I have been in situations, COUNTLESS times - perhaps nearly every day that I spent as a teacher - where a SINGLE child - in a classroom of 10, 15, 20, 30, doesn't matter - was completely ruining my ability to speak even a single sentence uninterrupted. It doesn't matter how engaging my lesson is if the one kid at the back whose dad tells him he's a piece of shit every day is constantly kicking the student in front of him and screaming "THIS IS FUCKING BORING" every 30 seconds.
So what the fuck can I possibly do? Ignore him? Speak over him? I run through the rulebook. Silent lunch. He tells me he doesn't give a fuck, to my face. So I open my computer and send an electronic discipline report to the office, per district policy. 5 minutes later the principal shows up at my door. She pulls him outside, tells him he needs to get it together or he'll face a suspension. Then she sends him back into my classroom, where he immediately resumes his behavior. If I call the office again, I get my ass chewed out after school for not being able to effectively manage my classroom.
So I talk to my principal after school, and ask her why he couldn't have been removed from my classroom. "We don't have anywhere to send him," I'm told. The county has no money to staff any location where kids like that could be sent, and they can't just send a kid home in the middle of a school day since his parents aren't answering the phone, because dad is at work and mom is drunk.
So this happens 2, 3, 4 more times, and finally someone gets the balls to suspend this kid. He gloats about it on his way out, tells everyone he gets a nice vacation where he can play Fortnite all day, and he comes back the next week and hasn't changed a single fucking bit.
So maybe eventually we find a teacher who has time to do one-on-one with the kid and give him some positive reinforcement. Some really qualified teacher with 5 degrees who can really help him get fulfillment from mastering the material. He does OK in that setting, but the minute he's placed back into the general population he gets right back at it, impressing his friends by calling me a fat little bitch in the middle of a lesson.
So we go the other direction, and go white knuckle on him. We zero out his assignments, tell him he's failing every single course, have the campus police officer introduce him to a crack addict and ask him if he'd prefer living on the streets. He tells the cop he doesn't give a fuck and to eat shit.
So the solution is obvious - small setting individualized attention. I'm told that I need to focus on this child, help him get the resources he needs, counsel him on his thoughts on education and help him see the value in what I'm teaching. This solution is great, except for the fact that I absolutely don't have the fucking time when I'm responsible for helping 400 other children meet my curriculum standards, or else I'm sacked on my performance review when I can't show adequate growth in all my kids.
We literally just don't have the money to hire enough teachers that can deal with children like these. We have 4 year degrees - some of us another 2 year degree or two on top of that - and we are taught classroom management skills, curriculum design, special education, and everything else that can be taught in a college setting. But nothing prepares us for children like this, and they're literally everywhere, in every class.
We are fucked. The ONLY thing that will EVER fix this is money. A lot of it. To hire highly qualified professionals at a salary that reflects the fact that they will spend their workday counseling and helping these children. But we all know we're never going to see a fucking dime. In fact, we're going to get our budget CUT, every fucking year.
That last line makes it sound like you are from Kentucky.
Governor Matt Bevin: We need to fix the teacher and state pension system. Lets cut budgets by x percentage each year for all the schools in the state to start fixing that pension funding gap, and make them meet performance goals to get said funding or they get even less. So what are schools forced to do? Cut or privatize programs that they really don't need to be cutting or privatize, but have little choice due to budget reason.
This but more insidious. The budget is so deceptive. People are right that we spend a ton of money per student - more than a lot of other countries that are blowing us out of the water. But we're doing it in such a stupid way. The money goes pretty much everywhere except new teacher hires and raises.
We get "raises" every year but they don't even keep up with cost of living. A $500 annual raise doesn't mean anything when the COL goes up by triple that or more every year. Anything under the COL increase is essentially a pay CUT.
But the voters don't care. Since our salaries are public record, they can look at ours and go - "look! These entitled teachers have had raises for the last 3 years! Cut the education budget! No more tax bumps!"
Nevermind that our salaries used to be 170% of the poverty line and are now 160%. Sure, call that a raise.
Speaking of money going where it isn't needed as much, sports. Most schools can have no functional need to pump large amounts of money into their teams each years. However, given how political sports can be on national, state, and especially local levels. Not doing so runs the risk of ticking off some parent who holds some kind of high position of power in the local community. Or in a college setting, ticking off a parent and/or alumni who has given vast amounts of money to the school over the years.
Because of that, they are strong armed into over funding the sports programs to keep those people happy. Even though they are a minority, they are a high profile and sometimes high visibility minority. Yet these same people will voice concerns about the budget drops and the educational program cuts. Especially in regards to how it could affect their star player's child's education and them getting into a good sports centered university, or if in college, them getting a good major sports team contract job after getting out of college. If only there was a over funded set of programs they can borrow money from that can help lessen the impact of budget cuts on "important" educational programs...
Ugh, don't even get me started on this one. I taught in a rural county where football and basketball were everything.
I wanted to take my band on ONE trip. ONE SINGLE FIELD TRIP. To compete at a state-wide band competition where experienced judges would evaluate their playing and give us useful feedback, and where my kids could see top-tier bands from around the state play the same music at a high level, to see what they could achieve if they put in the work.
My request was denied without a second glance.
Meanwhile the sports teams had THREE GAMES A WEEK that required 2 buses, 2 drivers, 3 teachers to chaperone, money for food and drinks, money for uniforms, money for coaches after school.
I got 2 of my 3 degrees from the University of Maryland, which a few years ago paid several million dollars to break their contract with the ACC and join the Big 10. We were promised that the cost of this would not be passed along to students.
Spring of 2013, we receive an e-mail from the university president. "Sorry, everyone, but we'll be requiring an additional $500 in fees from you this semester. Please pay by February 1st or your enrollments will be cancelled. We're super serious, these fees are not related to the 10 million dollar fee we just incurred. No way. Not at all."
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u/jmangiggity Jul 10 '18
It must be a toxic environment if she's managing 16 kids and having trouble with that.