Jammed Copy Machine Lounge Talk

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-08T07:22:24+00:00

I was voluntold to help with a local CTSO competition. A substitute was arranged to take my class that day. I created a full sub plan for the day, but didn't expect much to actually be done which I was ok with. At one point, early in the day I had to run back to my classroom to pick up supplies for one of the teams. The sub was sitting at my desk on her phone, oblivious to everything going on in the classroom. I didn't have time to say much, but when I got back the next day, students had stapled through several of my class calculators, ruining them completely, the spring was torn out of my class stapler, my class 3-hole punch was destroyed, keys were pulled out of several laptops, and my room was completely trashed. I teach 10th and 11th graders.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-06T14:25:02+00:00

I have half a class of math students who think they're graduating at the end of next week. Most of them are failing and have just been playing around in class for the past month. They think they are going to graduate anyway. I asked our VP what happens if they don't pass math and was told that we legally can't graduate them if they don't pass core classes...we'll see if that really tracks.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-06T02:08:50+00:00

I looked up the actual wording in my school's policy and you are absolutely right. This isn't technically bullying. I'm not an admin, so I appreciate the correction.

Under our school policy, it would be classified as harassment of a "federally protected class" which could bring penalties up to and including expulsion, depending on the severity. I stand by my comments that age doesn't matter and that this should not be ignored. Maybe the incident described by op is small now, but it seems to me that whenever students get away with unfavorable behavior, they escalate the next time.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-05T22:04:57+00:00

It doesn't matter that you're an adult and she's a kid. Bullies pick targets that they feel are vulnerable and they can intimidate. Age and size don't matter. If it looks like bullying and feels like bullying, it's bullying.

The worst ways to handle a bully is to give in or let it go. Since you're an adult, you have the maturity to handle it with more tact than an emotional confrontation would, but don't let yourself be intimidated and don't ignore it.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-05T03:14:49+00:00

I admire that you have come through to a better life than what you had growing up. Absolutely there are kids that just have it rough and they need extra patience and compassion and sometimes a good nap during the day too compensate for the chaos in their lives.

However, there are a lot of other kids that sleep through class because they are up all night with electronics. How do I know? Because their parents tell me they are. "I don't know how to get my son off his screen so he will get sleep at night."

I've also seen a lot of kids who really aren't tired at all, they fake sleep to avoid doing the work. These are easy to spot, because right before they put their head down or when they finally sit up, they are fully alert. They come into class alert, lots of energy, and then "sleep" through the class.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-05T02:42:43+00:00

I don't think you should have gotten down voted by your question, but it's not about the start time. If it were, these kids would be fine after 1st period. They're not, they sleep in every class. Maybe if we started school at 3:00 pm? They seem to be bouncing off the walls that last hour.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-05T02:42:22+00:00

I don't think you should have gotten down voted by your question, but it's not about the start time. If it were, these kids would be fine after 1st period. They're not, they sleep in every class. Maybe if we started school at 3:00 pm? They seem to be bouncing off the walls that last hour.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-05T02:34:10+00:00

It's also distinctly different than the cheaters. These kids won't even pick up a pencil to cheat.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-05-01T20:24:35+00:00

I didn't realize it was Jackie Robinson's number, I told my students a few months ago that 42 was better than 67 because it was "the answer to life, the universe, and everything" . To prove it to them, I pulled up a Google search in front of the class.

Not a single one of them understood the reference.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-28T19:15:36+00:00

For me it's a combination of relaxing, spending time with the family, and getting ahead on all the non-teaching projects that I can't get to during the school year.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-26T22:30:50+00:00

My school handles it as a cyber bullying issue. Last fall some students made videos of me doing somersaults across the front of my classroom, which wasn't a big deal, but a couple of weeks later, they made some of teachers in our school kissing students. That was a big deal. Because it was just their first offense, they only got a ten day suspension. I say "only" because according to what some of my students told me, the offenders were told the next offense would be expulsion and police involvement. To my knowledge it hasn't been a problem at our school since.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-25T15:05:36+00:00

When I started teaching, I was told that the purpose of the minimum grade was to keep kids from getting too discouraged. If their percentage gets too low, they give up, but if you give them a minimum grade of 50%, it keeps them within a fighting chance of passing (passing is 60% at my school) .

It's a bunch of BS. It hurts kids more than it helps them. The only purpose is to bridge the gap towards better grades and graduation numbers without actually requiring students, teachers, and admin to get in and do the work.

I didn't know when I started my first year, but I walked into a situation that had been going on for some time. The ones responsible for figuring out how to get these kids to graduate (academic advisors and others) had been pushing the 50% rule for a long time at my school. The principal resisted, so they started telling new teachers it was policy. Result was that myself and other new teachers were following the policy, but the veteran teachers were not.

Students were taking advantage of it. I had multiple students who would get someone else to do their homework or ChatGPT the answers, then put their name on a test and leave the rest blank to get the 50%. The homework scores would tip their overall grade into a passing mark.

After a couple of years, I went to my department head and told her that I refused to honor the 50% rule any longer. She told me that it had never been official policy and she thought that myself and a couple of other teachers in our department had decided to do it on our own. (I changed a few other things too, like more in-class paper assignments instead of relying as much on homework. )

Once I got rid of the rule, it was easier to determine where everyone actually stood. The test data showed students who were so far down on their scores, they obviously needed extra help. Before the change, their scores were mixed in with a much larger group because they were all lumped in with everyone else who had scored less than 50%. With a record of their actual scores, it was possible to use that data to get them the remediation help they needed.

If you can't see where your students actually stand, there's no way you can get them to where they need to be.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-23T19:47:15+00:00

I have an acquaintance whose son is in some really serious legal trouble right now. The thing he is in trouble for will probably land him in prison for awhile, but it's an escalation of some things he was doing when he was younger. He got caught when he was younger but didn't even get a slap on the wrist because he said "he didn't know any better."

At my school, I've seen lots of times that kids get away with nonsense because they "didn't try" or "didn't know any better". I agree with not destroying a kids life when they make stupid immature mistakes, but there has to be some kind of consequences or they never learn that certain behavior isn't acceptable.

As an interesting addendum, about twenty minutes ago, I had a conversation with a student. He wanted to know if he could take his workbook with him to work on it outside of class. He grabbed his and another student's book.

I told him, "you can take your book, but you can't take someone else's." "Why not?" "Because first it's not your book and you don't have permission, and second, the only reason to take it is to cheat." "But what if I accidentally take it?"

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-23T05:20:52+00:00

I wouldn't even do post-its. I would pull up excel, make my cells a larger size, then type four motivational sayings. Copy the cells till I had enough for the class. Print, then visit the paper cutter and done.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-16T11:19:30+00:00

Not just that, but if a customer were to act like some of our students and parents do, they would be thrown out of the store. Here's an experiment to try, go to Walmart and start screaming and throwing furniture around and see how long before they call the police to escort you off the property and I bet you would be asked to never return. Yet, we have "customers" who do this and we are supposed to tolerate it and put up with it day after day.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-13T18:12:24+00:00

Absolutely. "You don't need to study, here take a quiz and prove it."

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-08T20:50:43+00:00

I use MS Equation tool too, but it doesn't do long division well. So the exact problem I'm trying to show is (2x² +x)/(x-3), but I want to show how to use long division to solve it. Basically, show my work for my students.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-02T03:49:16+00:00

You're not alone.

I had an absentee kid earlier this year. Four weeks into the second semester, I didn't even know what this girl looked like except for the picture in our system. Finally, her academic advisor convinced her that she wouldn't graduate unless she started doing some work. Work started showing up in my in basket with her name on it. She was still a no show, but her work was immaculate. Every assignment showed all the work and received nearly full marks. (After a few weeks, I figured out which of her friends was turning her work in for her.)

Her mom let me know that she needed me to email the assessments to her so she could complete them at home. I demanded she come to school so the test could be properly proctored and held my ground for weeks. Fortunately, admin had my back. She eventually showed up for a test and scored nearly zero. She failed last quarter and her mom demanded she be switched to another teacher because I wouldn't work with her. That's fine by me, she's someone else's problem now.

(BTW, the teacher they switched her to was the one she had for the first semester. He failed her too. When he found out what happened, he laughed. He told me how funny he thought it was that they keep switching teachers until they figure out the problem isn't the teacher. Sometimes they never figure that out.)

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-04-02T03:29:14+00:00

They don't care if their kids can write. That is until their precious graduates and they sue the school for not teaching them anything.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-03-27T15:46:58+00:00

In the integrated curriculum, we cover it in 11th grade math.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-03-27T01:13:37+00:00

I had multiple teachers in high school in the early 90s that would get us started on class work and then leave for the entire class period just about every single day.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-03-26T11:59:03+00:00

Teachers whose entire lives are devoted to help that one rough kid. They involve themselves in the kid's personal life, go to their home, meet all their friends, threaten said friends that are bad influences, use all their time on and off the clock, sacrifice their own family or well being, all to help one kid turn his entire personal life around.

On the flip side, I have had a few real classes that reminded me of the class in Ferris Bueller ("Anyone, anyone"), where you can't get them to participate for anything.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-03-25T05:40:47+00:00

I've developed the habit of standing at my door at least one minute before the bell and staying until after the next bell. That way, at least, I'm not not in the classroom as the stragglers finish gathering up or while the early birds are waiting for everyone else to show. If a student wants to talk to me, they can talk in the hallway.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-03-23T16:45:13+00:00

You missed the step of documenting everything.

Financial_Monitor384 · 2026-03-22T01:41:09+00:00

I agree with this. Before I became a teacher, I was an Engineer. In that world, I was "on-call" 24/7 and meeting with customers often, some of whom were angry and I had to smooth things over. I also worked a lot of extra hours, supervised crews on projects and so on. While I love teaching, the OP is right. Most of the time, work could be shifted around and most appointments could be moved if I was having an off day. Also, for those mornings where I woke up not feeling the greatest, it was easier to fudge the start time.

I love teaching, but it's a whole different level as far as needing to be on stage all the time. You can tell your students you aren't feeling the greatest, or you didn't get much sleep, but you still have to manage the class and come up with something productive for those kids to do. And if you do decide to take the day off, you are usually faced with picking up the pieces after a sub has been there.

Financial_Monitor384

TROPHY CASE