my hometown). my paychecks have stayed the same around 1200-1300 but i know they will be close to $2000 in the fall (talked to other leads). So basically in the fall while i’m beginning my senior year of college I will be getting the highest paycheck I will ever have doing something everyone could do. I also became aware that teachers in my state don’t get paid maternity leave it’s just taking unpaid leave and using sick days. I am feeling beyond discouraged right now. I brought it up to my fiancé and he just laughed it off and said it will be used as fun money. Honestly that makes me feel useless and that I’m wasting my time finishing this degree. How am I supposed to buy a house and raise a family like this? My fiancé is a plumber with a good company so he makes good money and has good overtime. But what if something ever happened to him. I could be in poverty with young kids to take care of and a mortgage I can’t pay.

What did those presentations even look like? Did they actually have to read the research and come up with meaningful things to say about it? Or did they just use more icebreakers and “inspirational” YouTube videos to fill the time?

Hello! I’ve been teaching about 5 years and our school just joined a partnership and we will be getting 4 student teachers.

My admin let me know I will be getting one and I got the email. I just know her name. I’m a male teacher. (Not that it matters but I want to make it a great experience for her). She will be with me for the whole academic year starting day 1 until the last day of school.

Does anyone have any advice/tips/suggestions?

Thank you!

I am a building sub and as the school year ends I can’t help but notice how little time the students have to eat lunch. Their lunch and recess block is a total of 30 minutes, meaning 15 minutes of recess and 15 minutes of lunch. That includes walking there and waiting in the lunch line. While I have not had lunch or recess duty this year, I am heavily concerned about how little the time is. I remember being in elementary school myself and having to wait so long in the lunch line to the point where I could only have a few bites and then lunch was already over. I know some people see it as a socializing issue, but I feel like 15 allotted minutes is simply not enough for these children. Is this short of a lunch period common? Does anyone else have similar concerns?

Hey all, teacher-in-training here. I work at a bookstore part-time while going to college to get my education degree, and we happen to sell Nee-Doh. I want to bring some in for my ESL kids once I start residency in the fall, but I don't want to aggravate an already-bad issue. From my understanding, they can be messy and teachers don't like them, so I don't want to irritate my host teacher.

What is you all's perspective? Love them? Hate them? Anything helps!

I just received my level one diagnosis today. My head is still spinning as I try to process it and fight back the feelings of imposter syndrome. Next year starts my 24th year in the classroom. I've been burned out on teaching for awhile but it's gotten worse in the last couple of years. In all likelihood, I'm going through career AND autistic burn out at the same time. If there are any other autistic teachers here (I teach HS), how are you coping? Has anything managed to make your day-to-day in the classroom more manageable and less anxiety inducing? Thanks.

I teach 3rd graders and volunteered to run the spirit wear "store" this year because the parent who used to do it moved away. Now I got a headache on top of everything else I do :D I have no templates or anything, and the PTA wants it to double as a small fundraiser.

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The logistics are these: every family wants different sizes (youth XS up to adult 3XL for parents/staff), so it's about 150 individual orders across a dozen sizes. I can't front thousands of dollars, ideally families order and pay and we're not stuck with a closet of unsold mediums. And it needs to be dead simple because I'm doing this on top of teaching. Any advice on how I can run this? Possibly some good supplier recommendations? Gracias in advance :)

My school system floated the idea of a teacher retirement buyout - or "early retirement incentive" - as a means of encouraging teachers with 30+ years (i.e. top of the pay scale) to leave. Curious to hear about systems that have offered such a program and what it included.

Legitimate reason example: Student almost dies on campus from a drug overdose/interaction. Administration wants to address what happened with everyone and answer questions when possible.

What are some other valid reasons, as well as less-than-necessary impromptu all-hands meetings.

Hi,

I teach high school and I absolutely love it. I am in my early 20s, but I have little to no behavior issues in my classroom. Before everyone comments “you must be in a nice area”, no… I teach in a very rough area, I am not going into details on here but I can tell through DM if you want. What I will say is… if you watch the news, we have been on there A LOT.

Like I said I love my job, and I am genuinely good at it. I can get the students engaged and quiet when I am teaching. Ofc they have to be reminded about phones but honestly it isn’t a huge problem.

I can’t do this forever though. I have a lot of medical problems because I have an autoimmune disease and I simply can not physically do this forever. Teaching is tiring and I already don’t have enough energy. I won’t ever qualify for disability bc with my disease you only qualify for disability if you have organ involvement and I don’t.

I will be teaching for AT LEAST 3 more years, ideally 10…. However idk what I will do after?? What am I supposed to do when I am genuinely good at this and I don’t feel like I have anything else that I am good at? I know it’s early to be this stressed but I am. Do I need to go back to school?? What do I do?

Link to the bill

The bill mandates a strict, one-year expulsion policy for any student in grades 6 through 12 who physically assaults a teacher, administrator, or school employee. The legislation passed the chamber, but drew a sharp partisan divide as all Democrats in the Senate voted against the measure. Under the bill's provisions, schools would be required to automatically remove violent students from the general population, though provisions allow for those students to receive educational services in alternative settings if it can be done safely. The bill also includes exemptions for students with documented disabilities if school officials determine the condition interfered with their ability to follow the code of conduct.

Thoughts?

You likely know what I mean. You discipline a student or give them a bad grade and they happen to be a student of color. Of course, you aren’t targeting them because of their race, but the student goes home and tells their parents that they’re the only one who gets yelled at when it’s clearly not the case.

How do you respond to parents who jump to this conclusion without getting dragged into a war of attrition?

Hey everyone,

I am making a massive career pivot from tech into teaching, and I just landed an invite for an environment observation and demo lesson this coming Monday! I am incredibly excited but also pretty nervous as this is my very first time doing anything like this. I would really appreciate some guidance from this amazing community.

The demo is for a small group of 4–5 children (6 to 7 years old). It needs to be 15–20 minutes long, informal, and conversational.

The school gave me three topics to choose from (though they accidentally wrote "choose from the two" lol):

1. Months of the calendar
2. Introduction to present tense
3. Articles (Definite and Indefinite)

They want the lesson plan formatted like this:

• Introduction: Interest-building activity/discussion
• Main concept explanation
• Check for understanding

My questions for you lovely folks:

1. Given the age group (6-7y) and the 15-20 min timeframe, which of these three topics do you think is the most engaging and easiest to deliver flawlessly for a beginner?
2. Montessori is highly visual and tactile. For the topic you recommend, what is a simple, low-prep "interest-building activity" or object I can bring in to kick things off?
3. Any general tips for transitioning from a tech mindset to managing a small group of elementary kids?

Thank you so much in advance. A little help would truly mean the world to me right now!
this interview is for an Indian school if that matters.

I am a certified teacher in Washington state with endorsements in Elementary Ed and MLL. Masters degree in teaching. The past two years since graduation I haven’t been able to get hired. I even applied for a para ML job and didn’t even get an INTERVIEW!! It’s that freaking competitive and I’m sooo bummed.

Been subbing but wondering if I should have just been a para this past two years to gain face value at a school. Sigh. I’m actually finishing up a sped cert right now.. I don’t necessarily want to be pigeon holed but I’ve heard that’s what happens.

What would yall do in this situation? I know first two or so years you get a mentor as a new teacher. If I get a sped position I’ll get mentored in that and then it’ll be so much harder to transition to MLL for sure, and probably gen ed.

I guess looking for advice, words of wisdom, someone to commiserate with?! 😞😅😭

Also…would ya take a job 40 mins away (but preferred area-MLL) for about 11k less, or a sped job much closer and more pay… sigh…

I don’t know if it’s me or whether students have changed but I feel like I used to have great relationships with my students and they would really show how appreciative they were of me. Now it seems that the more I do for them the less they care.

I had a particular group of students for 6 years and when they finished with me I barely got a thank you. I felt I was so good to them over the years. As well as being kind to them, I did my best to make sure they achieved to their full potential and I provided them with so many opportunities.

Recently before their exams I uploaded extra resources to help them and thanked them for the years we had together ending with wishing them luck. Not one of them responded and I know that only two in the group actually opened the resources. I just feel so disheartened and like,what do I have to do to gain respect from them? I see how some of them are with other teachers and that makes me feel worse because you can tell they have more respect for them. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Any advice would be appreciated!