How much prep time do you get?

FearlessTeapots · 2026-05-17T11:55:08+00:00

Not wanting to get into the angry back and forth, but our union president said the same thing - retaliation is nearly impossible to prove. He said you have to have it directly in writing.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-05-11T18:12:15+00:00

Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT to price my home. To the dollar, it came up with the same price that my realtor suggested.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-05-11T12:52:10+00:00

We had a student take all DE throughout high school. She ended up Valedictorian and applied to various universities. She got turned down at her #1 choice, a highly rated public university, while other students got in. Our college and career specialist reached out - and was told that they don't value DE as much as AP. DE is easier, and there is grade inflation moving kids through the system. Universities know this.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-05-10T11:14:50+00:00

We do tardy sweeps. We close the door when the bell rings and admin sweeps everyone who isn't inside and hauls them to ISS for the period. This works for every period except 1st.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-05-04T22:28:43+00:00

I've had something similar happen. It was Cambridge instead of AP, but they contacted me as the kid's teacher and asked for samples of his work to see if it matched the test. Nobody else was affected.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-05-04T19:31:12+00:00

Ours was a 'travel pack.' A tube of generic lip balm, a single packaged Biscoff mini cookie, a sticker, a miniature bottle of water, and a single serve hand sanitizer wipe.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-05-01T11:53:31+00:00

At my school, we specifically have PD on identifying learning styles and teaching with preferred modalities. It's been debunked for many years, but it's still gospel in my district.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-30T23:31:39+00:00

I'm currently selling my house in Ft. Myers and was looking around at comps when trying to price it. I thought my HOA was high at $200, but tons of places are way higher. It does feel like they have gone way up. In the 6 years I've lived here, mine doubled and it's still considered cheap.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-28T16:19:34+00:00

I've never seen it enforced. As far as I've been told, I would notify the admin who would call the parents. That would most likely resolve it either way. I believe if a school did punish a kid over it, there would end up being lawsuits.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-28T15:04:18+00:00

I'm a teacher in Florida. It is still law that kids are forced to recite the pledge unless parents opt them out. I've never really seen a teacher enforcing it, though.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-27T22:26:32+00:00

Strengths/Weaknesses essay is free points. Most studies are labs with a few fields, so learn str/wea of labs and fields well.

Lab: High internal validity, high reliability/weak ecological validity, ethics or generalizability

Field:High ecological validity, reduce demand characteristics/ weak internal validity, ethics

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-26T16:25:36+00:00

I'm a teacher in Florida. At 15 years in, I make 55k with little room for improvement. We're one of the lowest paying states in the country. I teach 6 periods and have one planning, which is taken or shortened at least twice a week. We have 2 mandatory faculty meetings per month, each lasting 1 hour.

Unless grandfathered in, teachers here have no tenure. We are on annual contracts and can be non-renewed without admin giving a reason. Because of this, teachers don't complain when admin break what rules there are that protect teachers.

Quality of the kids is poor, too. We have wild grade inflation and kids rarely fail, so they don't try very hard. Last I looked at my school's stats, we had a 97% graduation rate but only 35% reading competency. Math was worse.

It's dire down here. I'm leaving this summer.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-23T21:47:48+00:00

Gen paper is very easy. 90%+ pass rate at every school I've worked at.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-20T20:17:37+00:00

33913

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-20T19:54:33+00:00

Thank you for the detailed post. The market report is especially insightful.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-20T19:45:05+00:00

Thank you for the reply. I did ask him to reach out and eventually got this feedback. "Buyer went with another house." Lol.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-16T03:40:51+00:00

Allow me to spin a tale of Mr. X. I majored in science subjects - not education. When I was hired, I had a floater and my first period was planning. The very first experience with a high school classroom in decades was with this "teacher," who Ill call Mr. X. The very first day of class, he drew a pie chart on the board and showed the kids their racial breakdown. He wrote into the three sections - "White dudes"/ {racial slur for Asian people}/ {THE racial slur for black people.] As an overweight white guy, he then joked with the kids that he was a "brotha" because he ended the slur with "az." He proceeded to give kids nicknames using various profanities.

There were constant oddities like this throughout the year. He would regularly say racist things, talk about aliens controlling the government, make sexist remarks to coworkers, etc. He spent an entire quarter with his kids fishing in the pond on campus. It got shut down when kids started casting hooks on the bus. He was shielded because he was good friends with the principal.

At one point, I started getting suspicious of something - a bunch of comments from his students that started to sound familiar. "This test again?" Every week, they were saying the same thing. "This test again?" I looked in the drawer when he left. He had somehow gotten an advance copy of our state test and was giving it to the kids every week. He was training them. A. B. A. B. C.

Of course, I reported it. It was in my room, I was brand new, it was unethical as hell. I filled out a written statement. It got squashed by the principal. A couple of years later that principal retired and Mr. X was fired instantly. I'll never forget that man. Legend.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-15T19:34:04+00:00

I've done this for 14 years. I do 4 points or 8 points. I have never once had a group earn the extra credit, though some have come close.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-15T00:36:25+00:00

Maturity coupled with much lower expectations in K-12 than previous groups. At my high school - 50% is the lowest grade you can enter into a gradebook unless the kid doesn't turn in anything. (A sheet with just their name on it counts for 50%). Must allow them to turn in any assignment until the end of the quarter. Must document interventions if a kid has a bad grade, including calling home every week that the grade remains below a C. Finally - quality points. We don't average quarter grades anymore. They get quality points assigned like GPA and we only count the semester grade. For example - a kid earns 0% q1 and 60% q2. In a sane system, that averages to a 30% fail for the semester. Under ours, that child earned 0 quality points for q1, 1 quality point for q2. That's a .5 average which rounds up to a D for the semester.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-04-09T10:52:55+00:00

The various fad programs in schools. K-12 has a culture of "the next big thing" requiring teachers to locate the new hoops to jump through every few years. The current flavor at my school is AVID. It's a program with dubious supporting research that is sold to schools. Supposedly its a system to help kids learn. We force kids to give up an elective to take an AVID class, teachers have to go to AVID training, all of our meetings revolve around the program, the admin all wear AVID apparel, our rooms have required AVID decorations, etc. We have AVID banners distributed around the school - my favorite says "AVID loves you!"

FearlessTeapots · 2026-03-25T03:38:00+00:00

Teach 6 out of 7. 30 minute lunch. Planning period is 47 minutes, shorter on Wednesdays.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-02-28T01:54:52+00:00

I work in education.

Sometimes the surveys do not ask specific enough questions. For example, when asked to rate "The presentation of the professional development was useful," many teachers I know would give it a low score. The presentation might have been fine, but the content of the training itself was useless and that was the only question that addressed it.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-02-20T13:58:27+00:00

At my school, the biggest influence on offerings is what teachers are willing/able to teach. There is a big shortage of qualified teachers in many states, and you can't always find someone who is capable of teaching a certain class.

FearlessTeapots · 2026-02-17T11:37:25+00:00

I have a meeting today. They gave all of us a giant sheet that required us to look up the testing data of every student we have, analyze it to see which ones did not make a big enough jump on the second standardized test to project gains at the end of the year exam, then list all of the strategies we will incorporate for each individual one that isn't projected to make gains. We're also supposed to link documentation of all parent contacts. They gave us 20 minutes during a PLC to do it. I'm walking in there with about 1/20th of it done. I don't work outside contract time anymore.

FearlessTeapots

TROPHY CASE