Middle School Teacher Shares The 4 Things Parents Could Actually Do To Avoid The Problems She’s Seeing In The Classroom
Her suggestions are surprisingly simple, but the fact they need to be pointed out is telling.
noowans / Shutterstock Everywhere you turn nowadays, people are wondering what is going on with kids in school, including many frustrated parents.
One middle school teacher recently shared suggestions based on the issues she repeatedly encountered in class. And while they're all pretty simple, the need to point them out is telling.
The teacher shared 4 things parents can do to avoid classroom problems.
All over the country, schools are having major discipline problems with students and it's far beyond the usual "few bad apples" that have always been a problem.
Schools are seeing widespread issues, and it's one of the most frequently cited reasons for the unprecedented rate of teacher resignations we've seen in recent years.
Understandably, many parents are equally at their wit's end. Middle school teacher Rebecca Volk said in a TikTok video that she hears from these parents all the time.
"I have seen so many parents and guardians on this app asking the question, 'Hey, we know something's going on in schools. We know our kids are not acting the way that you all want them to. What is going on and how can we help?'"
She admitted that she usually shied away from the question for fear of sounding like she was shaming moms and dads for their parenting.
But, she said, "The truth is, I'm with middle schoolers day in and day out. I am seeing what they're doing. I am talking to them, hearing their experiences. And I do have some insight on this."
So, she shared four things parents can do to avoid classroom problems. "I think if parents and guardians would do this," she said, "it may really help."
1. Explain that their actions have consequences and actually follow through.
To illustrate this, Volk explained how she managed classroom noise by issuing two noise warnings, followed by a consequence. "When it starts getting way too loud," she said, "I will say, 'Guys, here's your first warning. We talked about this.'"
Inevitably, it only worked temporarily, so she issued a second warning that whatever activity they were doing would cease if she had to warn them again. Crucially, when they did blow past the second warning, she stuck to her guns and it shocked them every time.
"When they get too loud and I tell them, 'Pack it up, we are stopping this activity,'" she said her kids are astonished to actually be facing consequences. "'What do you mean? But that's not fair,'" she said, imitating her students. "It literally is fair," she countered. After all, she warned them twice.
Of course, middle schoolers are always going to balk at rules being enforced, but the level of shock she sees when she lays down the law indicates that some of her students aren't facing follow-through at home with their parents.
Boundaries are an all-important part of parenting, according to therapists, so it's worth giving this some thought if you think your child might be like these students.
2. Encourage face-to-face communication with no technology or screens.
"Not every family can do this," the teacher acknowledged. "There are different situations where you have parents and guardians that are working three jobs."
Sometimes iPad time just had to suffice, and the teacher stressed that she was "not here to judge" how parents managed the often extraordinary demands on their time.
However, "the truth is, kids are struggling with this face-to-face conversation," she went on to say. "I am not anti-technology. I think it can be a powerful tool. I think it can even be used to bond," she said. "But they also need this face-to-face interaction."
Therapists and parenting experts agree that real-life, human contact without any screens in the way is vital to kids reaching all kinds of developmental milestones. So making sure to make space for this with your kids when and where you can is a great idea.
3. Teach your kids about kindness and empathy.
"For some kids, sure, this comes to them naturally," the teacher said. "For most kids, this is a skill that actually needs to be taught and modeled."
As examples, she cited teaching kids how to speak kindly to others, teaching them about disabilities and how they manifest, that people have different interests that are worthy of respect, and that commenting on people's bodies and weight is inappropriate.
"These are things that they don't know," she said, before going on to address a common complaint from parents. "You may be thinking, 'Well, you're the teacher, why aren't you teaching all these things?'"
She said that while most teachers were "trying," there was only so much they could do in class and only so much time and space for teaching things other than what was in kids' curriculum and textbooks. "We need help," she said bluntly.
4. Talk to your kids about internet literacy and safety.
"It is concerning what we overhear sometimes," she said, adding that what she saw among kids on social media apps was equally alarming. She theorized this came from many parents' assumptions that schools were teaching these skills while they were teaching kids how to do internet research.
But similarly to the kindness and empathy issue, teachers only have so much time and space here too. "I think if maybe we all pitch in a little bit, we're going to get there," she said.
She stressed, however, that internet safety was a very real concern for kids of all ages that many parents might not realize was such a big problem. "You wouldn't believe the things that they talk about, the things that they know purely because of the Internet, the way that they treat each other, the things that they say on the Internet — and that all bleeds over into school," she said.
She also pointed out how these four things also had a direct impact on actual learning and test scores. "People want to say all the time, well, math scores aren't as good and reading scores aren't as good," she said, "but the truth is, a lot of our content we are struggling to get to because of these issues."
At the end of the day, she said the situation boiled down to the old saying we've all heard a million times. "You know the phrase 'it takes a village'?" she asked. "It does… These kids are struggling, and as adults, we need to ask ourselves, 'What can we do to help?'"
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.