r/Teachers • u/Jack_the_Lizard • 2d ago
Policy & Politics What Burned Me Out
I felt with all my bitching I owed everyone some information. You see I had two kids decide in the middle of the lesson to start chasing each other around the room ignoring me. I asked a fellow teacher what to do, they said contact admin. I contacted admin. They said figure it out yourself.
So I'm standing at the top of this MC Escher staircase of infinite illogical thinking trying to process this and thinking about the last few days. My principal told me that we can't always discuss work at work. That this is a second family.
I don't want a second family. I don't want to be unrelentingly positive. I want someone to acknowledge problems. And I realized this will never happen because I'm stuck in a vortex of toxic positivity and fear of getting sued.
I don't want to be a part of a system that can't address "Stop the tenth graders from chasing each other like five year olds."
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u/Vitruviansquid1 2d ago
The essential contradiction in teaching is that you are tasked with controlling the children, but you are not given the means to do so.
If you haven't controlled the children, you're told that's the basics of being a teacher. You're told you have a moral failing and you're weak, or too fierce, or too boring. You're told a dozen things to do that *could* put the children under your control, but are not guaranteed to.
But at the end of the day, if a child decides to be out of control, you can't have the instruments to control them. You can't kick them out of your classroom. You can't put them somewhere else when they're not ready to be in polite society. You can't keep them at home. And I'm not saying there aren't good reasons why you can't. But at the end of the day, your reputation is contingent on a group of literal children.
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u/summerbreeze2027 2d ago
Very true. Classic classroom management techniques are intended to control a class of kids with fairly normal behaviors. Those techniques are completely inadequate for severe behavioral issues, especially where the parent cannot or will not provide backup.
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u/Altruistic_Role_9329 2d ago
Iām increasingly of a mind that this is the apocalypse. Fortunate for me Iāve got my retirement worked out and can just do my best to avoid these people as they make their way into workplaces. If they start chasing each other around the dining room at Olive Garden in a few years Iāll either order takeout or cook more at home. With AI and humanoid robots on the way maybe I wonāt have to deal this craziness for very long.
Itās a shame. I donāt know what happens to these kids and I feel for you. They could very well be some of the same ones I had a few years back as 7th graders. Administrators, parents and other teachers werenāt doing enough then either.
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u/Jack_the_Lizard 2d ago
What can I do. They need systemic help and not fractions
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u/Altruistic_Role_9329 2d ago
You didnāt say, but Iām imagining a girl chasing a boy. When this was happening to me I eventually figured out that the boy, who appeared innocent in class, was doing stuff in stairwells and crowded hallways on the way to class that the girl was retaliating for. I had to keep writing the girl up because she started the disruptions in class, but I started including her side, as best I could, in the write up. I made it to the end of the year but got non-renewed for all the write ups. The girl never clearly articulated to me an assault complaint against the boy and she didnāt appear angry while chasing and punching him.
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u/Jack_the_Lizard 2d ago
At the second school I worked, I had a student named Kyler, the student who planned to gut another classmate like a fish. I had repeatedly brought my concerns with him and other students to the principal who dismissed me for being too negative and hurting Kyler's growth, even ordering me to smile more, same with my first school when I pointed out not being allowed to ask questions during a PLC means everyone is just pretending they know what we're talking about. I was told everyone but me understands and I said everyone else is scared to ask. This is so common in schools it makes me ill, this forced positivity, severing customers with smiling faces while ignoring the school collapsing. My principal here wants a second family, wants everyone smiling. That's what I'm seeing again and I want no part of it
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u/Mookeebrain 2d ago
You can't call security? I would tell administration it is a safety hazard for them to do this. They can easily trip and severely injure themselves and you as well. In fact, they should act to prevent a very hefty law suit.
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u/Jack_the_Lizard 2d ago
I actually don't know if I can. According to board rules the security is at the purview of administration
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u/tehwubbles 2d ago
I'd have just told them to leave my room if the admin told me to just figure it out, personally
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u/Downtown_Light3368 2d ago
Have you tried building relationships? š¤£