[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 77 KB, 736x557, 54a22-great-teacher-onizuka-e28093-molto-piacereanime.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17011762 No.17011762 [Reply] [Original]

Anyone here an English teacher? What is it like? Got any stories?

>> No.17011770

>>17011762
I am. What do you want to know?

>> No.17011776

I wish I had a life like Onizuka. Real life is so boring.

>> No.17011783

>>17011770
What is it like? Got any stories?

>> No.17011803

>>17011783
I teach HS English in England. Kids are growing up really slowly nowadays, borderline neotenous. Ability gap is huge - some are barely literate/able to read. Getting them to pick up on inference is like pulling teeth.

>> No.17011867

>>17011803
In your general experience, have phones been a positive or negative influence on your students?

>> No.17012015

>>17011867
Not him, but I think the answer is pretty obvious.

>> No.17012080

>>17011803
TA here. Can confirm the situation is pretty much the same at university. If they keep being like that my projections is that literate people will be a master race of articulate language users ruling over a class of slaves unable to express their discontent with anything

>> No.17012260

>>17011762
I recently got re-admitted to an asylum after more or less jerking off on one of my students and flipping out at the black kid because I know he has a bigger cock than me. I wasn't right before but becoming a teacher of language brought me to this place.

>> No.17012309

>>17011867
Negative. Not that I'm a technophobe. Kids have always found distractions from school, but phones are a distraction from life. Part of the negative issue is that good uses for the technology haven't been modelled. They haven't been shown how to improve their lives with phones. Lots of teachers are against e-books too, because 'we have to get kids away from screens', but it's competing with a dopamine box, and it's not a fight they're winning.

I'm pretty against smart phones on the whole, because I think they've damaged the entirety of the world with their immediate social gratification escapism.

>>17012080
Wouldn't be shocked.

>> No.17012362

>>17011762
I'm doing a master of teaching and placements have given me second thoughts. State set curriculum is all fucked up, "cross curriculum priorities" all over the place because the government wants to use education to send political messages that change every few years, top down planning full of political grandstanding and no educational theory, universities scrambling to teach you all the crap you need to pay lip service to and still find the time to show you how to actually teach children.

Kids themselves vary wildly from ok to little shits. Phone addiction really did do a number on them, its impossible to get them to focus for long. Teachers have to plan for about half of the lesson time being lost to poor focus at lower levels of high school. I was sort of expecting that, but what I wasn't expecting was how hard it would be to get them to just pick up their fucking pen and write down the answer to a question when they already know it.
I'd walk up to a couple boys who were goofing off and ask if they'd finished what they were supposed to be doing and they'd tell me "no, it was too hard" and I'd look and they hadn't even started. I'd just ask them what the answer was and they'd give me a decent one and I'd say "so just fucking write that down so I can get off your case". Its not that they couldn't do the work, it's that they were unwilling to attempt to do work.

Had one kid tell me he wasn't going to finish an assessment he was working on because there was a question left and five minutes to go. I said "well you only need to write like 2 sentences and 5 minutes is plenty of time for that" and he looked shocked at the suggestion, said he didn't know the answer, so i just paraphrased the question, got a response, asked him where in the poem supported his response and he pointed it out, then I had to tell him to just write it down.

I know I'm labouring the point, but it was really weird how often I ran in to students who needed to hear that their answer was right before they would put pen to paper.
So yes, aggravating in a way I was not quite expecting.

>> No.17012385

>>17012362
Gonna level with you, most pedagogical theory is nonsense, and the academic field seems to be an elaborate ruse for people to sell pop-science every couple of years to the government.

Dunno what country you're teaching in, but I'm the Britbong teacher, and I laugh every time I look at the curriculum and see that Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations are on the syllabus. As if any class has the time to get through a 600 page novel. They struggle with 200 pages.

>> No.17012487

>>17012385
>Gonna level with you, most pedagogical theory is nonsense, and the academic field seems to be an elaborate ruse for people to sell pop-science every couple of years to the government.
True. I feel like here the problem is mostly that teachers are expected to know pedagogical theory and be able to discuss it in an academic fashion even if its not going to be of any actual use. The time would be better spent teaching us engagement strategies.

Agree on novels. I'm annoyed that currently the state curriculum authority is trying to draw up a completely arbitrary distinction between the drama and English curricula, meaning that suddenly new English teachers aren't being prepared to teach plays as texts properly because they suddenly aren't in our wheelhouse.

I'm in Australia, and the level of political interference and grandstanding in curricula is insane. As of right now ever high school teacher in the state is, in theory, supposed to be able to demonstrate how their unit plans teach not just the curriculum priorities set by the state authority but also the three "cross curriculum priorities". Which are, naturally, "Asia and Australia's place in asia", "indigenous culture and history", and "sustainability".

Lmaoing at math teachers. Enjoy those audits. Can you imagine trying to denonstrate how you teach Chinese cultural sensitivity in your trig unit?

>> No.17012521

teachers itt making it all seem very grim. like life-sapping grim

>> No.17012530

>>17012362
Student here. No one wants to do useless papers that arent graded, because hanging out with people you have close relationships with is far more interesting than doing some stupid busywork paper with theory that you could learn in 30 seconds.

>> No.17012553

>>17012530
>hanging with my friends is more fun than work
no shit. enjoy a rude awakening

>> No.17012770

>>17012260
I heard about this in the news, your brother is that biologist. At least one person in your family turned out alright

>> No.17012798

>>17011762
onizuka is top 3 animes

>> No.17012816

I used to teach english as language to vietnamese children and teenagers. Wish I fucked one of them

>> No.17012831

>>17011762
I taught English Composition and Creative Writing while getting my MFA a few years ago. Nothing particularly exciting in the way of stories, honestly -- most kids just didn't give a shit, even if you tried to make class engaging, so I just showed up and did what I needed to do. There is no way I would ever go back and teach (adjuncting, HS, etc).

>> No.17012856

all these boomers in this thread. Sound like preindustrial boomers railing against music playing devices.

>> No.17012896

>>17012856
Go back to tiktok

>> No.17012916
File: 69 KB, 220x220, 1603008736609.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17012916

>>17012896
>tfw on it right now

how did you know?

>> No.17012943

>>17012521
literally every field is life sapping grim

>> No.17012956

>>17012487
>meaning that suddenly new English teachers aren't being prepared to teach plays as texts properly because they suddenly aren't in our wheelhouse.
For us, we have a choice of modern dramas, but you can guarantee it'll be An Inspector Calls, and kids struggle to understand the premise behind that too.

>Lmaoing at math teachers. Enjoy those audits. Can you imagine trying to denonstrate how you teach Chinese cultural sensitivity in your trig unit?
"Ok class, Omar and Xin Zhi are working out a travel problem. Each train car can hold 24 standing passengers, and 34 sitting passengers. For each passenger, they need 30 grams of pork, and 100 grams of rice. One passenger dies every 2 hours. How many passengers make it to the Ughyur?"

>True. I feel like here the problem is mostly that teachers are expected to know pedagogical theory and be able to discuss it in an academic fashion even if its not going to be of any actual use. The time would be better spent teaching us engagement strategies.
There are some really basic tenets that need to be acknowledge:
1) Some children are bastards to teach because their life sucks and school is low priority.
2) Some children are hard to teach because they have special needs.
3) Children are humans and have needs that need to be fulfilled.
4) Don't be a massive cunt to other human beings. Children are still people. Being a cunt doesn't make you a better teacher.
5) Learn what a student can pick up in a lesson.

The rest is largely fluff and nonsense. No inter-rater data. Too many variables. It's just arm chair flavour of the month crap.

>>17012856
I'm 27. Smart phones started being a thing when I was a teenager. I have outright witnessed the change.

>> No.17012965

>>17012831
what are you doing now

>> No.17013039

>>17012965
I work for a large university library (supervisor in interlibrary loan). I worked in ILL when I was in undergrad, so I had previous work experience after I left grad school. I also do general reference via the university's online chat/help program.

As much as I'd like to make more money and use more of my skillset, the job isn't all that hard and allowed me to finish my story collection this summer, so there's that.

>> No.17013050

starting student teaching (usa) in a little more than a month. can confirm that all of my education classes are riddled with nonsensical theory, "how to teach black lives matter", and banal word salad discussion posts about how "laptop learning is so crucial in tough times like these." the tl dr of my 4 years of education is "make sure kids are doing things."

>> No.17013062

>>17012521
>teachers itt making it all seem very grim. like life-sapping grim
It's a weird job.

You can either have really easy and relaxed hours, or you can be stuck doing almost 2 hours of crap busywork for every 1 hour of actual work, all depends on the country and school. Teachers can either be decent and a laugh, or total fucking cunts (and if you think back to school, and that one teacher every pupil thought was a cunt.. well.. the other staff think they're a cunt too).

Kids these days have a lot of issues:
1) Borderline neotenous. They grow up ridiculously slowly thanks to new media. Low attention spans, low deferred reward schemas.
2) New media exists. They're fucking dumb because of it. The ones that aren't dumb share the same pattern: they took part in conventional arts and activities, such as reading, film etc.
3) They are without ambition; they have grown up in such abject hopelessness, they do not see a reason to try.
4) They have grown to be too skeptical. They cannot trust their teachers that they are learning something of value, and instead, approach all topics with a cynicism that makes them reluctant to partake.
5) Cyclical poverty; many students don't connect how working hard in school can lead to being happier in life later. Their parents work miserable jobs. Telling kids 'you can get a good job' is essentially saying 'we can prep you for misery'. Contrary to popular belief, impoverished parents often want their kids to do better than they did, because they hate being in poverty.

You cannot go into teaching expecting any of your students to have a passion for what they're learning. This generation is borderline unteachable because of how they've grown up, the attitudes they've been taught to hold, and the nature of media scaremongering.

You have to go into it because you believe you can make a difference to people's lives. Right now, that difference is trying to break them out of this cycle of shit they're caught in.

>> No.17013081

>>17012362
jesus christ. i graduated high school only a couple of years ago, and most of my peers didn't suffer from the attention problems to the degree you describe. are you teaching inner city kids?

>> No.17013095

>>17013081
I'm the brit. It's a serious issue. Teaching an 8th grade class, reading the novel aloud as a class, every now and then you have to switch readers; even when doing something as simple as switching readers, a task that should take all of 10 seconds, they just devolve into talking, shouting at each other etc.

It's literal tard wrangling at times.

>> No.17013130

>>17013095
What kind of region do you teach in, socio-economically?

I'm thinking of studying to teach secondary english at some point, but I am an unassertive manlet and feel like I will find it miserable.

Is there much pressure on you from senior figures / teaching inspectors or do people generally accept that things are fucked and just happy for you to get on with things?

Is it true (for your and your peers) that teaching is now a minimum 50-hour-week job?

>> No.17013131

>>17012309
>Kids have always found distractions from school, but phones are a distraction from life.
Damn, that's a good way to put it.

>> No.17013134

>>17013095
sorry to hear that. i hope all goes well for you though. i was a little shit to my literature teacher, but looking back on it, the guy was doing his best for us.

>> No.17013142

>>17012798
what are the other 2

>> No.17013158
File: 393 KB, 743x1000, 120398125_868723260563707_4633564638351572317_n.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17013158

I'm an English Teacher in Nip-land, which given your image is what I thought you were interested in.

Am doing this job so I can save some money, and have enough free time to work on Visual Novel development (a VN that I am intentionally taking in a more literary style) and documentaries. Hopefully by the time my contract ends my pursuits will take me somewhere. Other wise I might go to Grad School.

As for stories from teaching English. Nothing much, but I'm in a fairly rural area and while most schools are fine. There is one school that seems to completely neglect disciplining their students. There is a kid in the 3rd grade class in that school that will run around the class room like a literal retard while lessons are in progress. And when an assistant teacher tried stopping her, she threw a pair of scissors at her, and other than a brief scolding for a minute she wasn't punished. Keep in mind, she behaves like this everyday. If she were in America, she would have been suspended multiple times by now, and possibly even expelled.

>> No.17013166

>>17013130
>What kind of region do you teach in, socio-economically?
I teach in a socioeconomically deprived area. It's not totally fucked tiers like Manchester or inner London, but it's not great.

>I'm thinking of studying to teach secondary english at some point, but I am an unassertive manlet and feel like I will find it miserable.
Er, this one is hard. If you can have a laugh, and a bit of banter with the kids, then it makes things easier. It's humanising and sometimes they respond to that alone, but if not, then if you do have to sanction them, it's easier to recover the relationship.

>Is there much pressure on you from senior figures / teaching inspectors or do people generally accept that things are fucked and just happy for you to get on with things?
Really depends on the school. Senior teachers are easily the biggest burden in schools. The issue is, they're the ones that read up pedagogical theory and then decide they're going to launch an initiative to save education, usually with a bunch of bollocks paper work and a specific 'teaching style' forced upon people.

>Is it true (for your and your peers) that teaching is now a minimum 50-hour-week job?
Again it really depends on the school and its policies. Some schools will ask you to arrive at 8am, and expect you to stay until 5pm. Others won't. Some will expect you to mark books every 2 weeks. Others won't. See the above on that bit..

>>17013131
Thanks. It's horribly true though. It's not just school kids. Adults do it too. They don't like a social situation/it's not rewarding enough? Out comes the phone. Think how many people you talk with, that will just pull their phone out to check their texts while you talk. It's escapism.

>> No.17013175

>>17012080
>If they keep being like that my projections is that literate people will be a master race of articulate language users ruling over a class of slaves unable to express their discontent with anything
Not even fucking close

>> No.17013200

>>17013166
Thanks for answering mate and sorry to hear about the unnecessary paper work etc. Hope you've had a relatively relaxing year this year.

>> No.17013204

Is teaching fun at all or is it boring like any other office job?

>> No.17013214

>>17013200
The school I'm in at the moment is ok, but I've seen others with far more overbearing senior staff. It feels good when students open their eyes and seem to have an epiphany of relevance, or that you can do something that really changes their life, but you gotta live for those moments you know?

>> No.17013221
File: 58 KB, 764x950, 50051900_1200900920058126_6273329279505793024_n.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17013221

I am majoring in eng lit and my parents are all egging me on into ending up as a teacher. Is being a teacher really that good?

>> No.17013222

>>17013204
It's not Dead Poet's Society, but it's also not as bland as some office jobs.

>> No.17013241

>>17013222
Can I be like Onizuka?

>> No.17013249

I've been teaching for 4 years now and I love it. My dept. chair called me a "born teacher" because I'm personable, friendly, and open about my life and interests with my students.

I teach 3 classes of senior english and 2 of freshmen. I get to design the senior curriculum myself because it doesn't get tested, but my freshmen curriculum is scripted. For freshmen we use a thing called Springboard curriculum.

What I teach at the 9th grade from that is:
1st quarter: a short story analysis unit, where I teach:
>Lamb to the Slaughter - Roald Dahl
>There will Come Soft Rains - Ray Bradbury
>Gift of the Magi - O. Henry
>Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Bierce
>Martha, Martha by Zadie Smith
2nd Quarter:
Romeo and Juliet Unit
3rd Quarter:
Argumentative unit about the value of a college education and a career research project
4th Quarter:
To Kill a Mockingbird

With my Seniors, since I design it, I tried to do a mix of fun and interesting things:
>open with an analysis unit focusing on film analysis and song analysis
>Political rhetoric unit
>Writing a This I Believe essay
>Writing a Where I'm From essay
>Creating visual arguments
>Mini-author study unit on JD Salinger and his short stories
>Othello unit
>Slam Poetry unit
>4 week final project where they have to make a cut-up of different texts we've read throughout the semester in small groups, with a unified theme, and then perform it. The written portion also includes a textual connections part.

My freshmen this year are pretty good but I have to remember they sometimes have the emotional maturity of 12 year olds still.
Each grade level has its strengths and weaknesses to deal with as a teacher. With freshmen you can mold them to be better people, but they also have that aforementioned lack of maturity.

Seniors you can do more with and have fun with, but they also don't care as much and skip for large amounts of time.

English has a weird reputation as a class that is both hated and loved because it's either too easy or too frustrating. I always say it's easy to pass but hard to master

>> No.17013256

>>17013221
This picture makes it looks like she has one hairy pit

>> No.17013264

>>17013221
it's probably alright if you're not introverted and not a coomer who's thinking about fucking the students

>> No.17013274

>>17013249
also the one year where I got to design junior curriculum before we adopted Springboard, I taught:
>The Things They Carried
>The Crucible
>Short story unit on mid-period American writers i.e. Flannery O'Connor, Updike, Roth
>Synthesis Argument unit on a number of topics, from the wake of gun violence in schools to the homelessness issue to whether schools or jobs should be able to hire or fire people based on their social media posts
>Persuasive Speeches/Presentations on issues they felt strongly about
>Advertisement/rhetoric analysis

>> No.17013275
File: 40 KB, 546x254, Screen Shot 2020-12-08 at 6.32.06 PM.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17013275

Feeling pretty comfy being a literate zoomer if most people are going to be illiterate. Time to be a god among the illiterate sheep.

>> No.17013348

Even 10 years ago, everyone in class had a laptop for "taking notes" and by taking notes I mean scrolling through facebook. Never should have let those fucking things in the classroom.

>> No.17013362

>>17013166
>Think how many people you talk with, that will just pull their phone out to check their texts while you talk.
This has caused me to dress people down in real life. I can't be around people like that.

>> No.17013389

>>17013348
We have laptops for the situation we're in, and it saves on paper, but I've had students actively resist laptops. Kids in poverty don't really know how to use them because they can't afford them, so they resist it.

>> No.17013390
File: 60 KB, 476x687, 1599313915349.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17013390

>>17013249
>4 week final project where they have to make a cut-up of different texts we've read throughout the semester in small groups, with a unified theme, and then perform it
Jesus Christ I hated shit like this, I'm a social retard though so that's probably why

>> No.17013393

>>17013081
No, 13-15 year olds in rural Australia.
I actually negotiated with some kid that if he agreed to do 1 minute of work for every minute spent playing fucking video games I would never bother him about it. I told him he could use a could use a stopwatch and time it for all I care. He actually got more work done after agreeing to it.

Its not a wilful disobedience problem, they are just fundamentally unable to focus. The notion of thinking through a response and writing it down is confronting to them to the point that they need to be talked through the process. You ever watch one of those "Mandela effect" videos where someone gets genuinely upset that there isn't a hyphen in "kit kat" and you see their sense of self falter? Its like that. They can often do what they are being asked to, but arent capable of realising that without constant prompting. Kids like this would have been diagnosed with something 20 years ago, now half the classroom is like it, and the real problem is that since you have to spend half the lesson tard wrangling the handful of kids who don't need to be wrangled have to put up with it.

Kids are facing a lot of problems, like the "Ted Kazcinski was right" kind of problems. I just wanted to teach them poetry and to have more career ambition than I did.

>> No.17013432

>>17013389
I appreciate that there's no going back, digital is the future, but I hate that before kids would sneak texts under their desks and with the advent of cheap laptops, suddenly they were allowed what are functionally giant phones plopped right on their desk.

>> No.17013472

>>17013390
I get that. It usually pans out to where those kids do a chunk of the written portion and only a few lines of performance. The idea is it's supposed to be a mixture of the 4 main areas of state English Standards here: Reading, Writing, Research, and Speaking/Listening. The awkward kids usually do the first three, and those are the parts I grade most heavily.

>> No.17013727

>>17013275
Fuck no.
I never feel more isolated than when I realize my friends have no clue what I'm talking about, we have almost nothing in common. Most of the time I assume that I can't really express myself.

>> No.17013738

>>17011770
Just how desperate are you?

>> No.17014134

>>17011762
I teach English at a uni. (I'm ESL)

>> No.17014245

>>17013095
I'm planning to eventually become a teacher, if something like this happens, the class just devolves into talking and shouting, what's appropriate response? Are you supposed to yell louder to get them to shut up? I'm looking for genuine advice

>> No.17014250

>>17013249
I had the Springboard curriculum in freshman year too (we read TKAM and Romeo & Juliet), but with the addition of plenty of poetry because our teacher was a big fan. Pretty comfy class desu but a lot of my classmates hated the teacher because he had high expectations

>> No.17014348

>>17013062
Carry on anon. I don’t know who you are, but I appreciate you.

>> No.17014553

>>17013264
what is a good career choice for an introverted coomer?

>> No.17014571

>>17013062
articulate post. spot on

>> No.17014580

>>17014553
STEM
Probs something IT related
>t. IT student

>> No.17014589

>>17013062
Thank you for the effortpost, but,
>Cyclical poverty; many students don't connect how working hard in school can lead to being happier in life later. Their parents work miserable jobs. Telling kids 'you can get a good job' is essentially saying 'we can prep you for misery'. Contrary to popular belief, impoverished parents often want their kids to do better than they did, because they hate being in poverty.
has only been true in the past. That is to say, it's still true as a rule of thumb that education pays off, but we're way past the times when education GUARANTEED a respectable job.

>> No.17014623

>>17014589
Maybe not higher ed, but finishing high school at least is a huge step up compared to not finishing it at all and it does open lots of new career options

>> No.17014641

>>17014623
Is that so? In my country a college diploma is the new high school diploma. The inflation of the value of education is very much a real phenomenon.

>> No.17014650

>>17014641
I agree, and you're right that the value of education has been inflated. I think country might be a factor, but in the US at least the absolute minimum for most jobs is a high school diploma. McDonalds won't even hire you if you don't have a high school diploma

>> No.17014854

Currently finishing up my senior year in college with a history degree and I’m debating on getting an English teaching certificate. Anyone in here teach both? Which did you prefer?

>> No.17014857

>>17014580
>>17014553
what this guy said. Become internal IT support for a small company or become SYS admin for ultimate comfy

>> No.17014869 [DELETED] 

I think being a PE teacher would be good. More than anything else physical fitness is essential to everyone

>> No.17014905 [DELETED] 

>>17013393
If it’s anything like when I was at a rural school I bet 90% of your curriculum is political brainwashing with zero relevance to the kids there, no wonder they’re more interested in whatever the fuck they’re interested in now

>> No.17015265

>>17011803
How much of a looming threat is standardized testing in England? I worked at a charter school as a middle school ELA teacher in America and the admin made that place a living hell for everyone because they needed a massive uptick in test scores or the school would end up getting shut down. I almost got fired for abandoning an online lesson plan program that was supposed help kids prep for the test, but was non-functional in every aspect. As in we lost the first month of the school year in the computer lab just trying to get the kids logged in, and even when we did get it working the lesson content was practically non-existent. One of the 7th grade vocab words in the later chapters was "business."

I ended up getting reassigned to Theater Arts teacher for the second semester (I have zero theater background) because my principle knew that I wouldn't be able to finish my teaching certification if I lost my job halfway through the year. I have dozens of other war stories from that god forsaken school if ya'll wanna hear tales of heinous mismanagement.

>> No.17015277
File: 48 KB, 632x810, 1571086275770.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17015277

I was an English TA for a while. Generally agree with the broad sentiments of other posters. Most kids are only just barely literate. My perception of the job is somewhat warped though in that I would mostly interact with kids who were struggling but I would often be in top set classes too and they rarely were much better than the midsets (bottom sets are another story all together, Jesus Christ). What's interesting to me is that English is by far the most hated subject across the board. Maths is much preferred, which is insane to me since it was the exact opposite when I was at school. Kids can't work out why they have to study novels and poetry, it makes as much sense to them as studying the many varieties of postage stamps, and is as about as interesting. English Language study is a little better but that's mostly because its method has a more parsable goal in exams, namely "find this feature in this random excerpt here" which is easier to game than writing about a book you haven't read. Don't get me started on creative writing. Imaginatively bankrupt doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm not expecting 15 year olds to come up with great original flash fiction but to see how consistently they would come up with nothing never stopped being galling. They weren't even capable of plagiarizing shit that they'd seen possibly because they don't even watch fiction. Again, these were mostly kids who were struggling but there were more struggling than not.

Smart phones are indeed a plague among the kids but you should see the staff room during break to see how ubiquitous an infection it is across society. Most teachers I worked with are scarcely up to the task of teaching the kids. They don't read much more than the kids. "English teacher" is, by and large, synonymous with "I didn't know what to do with my life so I fudged it" which is as true for me as it for them. My brief career three year career in as many schools was just a stop gap that got out of hand. I don't want to paint myself as some pedagogical maverick, I was fucking shit at my job. The fact three schools hired me at all is an indictment in and of itself. I could handle retarded kids what I couldn't handle, being a big spaghetti dropping sperg, was bad behaviour which was pretty rampant.
It wasn't all bad. When you do have kids who are engaged it really is a lovely job. It just only happened for me a few times.

>> No.17015280

>>17015265
We wanna hear them all of course.

>> No.17015301

>>17015265
>How much of a looming threat is standardized testing in England?
Not him but it's no longer looming, it's here and has completely wrecked both the kids' ability to think and teachers' ability to teach. The whole process is a retardation zombie virus for both staff and student. Don't let anyone tell you that students are "better educated" nowadays, it means nothing.

>> No.17015312

>>17015277
I’ve heard from teachers I respect that the break room is nothing more than teachers talking shit about everything and it’s basically just full of negativity. My high school physics teacher said if you want to be happy as a teacher to make your own lesson plans and stay out of the teachers lounge. How true is that?

>> No.17015322

>>17011762
After graduating from STISD, my English teacher and I talked about life. He really enjoyed his job, had a great life, but wished for more. Even in a top school, you can only go so far in English classes. He wanted to teach philosophy, but the STEM Chad teachers kept winning more money. Hell, we even got a wind tunnel. I'm now an Aerospace Engineer, but that teacher helped me rediscover my love of literature and philosophy.

>> No.17015347

>>17015312
I have a friend who used to be an highschool teacher in France and she told me pretty much this. The break room as an arena for petty fight of egos and cliques over meaningless slights.

She managed to get appointed in a French highschool in Gabon, and the break room is much nicer. It's actually like a travel agency, teachers share stories about the nice places in Africa they've been to.

>> No.17015348

>>17015312
Very true. Teachers moaning about kids, usually with highly choice language, or teachers moaning about other teachers who they feel have slighted them in some way, usually by not pulling their weight or undermining them.

>> No.17015360
File: 110 KB, 1600x1067, anxious man.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17015360

>Me at 17 years old
>Favorite teachers all through high school have been English teachers
>My Senior English teacher (or Grade 12 for all you non Americunts) is huge influence on me
>Gets me back into reading and helps me realize my potential as a thinker
>Visit him several times after graduating
>13 years later
>Find out he just got fired
>Find out he might be going to prison
>Find out he was a hebephile
>Fucked at least 3 of his female students
>One of them was in my class
>mfw I idolized him
>mfw I didn't see it coming

Hope you guys had better English teachers

>> No.17015378

>>17012943
agreed if you look up any field you'll find so much shit about how terrible it is, life is grim

>> No.17015380

>>17011762
I've been a high school teacher for almost ten years. It's really not worth it for the most part. More often than not, you'll put in an insane amount of time and dedication and get jack shit in return. No one reads anymore. No one writes anymore. I'm pretty sure that for some kids the act of physically picking up a pencil and putting it against a piece of paper is akin to waterboarding.
But every once in a while, you get a student who gives a shit. A student who engages and is engaged with the text, who pushes the discussion further, who treats the texts as a fun riddle and an interesting tool to learn about ourselves. Most years I have one or two of them, in total. They are the ones who clearly enjoy reading, who stay after class to keep the discussion going and who ask for more things to read afterwards. They are the ones who somewhat make it worth it. At every end of the year, I like to give them books as Christmas gifts and to encourage them to pursue the passion for the letters, which keeps dying every day. It's cool.

>> No.17015393
File: 473 KB, 748x748, 1607820888853.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17015393

>>17015360
>Hebephilia
>Bad
Spooked

>> No.17015405

>>17015393
Reading Lolita is not a personality trait, anon.

>> No.17015409

>>17015405
But jerking off to it is

>> No.17015424

>>17015360
See the bright side of things anon, at least he didn't try to fuck you.

>> No.17015431

i taught in asia for two years and was high off my ass in every lesson, i was a brutally strict teacher in regards to the students, but quite laissez-faire when it came to lesson planning.

>> No.17015437

>>17015424
True. I should've seen it coming when he had us do a deep dive into Peter Pan for our big class project 2nd semester.

>> No.17015439

Did anyone major in Classics? How is life for you?

>> No.17015448

>>17015393
As someone studying to be a teacher, i can't imagine a worse job for someone attactred to children. Why would you surround yourself with them and make every day a crushing game of "look but don't touch"? That sounds like an awful existence to subject yourself to.

I remember getting frustrated in one of my ethics related assessments about it. Yeah, no shit, don't touch the kids. It makes me aggravated that people feel the need to tell me that. It using specifically male language when doing so only irritated me more. The reverse was the problem where I went to school, but anyone who does that knows that they arent supposed to, they do it anyway.

But im also incapable of being attracted to anyone that pisses me off, so that would rule out teenagers anyway. Seems like such an alien problem for me. Kids are so god damn annoying I can't fathom being attracted to them.

>> No.17015460

>>17015437
Ngl anon, I've taught classes in uni in the past years, and I understand the allure of fucking some of your most attractive students (but then again mine were 20-21 and I was 28, not quite the same thing as your prof). But I wouldn't act on that.

I'm surprised he went so long before being noticed.

>> No.17015461

>>17015360
based teacher

>> No.17015466

>>17015448
Some people don't discover they're attracted to teens until their 30s.

>> No.17015477

>>17013727
This is the worst . All my friends exclusively play video games as their only hobby. Hard to talk to them about anything when the only things they read are patch notes.

>> No.17015484

>>17012798
>anime
manga is better anon

>> No.17015547

>>17011776
I was thinking this earlier even though its pathetic. I'm glad somebody else is also

>> No.17015566

>>17015460
There were rumors for years, but he was such a beloved teacher that it was never investigation. Personally, other than the possibility for special treatment, I don't see the problem with university profs fucking students, especially if they're no longer in your class. It's definitely scummy in high school, though. Teenage girls are retarded.

>> No.17015574

>>17015566
investigated*

>> No.17015580

>>17015566
If they are not too young and not in the school anymore (because dropped, changed schools or graduated) then it's mostly fine.

>Teenage girls are retarded.
As Brassens said, in love we don't ask for women who invented gunpowder. Even more true in sex.

>> No.17015754

>>17015280
I'll post one of the shorter ones cause I'm hungry and wanna go make dinner soon.
>Charter school is owned by a company that runs a couple other schools in central Texas
>Most of them are in the middle of bum fuck nowhere, but our school is the only in the actual suburbs
>Next nearest campus in the next town over, at a bare minimum it's just under 45 minutes away
>Despite being the main meeting site for district meetings, this campus somehow opened with only about 50% of the teaching staff needed to meet the curriculum requirements
>Their solution is to bus all their middle and high school students to us in the morning, meaning I have extra students showing up to my class about 2/3rds of the way through first period
>They leave around lunch time, driving all the way back to their home campus for afternoon classes
>All together they loose roughly an entire class period a day just commuting between campuses on a single bus
>I met my ELA counterpart from the other campus once at a district meeting, then was met with complete radio silence when I tried following up about what her students were doing in their classes
>The reason I was given was that she was on maternity leave, but I think I was effectively they only MS ELA teacher for those two schools for several months
>The cherry on top was almost all the kids they were sending over had various learning disabilities or had just fallen behind in all their subjects from attending these joke schools for most of their lives.
>This is to be expected since all of my regular students had almost all had the same issues, so it was like throwing a grease fire on another grease fire

>> No.17016156

Sorry, I went to bed. Answering questions:

>>17013738
Desperate for what?

>>17014245
Er, whatever works, to be honest. Schools have a discipline plan in place that you're expected to follow to a reasonable degree, but that isn't always reliable.

>>17014348
>>17014571
Thanks

>>17014589
You're kidding right? No, it doesn't guarantee you a good job, but what you can guarantee is that paper standards for job entry have dramatically risen and continue to rise. They expect proof that you are capable, and some jobs are expecting proof beyond the means of the applicants and payscale they're hiring for; it is now, more than ever, important to have qualifications and experience.

>>17015265
We used to have coursework components, but because of Michael Gove, that has now all gone, and instead we rely on assessment tasks and tests. I don't know which is more work for teachers, I wasn't a teacher whilst coursework was still a thing, but I can believe that coursework more accurately represents the working world at large than exams on paper based topics.

>>17015380
You've been in this longer than I have, what did you think of my summations in >>17013062?

>> No.17016173

>>17015754
Have to admit I didn't expect this level of tomfoolery, and I've been schooled in France, the paradise of kafka-inducing unnecessary top-down regulations.

>> No.17016230

>>17016156
They are pretty good, Tobe honest. I teach at a private school and besides all that, I have to deal with entitled little shots who think they can buy their way in life. I hear every year something like "let me be, I play your salary". At first, this thing fucking startled me, but know I am able to either ignore or be a dick to them without losing my authority ("and if you can't pass on your English class, I'll pay your salary next time I have some KFC).
Honestly, the phones are the worst thing. Some kids don't even use them in class, but they just have to hold them, keep them around, know that the phone is there. One year I had a policy of all phones, including my own, would be left on my desk until the end of the class. These kids would get anxious. They'd bite their nails, twitch their legs, look around, fiddle. They seriously cannot sit still and pay attention to one thing at a time for more than 10 minutes. It's absolutely mental.

>> No.17016262

>>17016230
Damn son. I dunno what I'd say if a kid said that to me. Probably something along the lines of "Well, to ensure you get value for your money, you can spend tonight in detention with me. Wouldn't want you missing out, would we?"

They're uncomfortable because you've removed their social gratification boxes. They don't even know why they're uncomfortable, just that it's caused by the absence of their phones. Phones have become akin to therapy animals for autistic children. They provide social comfort and reward when none is available to them in the corporeal world at that instant.

As said I'm young enough that I saw this change. It's depressing to say the least. We were far from angels, and we had ways to distract from work - shit people used to text in class from time to time and that did get worse with blackberry phones... but nothing like this.

>> No.17016279

>>17015754
>>17016173
Almost everyone at every level was criminally incompetent
>None of the computer lab PCs or Chromebooks have a web blocker for the first couple of months
>Entire district has a single IT guy that has to go between four schools
>Tell him we need a web blocker because the students are alt tabbing onto flash game sites whenever I'm not standing directly next to them and throwing LAN parties in some shitty flash based Fortnite clone
>He says he's working on it
>One day one of the sites that my older students need to access online text books and assignments is blocked, but the game sites aren't
>This flip flops super hard over the next couple of months, with sites getting blocked and unblocked seemingly at random
>Word spreads among the students quicker than any of the staff can keep up with
>Came to a head when for some reason our superintendent decided to crack down on a typing based racing game I would let students play if they finished their work early because it was actually remotely educational and would distract them from playing shitty flash shooters
>The next week that racing game was basically the only site that was blocked
>students eventually figured out how to download VPNs so they could waste time "looking for study music" on YouTube or just blast earrape
>Eventually the web blocker just stopped working entirely for the last three or so months of the school year
>My 6th graders came into the computer lab one day to find the background changed to a low res image of a cat licking a woman's pussy
>Even when the blocker was active their was nothing stopping students from messing with the PC's settings or backgrounds so they'd constantly replace them with MS paint doodles and Zoomer memes or download virtual mouses to speed run cookie clicker

>> No.17016310

>tfw I read 3 books each day but still am inarticulate due to lack of irl communication

>> No.17016315

>>17016310
Go communicate IRL. Quit being autistic

>> No.17016321
File: 2.13 MB, 300x300, woah....gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17016321

>>17016310
>Can write decently well, always get A+ on essays
>Every time I talk to people it eventually devolves into a stumbling jumble of word salad

>> No.17016324

>>17016310
Reading does not make you a better writer or speaker. Up to a point, they share a field, but they diverge from one another to require unique skills. I know bookfags want to pretend reading makes you better at everything, but it doesn't, it makes you better at some things. The way you get better at writing is through the practice of skills that make a writer good (one I personally advocate is to build a 'voice' for each character, including the narrator, such that you can distinctly imagine how they would articulate).

>> No.17016325

>>17016315
>go take a long run, don't be a cripple

>> No.17016419

Reading through these stories, and I've never been more sure that education is a scam. Same for everything I suppose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeF_o1Ss1NQ

>> No.17016470

>>17016279
This is bringing back some serious middle school memories. In fact I discovered flash games during my IT class (don't know how to call it in English) in junior middle school.

>> No.17016500

>>17015360
I bet she saw it coming though.

>> No.17016522

>>17014650
This is categorically false.

>> No.17016530

>>17016262
I am in my mid thirties and was a very very late adopter of smartphones, so it's something that is still quite puzzling to me.
Do you ever think about switching careers?

>> No.17016531

One of two things must be true in this thread. Either you guys are some combo of retarded/jaded/hypocritical/cynical/pessimistic teachers in the wrong profession, or I am just lucky.

My public school district is 97 percent white, and the neighborhood is all $1.5-$2 million dollar homes. My kids read independently. They’re nice kids. Some are dumb or ADD or lazy but in middle school they’re smart enough to be self aware about it. I graded their papers hard and they accepted it. I went behind the team head to offer extra credit and one of my classes actually cheered. We have top of the line iPads and I just got a dell ultra wide for productivity, all free from the school. I teach online and in person at the same time because of covid and it is hard but what are you gonna do. It is public service. It is a balm for psychosis. Most of my kids are awesome and the parents are TOO supportive. Got an email from a parent asking how a student can improve a 79 grade they had for an assignment. Dude, it’s 7th grade.

>muh phones
Walk around the room and have consequences dipshit.

>> No.17016546

>>17016531
>My public school district is 97 percent white, and the neighborhood is all $1.5-$2 million dollar homes.
> or I am just lucky.
hmmmmm

>> No.17016582

>>17013727
>>17015477
I feel this too. They just spend their spare time playing shit like League of Legends mostly. They do watch a bit of anime and read a bit of manga, but even then it's something I can't often talk to them about on a critical level.

>> No.17016586

>>17015360
God bless him

>> No.17016588

>>17016531
>my public school district is 97% white
This has to be bait

>> No.17016607

>>17016588
Not my district but look up highland park district in Dallas.

>> No.17016626

>>17011803
all white?

>> No.17016636

>>17015409
based

>> No.17016639

What do you think of this?
http://deliberatedumbingdown.com/ddd/

>> No.17016672

The truth is it’s probably both. I’m both fortunate and you guys are elitist retards that don’t realize even pre-phones, most students were reading hardy boys and hank the cow dog and babysitters club and other garbage.

>> No.17016694

>>17013081
You did write one shitty sentence with terrible grammar.

I'm pretty sure you're the exact person being discussed by all these demoralized folks and no one thinks of themselves as the brainless drone, but they usually are.

>> No.17016701

>>17016639
The website looks like shit

>> No.17016710

>tfw going to teach english to kids in asia next year

>> No.17016717

>>17016710
I was thinking about doing this desu. Which country anon?

>> No.17016729

>>17016694
Oh fuck off, faggot. I didn’t ask for this globohomo hellscape. Had I known the consequences I wouldn’t have spent the majority of my youth on the computer. And besides, the real question is why didn’t any of you oldfags do anything about it. Is it because you were all degenerates who opted to do cocaine and listen to John Lennon while acting like you gave a shit? You don’t care about our generation. You’re just a bitter oldfag who achieved nothing in life. Do us all a favor and eat a bullet.

>> No.17016740

>>17011762
I was a photography/videography teacher for wealthy kids for one year. The most /lit/ thing I asked them to do was writing scripts.

Had kids from 6th to 11th grade. Kids were incredibly spoiled, some were legitimately dumb. Others were pretty bright. It was an incredible amount of work because by being an "elite" school, they have to keep a bunch of certifications and for that they must comply with a bunch of reports, formats and what not.

I'd like teaching if it was for more mature people and teaching someone who actually wants to learn is pretty nice. I did try designing my own photography course but it was extremely hard to get people on board. The one I taught was pretty successful I guess. Each session had a small aesthetic theory reading that connected with the subject being handled and we would discuss it as a group.

Bottom line is: Fuck school, go for college.

>> No.17016753
File: 922 KB, 400x225, 1442882978010.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17016753

>>17016729
You're also too emotionally stunned to take some banter, lol. You're actually the retard we're all talking about. Shitstain who will never break from being a depressed loser while beliving himself to be a genious.

Plus I'm 31, never heard a John Lenon song in my entire life.

>> No.17016782

>>17016753
>b-but I just joking
I'm sure you were, faggot. Keep seething over people younger than you. Maybe then you'll become so depressed with your own impotence and inadequacies that you'll finally pull the trigger and rid yourself from this planet.

>> No.17016851

>>17016717
Korea or Japan. Probably Korea.

>> No.17016894

>>17015360
>hebephile
He sounds based

>> No.17016902

>>17011762
I'm an English teacher in Chinarr. AMA.

>> No.17016952

>>17012956
>kids struggling to understand the premise of An Inspector Calls
That's dire, I don't think it could be clearer with its message

>> No.17016955

>>17016902
is it common for students to copy each other's work? like the whole class writing the same story for some creative class for example

>> No.17016959

>>17016279
>>My 6th graders came into the computer lab one day to find the background changed to a low res image of a cat licking a woman's pussy
kek'd

>> No.17016995

>>17016955
I establish right away that they're not allowed to copy each other's work and can only work jointly when I say so.

>> No.17017006

>>17016530
I don't know what I'd switch to, in all honesty.

>>17016626
Mostly.

>>17016952
They have no capacity for inference. They can't read between the lines in any way. You'll have kids that won't open the book, then complain they 'don't get it'. They can't conceive that Animal Farm isn't a book about animals on a farm.

>>17016902
I turned down a job in China. Political situation got too hot. Bojo keeps poking Huawei, and I don't fancy a stint in a gulag as a retaliatory prisoner.

>> No.17017058

>>17016279

>blasting earrape

Yours too? The little shits think this is hilarious.

>> No.17017067

>>17015360
You should be idolizing him even more desu. How did he get caught?

>> No.17017127

>>17012362
Did a Master of Teaching focusing on Science and Mathematics (in Australia).

I had THREE courses on educating 'Aboriginal and Indigenous Australians' and ZERO where science or mathematics was the focus.

The state of education is a joke. Infected by the politics of women, sadly.

>> No.17017199

>>17017127
>The state of education is a joke. Infected by the politics of women, sadly.
The problem with women in education is that it reinforces an internal POV where they're the most important person in the room at any given time. When that is challenged, they melt down into fits of rage and vitriol. Educating is negative to a woman, because it upsets their ego; they become imbalanced and violent.

>> No.17017226

>>17017006
Better safe than sorry, I guess. I (a Leaf) was over here during the Canada-Meng Wanzhou debacle and things were fine.

>> No.17017232

>>17017127
>>17017199
>The state of education is a joke. Infected by the politics of women, sadly
This is why one if the most based and noble things we can do is become teachers and gradually redpill the youth.

>> No.17017239

>>17014553
For someone with an English degree? Maybe proofreading/editing. Perhaps journalism but I heard it's over-saturated. Also marketing.

>> No.17017247

>>17017226
Yeah they took two people hostage in response to the Meng Wanzhou thing. Apparently shit got really xenophobic too.

>>17017232
I know one who's been in education for 30 years and is working on per PhD. She's a fucking moron and a sociopath of the most dangerous calibre, which seems to be part and parcel for being a woman in teaching for a life time.

>> No.17017434

>>17016279
>download virtual mouses to speed run cookie clicker
patrician taste
or 'based & redpilled' as they say nowadays

>> No.17017504

>>17015360
just separate the person from the persona lol

>> No.17017581

>>17017247
>Yeah they took two people hostage
They were both Canadians too. 99% of Chinese people don't give a fuck about political memes- they're just excited to see a big fat 6'3 white guy lumbering about. They couldn't even tell where you're from, and you could always lie about your nationality if they asked.
>>17017247
My longterm plan is to return to Canada and teach in Canadian high schools. I had two or three really great male teachers in high school who really made my experience so much better. I want to be able to assist the young disillusioned guys who might otherwise end up in the gutter. Teachers have a horrible reputation (justifiably), but all it takes is a few good male teachers to make things better.

>> No.17017742

>>17017232
>gets fired almost immediately

>> No.17017755

>>17017742
Maybe don't pull out the JQ on day one.

>> No.17017758

Jesus christ, threads like these make me realize just how lucky I am. Currently a Senior at a semi-decent Catholic School, and I haven't seen any of the problems described ITT. Everyone's relatively attentive, people aren't enslaved by their phones, etc. Shudders to make me think what would have happened if I hadn't been lucky enough to get in.