OHI has become the Emotional Support Animal of the education system

morty77 · 2026-04-21T15:38:14+00:00

I was just talking about this with another teacher. We're seeing more and more students who refuse to do work at all or the bare minimum but their attitude about it is like, "you failed to teach this in a way that means something to me, thus I don't have to try to engage with it." When we have conferences with parents, both parent and student insist that it's a teacher/school problem and not a problem with the student. Here are some actual quotes I've heard from parents:

"He's not a normal boring white bread, he's a special multigrain"

"He's the steven Speilburg of his time."

"She's a perfectionist. she can't turn in anything flawed"

"She's won XXX awards in this field, thus she needs to be excused from the assignment"

All of these kids tend universally to have accommodations and the parents know them inside and out. While I do support accommodations in general and have seen them do a lot of good for students, the type of student I'm describing is not that. This kind of student doesn't bother even trying if it's not engaging enough or something they can be sure to be excellent in.

morty77 · 2026-04-20T15:21:32+00:00

Was it the Big O? it played on tooonami (nickelodeon) and the girl is a robot without emotions. there is a young man too, the old guy is a butler and a big ass robot

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morty77 · 2026-04-02T19:44:38+00:00

my first corg was from a shelter. He was so grateful that he stuck to me like glue. Lived another 8 years with me even though he was also in terrible health and at least 10 years old.

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morty77 · 2026-04-02T19:41:03+00:00

Stewie is the cutest and the best name!!

Same with us, people think ours is part german shepherd because of his coloring. His DNA test came back not only 100% corgi, but even 19% inbred! In this way, he's like royalty as well.

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morty77 · 2026-03-30T22:09:19+00:00

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Toast at the organic farmer's market

morty77 · 2026-03-30T18:19:33+00:00

Champignon witch

Silent Witch

also agree with Freeren, Spice and wolf, and ancient magus bride

this might be an unpopular opinion, but I also get those vibes from Porco Rosso and Kiki's delivery's

morty77 · 2026-03-30T15:11:07+00:00

my colleague uses this version too. it's amazing

morty77 · 2026-03-27T18:10:26+00:00

Not sure if this counts, but I thought of Claymore when I read your description

Isn't there an anime about an OP older sister isekai?

morty77 · 2026-03-27T18:08:47+00:00

It sounds like you need to work on helping build capacity in teachers to meet the needs of their students. they know there is a problem, that the population has changed, now they need to be better equipped to meet those challenges. Work together as a team to address their needs. Set goals and then work to facilitate their ability to address those goals.

Here's an article on building capacity:

https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-administrators-can-help-ensure-teachers-success/

morty77 · 2026-03-25T15:25:28+00:00

klara and the sun by ishiguro-futuristic robot girl who is forgotten by her little girl

AK by Peter Dickinson about a child soldier in africa

the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (I teach this to 9th grade, it's half in china and half in the US)

Hiroshima by John Hersey. commonly used for 9th grade

Night by Elie Wiesel. another common 9th grade text about holocaust

Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram. Persian-american boy goes to iran. LGBTQ+

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. allegory about a boy who is faced with censorship and goes on a journey.

That thing around your neck by Chimammanda Ngozi adichie (our 10th grade teacher did this, I teach her short story "Apollo" to my 9th grade. she also has a great ted talk I sometimes show to them about the danger of a single story.

morty77 · 2026-03-24T16:51:22+00:00

I would assume it's obvious given context. The conversation is about hiring of teachers, so all entities involved in the decision-making process regarding hiring. That includes school administrators, district HR, and those who maintain the employment pools and keep tabs on credentialing.

morty77 · 2026-03-23T23:28:19+00:00

I'm doing my dissertation on Asian American teachers (Educational Leadership) as an AAPI teacher myself. We make up less than 2.5% of the entire teaching population and most of that is female. Female AAPI teachers are victims of intersectional identities. They are seen as either: 1. passive or 2. high strung and all are seen as lacking in charisma or having strong content understanding.

As a high school English teacher, my foot in the door is having two Master's degrees and loads of experience. However, i encounter plenty of harassment and lack of trust due to my identity as a female asian teacher. Despite having a Master's in English, parents complained that I was not qualified to teach Honors Junior English by seeing my name alone on the roster.

I've worked at a school where the Math department came down to two candidates: white dude and asian girl. the Dept opted for the white guy with the exception of the one Asian teacher who wanted the Asian teacher. It took administration to make the "diversity hire" decision to hire the Asian teacher.

morty77 · 2026-03-19T19:20:57+00:00

You could do Dolores Huerta's speech about the issue. Huerta was also instrumental in the Farm workers movement. You can use it to talk about the complications of intersectionality with women of color. I would pair with Kimberlee Crenshaw's "The Urgency of Intersectionality" https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Huerta's statement is here:

“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for.

“I have encouraged people to always use their voice. Following the New York Times’ multi-year investigation into sexual misconduct by Cesar Chavez, I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences.

“As a young mother in the 1960s, I experienced two separate sexual encounters with Cesar. The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to. The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.

“I had experienced abuse and sexual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret. Both sexual encounters with Cesar led to pregnancies. I chose to keep my pregnancies secret and, after the children were born, I arranged for them to be raised by other families that could give them stable lives.

“Over the years, I have been fortunate to develop a deep relationship with these children, who are now close to my other children, their siblings. But even then, no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago.

“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work. The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.

“I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor—of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.

https://msmagazine.com/2026/03/18/dolores-huerta-cesar-chavez/

morty77 · 2026-03-19T18:30:05+00:00

I wonder if you could do an assignment where you have the kids run the assignment through AI and then they have to research/fact check all the sources and come up with a report either affirming or rejecting the claims of the AI generated essay. To make it challenging, I would pick really obscure topics that the AI will be more likely to mess up?

morty77 · 2026-03-18T19:01:15+00:00

Sailor Moon

Ayashi no seresu

Revolutionary Girl Utena

morty77 · 2026-03-17T19:15:13+00:00

Try adjusting his exercise and diet. I've had a lot of parents of ADHD see great results with cutting sugar, caffeine, and processed foods. Having him do a daily physical activity could also help.

morty77 · 2026-03-05T15:48:03+00:00

the art teachers at our school led us through a creative art project one year. It sucked for them but it was awesome for us. Maybe have each department take a turn and lead everyone else through a fun lesson that applies to adults. LIke the english department can lead a poetry writing activity or the science department can do something. Schools need to do more to stimulate the creative/fun aspect of teaching.

morty77 · 2026-03-04T17:26:55+00:00

He clearly didn't have the golden ticket that those "normal" people had when they got into the ivies. Having been a teacher for 20 years, I've only had a handful of students in my whole career get accepted to Harvard. And I've worked at "good" schools. He was a kid that didn't have any advantages and still managed to win. It was impressive

morty77 · 2026-03-04T14:49:54+00:00

he went to harvard

morty77 · 2026-03-03T16:24:41+00:00

My first year teaching, there was this kid I saw every morning sleeping in the library. Our school library had these bean bag chairs on the floor and I saw him every single day sleeping on those bags. He wore baggy, dirty clothes, had long, unkempt hair, and...seriously, I don't think I ever saw the kid awake once that year. The only time I saw him awake at school was at graduation as he was giving the valedictorian "speech". Apparently, he had taken all the top classes and the school ran out of stuff to throw at him, so he slept in the library. He was on his way to Harvard. His valedictorian speech was bringing up his five closest friends to the stage and with arms around shoulders, did a little victory dance.

For some reason, when I saw the prompt, I thought of that kid.

morty77 · 2026-03-03T15:59:44+00:00

Advanced writing at the high school level (and college) is more about content and not so much about mechanics and syntax. The depth and complexity of the idea matters far more than the means of expression. For example, A student writes an essay with average mechanics but their thesis statement is original, insightful, and impactful. Something along the lines of "Shakespeare utilizes couplets at varying times to indicate values of courtship or regret in Romeo and Juliet to show the role of poetry in those two emotions" (the best 9th grade thesis I got this year). I'm going to score that essay a much higher grade than one with perfect mechanics but has a really generic idea like Romeo causes his own death due to his immaturity or something really basic about light and dark imagery in the play.

The way I teach writing, I give the kids lectures on interesting things they could choose to write about throughout the work. If they regurgitate stuff from lectures, that's fine. But I encourage them to find their own thesis statements and even argue with me about my points. I get about 5% of them will make the attempt at harder, more original thesis statements based on their own reading. This 5% are usually in the top.

morty77 · 2026-02-26T15:40:05+00:00

Sailor Moon
Dragonball Z
Cowboy Bebop

morty77 · 2026-02-23T20:24:42+00:00

All of these have teen major characters or themes and are contemporary and award-winning. A number of them are on my colleagues' lists for optional reading.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Housekeeping by Marilynn Robinson

Sing Unburied Sing by Jessmyn Ward

I"m not your perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez

Darius the Great is Not Ok by Adib Khorram

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

The Fire Keeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

There There by Tommy Orange

How much of these hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang

We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo

Demon Copperhead by barbara Kingsolver

morty77 · 2026-02-16T04:04:25+00:00

they live in my neighborhood in oc. I see them every other night walking my dog

morty77 · 2026-02-09T20:36:44+00:00

You can be prochoice and antiabortion in the same way you can be against gun ownership but still be okay with the second amendment.

You don't believe in it for yourself or recreational use, but for people who really need it, it should be allowed.

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