Teacher Admits Her Students' Bad Behavior Made Her Cry — 'They Make It Near Impossible'
"It's hard to 'pick your battles' when every one feels unwinnable."
VCoscaron / Shutterstock Teachers seem to be at the end of their ropes right now. Bad behavior from iPad kids and the effects of the pandemic are catching up to them in the classroom. They have to become more innovative than ever to get through to students.
For one teacher, it all became too much.
One teacher said she has cried because of her students’ behavior.
A middle school teacher took to Reddit and shared her horrible experience with her students. She admitted that she never had so much trouble with her job before.
“They won’t keep their hands to themselves — they are always touching or hitting each other, or taking other people’s things because they think it’s funny,” the teacher explained. “They throw all variety of things across the room, squirt each other with water from their water bottles, steal candy from my desk, break supplies, the list goes on.”
The teacher pointed out that phones are particularly problematic in the classroom, and said, “I don’t even know if ‘addiction’ is strong enough a word to describe it.”
In addition to her students’ poor, immature behavior, the teacher also said that they are downright rude.
“I try to build relationships and be genuine, but it’s hard when they are just mean,” she said.
She shared one especially awful experience when the students made fun of her directly.
“I tend to trip over words when I get stressed out, and sometimes it comes out sounding like a stutter,” she said. “So one day, as I am trying to defuse a situation between a handful of students, two others decide to get a laugh by fake-stuttering — then they have the audacity to deny it when I called them on it.”
In addition to causing behavior issues in the classroom, the students also cause a distraction. The teacher spoke of “the effect the constant behavior issues [have] on anybody actually trying to learn something.”
She said that students are struggling in her relatively easy class. “And any time I want to help a student who is trying, I am usually interrupted more than once by having to deal with a behavior issue,” she stated. “It’s amazing how anyone can focus on learning at all.”
The teacher ended her post by saying she has not become jaded by her experiences. She just wants things to improve.
“I love teaching and I can’t picture myself doing anything else,” she said. “I’ve got to believe that things will improve, if not this year then next, or maybe even a few years from now when my students are too young to have been affected as much by the pandemic.”
But, the teacher’s love for her job doesn’t change the fact that she feels terrible and has no idea how to move forward. “It’s just exhausting and so, so depressing when I feel like such a failure no matter what I try,” she said.
Even parents admit that students are particularly badly behaved right now.
Reporting on a survey performed by Character.org, Education Week stated, “A majority of parents said that, in general, children today don’t treat others with respect, are dishonest, don’t show gratitude, and are lazy.”
Indeed, one of the survey respondents said, “I have seen the videos my children come across, and I’m shocked at how kids are treating each other and adults.”
In a time when life is becoming increasingly difficult for everyone, children are not immune. The problems they face must be addressed so that they can get back on the right track. Ignoring the problem will only make it worse.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.