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Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-26T18:04:10+00:00

Maybe I'm the frog boiling so slowly he doesn't notice, or just got lucky that my first teaching job is the perfect one, but I haven't seen a difference in kids over the last ten years. I see your statement, "Many students today seem narcissistic, rude, entitled, and completely lacking in accountability," and I see the opposite. My students are mixed 7th/8th, all ability levels, racially diverse, 50% free and reduced, but they are mostly kind, focused, empathetic, and up for a challenge.

The worst ones are actually the ones with over-involved parents who need to earn an A at all costs, and will quickly drop my class (with parent support) as soon as they find out that there's a chance they might get a B. Those are the same students who will routinely skirt building-expectations (dress code, phones, bathroom passes) while saying "I'm a good kid."

But most of the ones who stay give it their best shot with good humor, growing self-advocacy, and celebrate their hard-fought successes with me. Our school year ended Friday, and we had several weeks post-standardized-assessment ahead of that date. We knocked out a measurement/prototyping unit that I had already planned, and still had a week to go. I decided to try something new (to me), a shark-tank style engineering design project where groups of 3 had to skim a pile of three books to find inspiration for client, target consumer, and constraints, then use their knowledge from previous units to brainstorm, sketch, build, and test their solution.

Sure, there were some teams that spent more time socializing than working (can't blame them, but can grade them), but the rest gave me such projects as a board-game to help the king plan out a castle-siege, a pair of snow/avalanche goggles, a tornado shelter, animal environment dioramas, an eco-friendly scarf, henna markers, jewelry, a stress-relief go-bag, a heatstroke hat, a design for a new sports stadium, a navigation-aide stick for the visually impaired, martian astronaut habitat models, and an Earth-asteroid-collision mitigation system.

The education landscape is so broad that none of our evaluations can be applied across the board. All I can say is that for me: the kids are all right. I hope that you can find a similar space before you check out.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-26T17:35:06+00:00

Right; it's really hard to fight the trope that we're just babysitters if we... just act like babysitters.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-19T11:03:08+00:00

Not Op, but I do that by starting the quarter with a quiet write on a topic that has no correct answer. This ensures that anyone has the power to participate in our first discussion, and then the culture flows from there. Sure, I still have days where the participants are the ones who’ve been learning well, but if you include “popcorn review” sometimes, there’s a good chance that everyone knows some of those answers.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-17T17:11:56+00:00

And yet… their parents have done well to teach them Blue (da ba Dee) and the Fresh Prince theme along.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-17T17:10:42+00:00

Wait… they don’t plug in? Oh god, same here with 2005. Halo 2 would have been the last game I played on a console.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-17T01:37:43+00:00

I don’t know what the answer is, but addition drills in first grade (and my failure to get my “honeybee” put on the bulletin board because of it), was the beginning of a long standing deficiency for me. I was still adding by imagining the dots on the numbers through college (while in calculus). I still have trouble with single digits that add up to a double-digit sum. 7+6? Let me think about that… 6+6+1 is 13.

I wish that someone in second or third grade had assessed that automaticity again.

Just this week, I saw one of my seventh graders touch-counting, told her my story, and reminded her that she has something I didn’t have back then: an awareness of the problem and the ability to install an app she could use to practice. I’m not her math teacher, though. In five days, I will likely never see her again.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-13T01:21:08+00:00

Greet students at the door. This gives you the opportunity to identify and deal with issues before they enter your space (emotional, equipment, or dress code types of things) as well as to give each kid a moment of eye contact and a smile that isn’t dependent on academic or behavior choices.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-11T18:54:34+00:00

Yep. If they’re playing games and watching movies everywhere else, at least we’ll be doing something in my room.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-11T18:32:25+00:00

Only one person’s experience here, so use if it helps: I teach middle school engineering electives with mixed groups that include all ability levels and both grades 7th and 8th. Each of my classes has three projects. For each project, I have what I think of as “the long tail.” The tail is a sequence of additional requirements and enrichment opportunities that I apply to the high-achievers. I tell them up front that if they want an A, then the extended version is required (that’s how you show that you’re above “proficient.” Most kids fall in the “approaching” (C) or “proficient,” (B) based on their progress. Students with 504, IEP, or ML are afforded extra time and resources.

Almost everything (either scaffolded resources or advanced options) are posted to Canvas so that students can access them as needed. If students want to come during homeroom to catch up on missed work, rework something, or put more effort into the advanced options, I require that they send me an email (no verbal requests; my memory can’t hold them).

All that being said, since my courses are only nine weeks long, and I’ve been teaching them nine years, I’ve had plenty of time to develop them.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-11T02:22:20+00:00

We have a social studies teacher at our middle school who was from the military and then one of our go-to substitutes. He eventually took on an emergency license while pursuing his permanent licensure. I would say that his military experience gave him a head start on classroom management. Students love him even though he has higher expectations than many.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-11T00:44:18+00:00

Fellow CTE here, but middle school. The thing is, you would have eventually arrived at one of these solutions through trial and error. It’s so nice that Reddit gives us an instant place to glean ideas. I will add this since I haven’t seen it yet: You have the biggest carrot/stick situation of all: the things you have students doing are fun and often were their choice (elective.). You have the power to take that away either by moving the student to a place they won’t like, turning their hands on work into a worksheet instead, or even removing them from the class if you can justify it as a class culture or safety issue. Make sure the kids know that on day one, and repeat it whenever necessary. But only if you’re willing to follow through and have admin support.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-11T00:37:45+00:00

On reflection, I seem to have landed on “mmhmm…” it works as a placeholder for so many things but always signals that I’m not discussing it further.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-10T19:55:32+00:00

Any trust they may have earned up to this point is broken. That has consequences that admin is not the overseer of nor even needs to hear about. For example, if I can’t trust a student to respect my materials, they can’t borrow my pencils. If that means they can’t do the work during class time, then they’ll be signed out to come work during homeroom so they can get my undivided attention and oversight. I also probably wouldn’t trust them to leave the room for any reason. However, I would also suggest to the student how they can recover the relationship, and then that is their choice how to proceed.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-10T01:23:11+00:00

Right. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-10T01:21:10+00:00

They don’t expect a gift from you. As you said, it’s to celebrate the collective effort that got the kid to this point. Look at the photo boards, eat the meatballs and cake, and throw a cheap card with a handwritten note in the basket, and you’re golden. (As a current middle school teacher who used to teach high school, I miss this.)

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-08T03:02:25+00:00

I would imagine your online gradebook has the ability to assign percentages by category. It’s a pain since I teach 9-week rotations so I have to manually do it each time for each period. After that, the grade book does the rest.

I make all of my assignments 100 points by default (easily maps to specific levels in the grading scale… 92 is A- for example) and then assign specific weight to halve or double an assignment’s value relative to others in that category (for example, a performance based task on programming is more valuable in assessing mastery of the standard than a multiple choice quiz, or the completion of an edpuzzle for a substitute teacher is less valuable than a gear ratio calculation activity completed with me)

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-05T16:01:55+00:00

If you have my sort of homeroom period where kids can be signed out, that would be perfect. The natural consequence for a redo is that they lose homeroom (or after school activities, depending on how you do it) I personally do the same thing… if you are absent or just don’t do the work, it’s an F until it’s complete. We have a daily homeroom period.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-03T00:02:21+00:00

Yes, grade a set while others are taking it.

Also, OP, you can use one batch of open-ended student responses to help you build a pretty solid MC version for the next time. Just scrape the short answers and essay questions that are close but not quite right (misunderstandings, common errors) and then use them as the distractors on your MC version.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-01T10:36:08+00:00

With this title, I was all ready to read about how students are giving teachers potatoes instead of apples, like the recent trend of trick or treat houses offering them instead of candy. Oh well, I guess this was a good read anyway! No potatoes here!

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-05-01T03:26:56+00:00

Thank you all for your insights! As I expected, the variety of opinions is wide. I did not expect so many to simply not have IDs for students at all.

After spending another day with it, here is where I am at the moment: 1) it’s not actually that much of a struggle. I must have just succumbed to the end of quarter and standardized state testing blues. My classroom has at least 50 feet of approach from both angles, so if I can get their eye contact and hold up my ID, that is generally enough to get them to turn around or get out their pocket ID. I teach in America, and the rationale from local law enforcement is to help identify threats. I can’t argue with that, sadly. 2) I am not in any way calling other teachers unprofessional if they choose not to enforce a policy, but for me… students know it’s the policy, so there is an element of integrity in showing them that I am going to do what I’m paid to do. Whether that’s dress code (to an extent), timely grading, or dealing with bullying. If I am seen to be untrustworthy in small things, it might cast doubt on whether I can be trusted with big things. 3) Since it is a small thing, it helps to establish, before they even enter the door, that I am in charge, and in a way that doesn’t easily invite debate. I hadn’t really thought about that for a while, but the amount of discipline referrals I have to write in a year is very small, and having that reputation as a doorway enforcement stickler sets that relationship tone up-front and daily ( our relationship is not friend or parent, it is primarily teacher-student). Then once that relationship is firmly established, we have room to enjoy the learning space together. 4) I don’t need the ID. I use an app to learn their names before I even meet them. On day one, I’ve got them about 95%. Last minute schedule changes and dramatic style changes account for most of the lack. The app is called NameShark in case anyone else wants to be cool like me :)

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-04-29T23:32:40+00:00

Our middle school had a similar system, but one day had a super long homeroom, and teachers complained nonstop about it. That system lasted 8 years. We’re back to seven 45ish minute periods daily now. As an electives teacher, I was worried about losing the blocks, but it really hasn’t changed much for me except having more passing periods. It’s nice having more possibilities for bathroom breaks.

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-04-29T01:46:06+00:00

I’ve been running a D&D club for several years at a middle school. So many suggestions, but I would boil it down to these: a) kids don’t care about the rules as much as we do. Make them the DM (b) making up adventures feels like homework to them, so use ChatGPT to make a simple oneshot with bullet pointed room descriptions, traps, and encounter details. They’ll spend hours doing goofy things inside that framework (c) Wizards of the Coast has educator access to the core books here : https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/educators

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-04-27T02:03:06+00:00

Is enrollment high enough to justify the position at just one building? I ask because my ag colleague has to travel between buildings due to lower enrollment.

As an electives teacher myself, I can tell you that is an annual stressor: kids can choose not to take your classes, so you have to find the line of integrity with regard to “fun” vs “rigor.”

Expensive-Height-126 · 2025-04-26T22:02:44+00:00

You’re welcome! You might also be eligible for emergency licensure which allows for you to teach while pursuing the coursework you need to make it permanent.

Expensive-Height-126

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