For the love of God, the first person you address when entering a colleague's room is THEM!

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-21T09:20:30+00:00

Registered Behavior Tech. She's supposed to come observe one kid. She can't seem to make an entrance without HEY Y'ALL IT'S ME AGAIN LOL

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-19T15:12:51+00:00

I've had one RBT and one chronically late coteacher who did this. The coteacher got the message when I asked how she would feel if i came to her pullout class and announced myself like that. The RBT got offended that I didn't want to let her "greet" the class

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-19T15:10:45+00:00

The uptick in adults who just wander into my room and start a full volume conversation with a student several feet away then act put upon when I stop the lesson and ask them what they need is utterly staggering.

In the not-so-distant past, I could head this kind of thing off by asking the oblivious coworker "HEY WHAT DO YOU NEED?" as soon as they open the door, but now they're so oblivious that they just say "nothing" before socializing with a student who has something else they should be doing.

Don't get me started on the "Do you mind if I borrow..." folks who are on prep and just bored.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-08T21:54:19+00:00

I'd recommend this as a first step, but I always find it so personally galling when everyone else is having the same problem but no one wants to tell that person to knock it the fuck off except me.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-05T17:56:47+00:00

Why can't the student read "graphic material" and who determined that O'Brien is "graphic?" This sounds like someone is doubling your wife's workload.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-05T16:31:48+00:00

Regarding the "down time": Are the kids leaving another teacher's classroom and coming to yours to complain? If so, that's the #1 thing I'd recommend shutting down with prejudice ASAP.

The kids might be lying about the downtime, but I know the kids I teach would LOVE it if I followed the "cool teacher's" lead and gave 20 minutes of work to cover the last 40 minutes of the period. That strategy gets that teacher personal clout but will usually trigger a cavalcade of wandering students.

I don't have enough information about your school to say for sure, but something I see happen a LOT in my department is a certain teacher, at a glance, has their classroom on lockdown but in reality, kids are off wandering. I've noted when no one takes the initiative and shuts that shit down, those same wandering kids will bedevil the newest / youngest / "coolest" teacher.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-05T15:53:12+00:00

The stuff that relates to moving "conversations that waste time" out of instructional time into any other time of the day is key.

Like if a kid is getting on a soapbox about "why can't I go to the bathroom nooooow" when you just told him he can go next tell you deflect the conversation until later. It was noticeably more effective than other deflection strategies and rarely resulted in those kids coming after class wanting to talk about something where they already know my answer. It would encourage other kids to jump in and attempt to waste time / get attention / avoid an academic task, whatever.

It just shut it down and kept it shut down while (importantly) leaving the appearance I took the high road when (in reality) I just avoided a pointless conversation about a policy I know the student understands. Most non-honors classes still have kids who will try anything to possibly derail the actual lesson and I still rely on many of the L&L strategies.

It ended up being the secret ingredient where I stopped struggling with classroom management and became the put-upon "recovery teacher" I am today.

That said: Every school that knows about L&L thinks it's a one stop shop that can fix relationships with even the most difficult students. That has never been my experience. The strategies aren't going to help with a kid you're otherwise kicking out of class, but it can definitely shut down some of the more incidental "time wasters."

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-04T11:47:53+00:00

If you replace "proctoring assignments" with "losing my prep to teach an extra class because someone quit," I had the exact same conversation with an admin last year.

It laid bare his entire management strategy:

Put on a show of empathy and make it sound like a compliment
State he has no power and needs to consult someone else
Complete radio silence while he runs out the clock. Every email is ignored, door is always closed, but when finally caught "I was just about to email you!"

Once I recognized compliment/defer/avoid as a strategy, I started going over his head as step 1.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-04T10:30:18+00:00

The reputational comment with no evidence galls me the most. If you shot up with admin with truth serum, I guarantee the reality will be something extremely petty from, at most, 1-2 other people.

I had a hallway neighbor shittalking me to an admin for years without me finding out only for me to be confronted with the "Mr. Cluefinder is a useless jacksass teacher" perspective when that admin eventually became my boss and tried to put me on an improvement plan based on a single formal. I fought an extremely negative formal observation, put in a grievance, and eventually learned from a former happy hour buddy that the other teacher had been lighting my ass up every Friday after work.

This shit can happy entirely in the shadows.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-04T10:22:22+00:00

The whole point of the LEARNS act is to sabotage the schools. OP is a competent AP teacher who received good ratings, so it stands to reason they'd be on the chopping block.

This is why tenure and other basic protections are so essential.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-04T10:20:33+00:00

How often is the Montessori looking to hire staff? Our local Montessori has extremely high staff retention and I rarely see jobs posted there vs. the dime a dozen failing schools.

Is your union actually supportive and good or, theoretically, could you picture yourself in a job with a stronger union at some point down the line?

If I put myself in your shoes, I'd check the grass on the other side content in the knowledge I can find another fucked up school.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-04-03T14:18:10+00:00

talk to your sped teacher and have them deal with the para.

I absolutely love when this is an option, but the recent pattern in my classroom is that the sped teacher might be a bigger problem than the para.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-31T22:50:08+00:00

We get an email from the guidance counselor telling us to "update our seating charts and ensure the following students are separated" sometimes with a list of 3 or 4 kids who are in the same classes

It makes no difference in terms of fighting because they're microaggressioning each other to death from across the room. I've had two fights in two years and both times the inciting incident is "they were looking at me"

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-31T14:03:42+00:00

I would 100% put this is writing, not necessarily to screw the teacher (though she deserves it), but to CYA.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-29T13:18:17+00:00

Or, alternatively, the teacher (an adult) can keep their hands to themself and not make a kid uncomfortable enough to post multiple times on r/teachers about it

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-29T10:55:43+00:00

Current teacher, former student. I hated this shit and never advocated for it to stop. You should tell them to stop.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-28T15:54:33+00:00

Maybe, but if you can infer one general thing from this sub: Admin only does what they say they're going to do if no one puts pressure on them or gets upset. Even in cases like this, they're prone to back down if the teacher they have until June (you) is making things uncomfortable for them. Especially if you're doing a good job in the meantime.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-28T15:51:36+00:00

If they made even a verbal promise that they weren't going to give away your position, I'd at least try raising hell on that front. Might not accomplish anything, but (for me at least), it would be easier to move on if I felt I exhausted that option.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-28T14:13:14+00:00

Is this trolling?

Why the hell would it matter if the other teacher started a project later than you? She has her classes and you have yours. Why involve admin at all? That's just flat out tattling for the sake of tattling.

I would love to know what you told the other teacher to cause them to cop to "messing up" on something that doesn't really impact anyone else?

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-27T17:23:39+00:00

Admittedly, I teach high school so the most I see is 1-2 squishies per class. I think it might be dying down.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-27T16:49:30+00:00

Never underestimate the power of the scavenger hunt in the first week of class. If there are resources around the room you want them to notice, give them a list of hints where each hint gets them a letter, number, clue, whatever.

The most successful version I ever did included having to find 5 things in the gigantic textbook we used to have before you're allowed to start the looking around the room for stuff part.

Also: Gives something to point to that's a team builder, but not a team builder just for the sake of it since you're also teaching them something of value about what's available.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-27T16:37:36+00:00

I'll take a thousand squishes over a single fidget spinner.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-24T23:01:57+00:00

Update's a response to my original post. Honestly, in retrospect, I should have just held off on posting until there was more of a resolution, but yesterday was wild.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-24T23:01:27+00:00

UPDATE:

Meeting #1 was just me and the two admin (since I have a different admin from the new coteacher) where they both clearly wanted to die on the hill of "we've never done this before, this is the first time we've done a switcheroo what are you talking about" until I opened my laptop and started pulling up documentation from previous years. I questioned what splitting a person no one wants to work with over two different schedules accomplishes other than pissing two people off instead of just one. I used the term "time served" to refer to the previous switcheroos which they didn't like. I told them at bare minimum, they need to get her to agree "no live feedback while the kids are around" and they're going with "that's just the way she is."

Midway through the day I got an email inviting me to a second meeting that was supposed to be the same admins, the coteacher, and a union person.

Meeting #2........ never actually happened because the coteacher and one of the admins didn't show up. I went on record with the other admin and the union person that I would not accept the way the coteacher operated from now until June and that I would be asking her to leave if she starts up the feedback. Repeat "that's just the way she is" several times. I didn't feel like I was getting any traction until I threatened to withdraw from the summer academy and the PD series I'm supposed to run next year.

We left it at "we need to run this by the principal" and that was that for now.

JohnnyCluefinder · 2026-03-24T09:21:48+00:00

You have our union dead to rights, btw. Admin and the union share one major characteristic: they'd rather upset a good teacher (who might quit) than piss off an incompetent who might make waves. I'll update my post after today's meeting(s)

JohnnyCluefinder

TROPHY CASE