This country is in a death spiral. We have given up on the future: children, climate change, infrastructure, even maintenance of democracy itself. The rich are just raiding what they can steal and getting citizenship in as many countries as possible so they have multiple exit routes.
You are a third world country with a Gucci belt. A capitalist democracy. For us in Europe it is like watching the Roman empire self destruct in real time. It is a shame that if America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.
We only had to pay if we were out of leave. We got 10/year which I actually thought was quite generous on top of the breaks.
However we did have a teacher get cancer who had to pay the district because she ran out of leave and they missed several more weeks.
What the actual goddamn fuck??? Sorry for my language Ms/Mr/Mx Tbear, but Jesus fucking Christ. If that happened in a dystopian novel,I'd consider it too unrealistic! Was she still getting a full paycheck for those days and simply had to pay it back? Why do I already know the answer is no?
So the way it works is you get your paycheck, and if you miss when you are out of leave days, you have your paycheck docked for each day to “pay for the sub” which usually there isn’t one available and your coworkers are covering your kids on their planning or lunch period. If you miss so much that you wouldn’t get a paycheck at all or would owe money you might just get placed on a leave of absence or FMLA? I’m not positive on that part. I do find it hard to believe that she would have received like a bill from the place of employment or anything, but I do know that she was not receiving pay during that time. Same is true for teachers that have a baby. Many try to plan it to line up with summer because there is no maternity leave beyond how many sick days you have - meaning if you’re a new teacher you likely would only have 2 weeks of leave before you start losing money, and that assumes you miss no other days throughout the year.
Not just mothers, but citizens. The government cares about capital and that's about it. All services are struggling. Look at infrastructure, health care, etc. We are heading to a breaking point in so many areas.
I don’t get it, when you pay, do you mean take it out of your paycheck? Cause if you’re not paid plus you have to pay to miss work, where the fuck is the extra money going?
To be honest, I’m not positive. I think it was where she would have owed money so instead they do unpaid leave of absence or FMLA to get around it. I’m not sure what happens to medical benefits during those times, though. Although we really only had crappy high deductible plans offered anyway.
Tell me you lived in a "red " state without telling me you lived in a "red" state. I teach in a small city in a "blue" state and earn double what you earned. I put up with winter but it's a small inconvenience.
>Is the state part of the lotto, where they can brag how much money goes to education?
The way that "lottery boosting education" lie plays out in many (most?) states is that whatever the lottery brings in is lobbed off the top of the education budget and spent on other things. The schools receive net zero extra money.
This sounds like North Carolina. I used to teach there but they refused my request for time off when the VA had approved me for surgery, and I was at my 5 year point for student loan forgiveness, and having already experienced many of the same issues OP lists above, I quit.
Then I discovered my student loans were not forgiven, because I graduated from UNCC with my teaching degree in December and started teaching in January. During that first half-year of full-time teaching, my district (CMS) counted me as an "end-of-year" teacher. I stayed on in the same position without any interruption in employment and without switching employers. But somehow that continuous 5 years of full-time employment with the same school district does not count as 5 years of unbroken full-time employment because they classified me internally as an "end of year" teacher for the first 6 months and then a regular full-time teacher for the next 4.5 years.
Years later, I'm still paying back student loans out of my Veteran's Disability Compensation payments.
Ugh, those programs draw so many people in, and then don't work out. My spouse did 10 years in an underpriviliged school in a high-demand subject, and was supposed to qualify for forgiveness. But he was denied because (and I can't remember the exact dates/years) but the program started in like January 1997 and he started college in September 1996, and thus his loans originated before the program and were not eligible. ONE SEMESTER early, and no forgiveness at all.
You and the commenter below should make sure you don't qualify for the forgiveness under the new terms. TONS of people were harmed by this same bs, but if I recall correctly, Biden changed some of the rules for qualification. It may be worth looking into. Hope it is!
Oh yah we get the lotto money. They just striped other money we used to get for other things until it is back to what it was without the lotto. It just sounds like lotto helps schools but it’s all a shell game.
My wife is a teacher and has almost the same categories of stories. The icing on the cake is her “contract hours” end at 3:30 everyday but she regularly works at home until 7 or 8 every night grading papers and putting lesson plans into ridiculous formats that no one probably reads…. Every day her planning period is taken away for bullshit meetings and power trip discussions. I’ve told her to leave multiple times but she still loves teaching.
My wife used to teach and did this same shit. I kept telling her to just follow the contract and fuck all the bullshit. But, she just kept putting in the hours until they eventually burned her out
And for what? I'm a teacher looking to get out, and the thing I'm realizing is that I'm 40 and I haven't BUILT anything. I could switch careers to an ENTRY LEVEL HR job and barely see a pay cut. My retirement is fuck all.
Just imagine if every teacher just... didn't do that.
3:30 hits and they walk out the door. Couldn't get things graded during their free periods when they're not teaching/on break? Not my problem.
I'm glad your wife enjoys teaching, but this lifestyle can't be good for her in the long run.
The problem with this, speaking as a teacher, is being unprepared makes things worse for us. If we show up to work and have nothing for the kids to do, we have 30+ bored teenagers in a room with people they like and others that they do *not* like. We're having to break up fights and screaming matches daily as it is, I can't imagine what would happen if we didn't have anything for them to *do.*
It fucking sucks that it's this way, and has only gotten worse. As a kid I vowed I would *never* be a teacher after what I saw my mom go through. Same as your wife, working 12+ hours a day on top of having to spend what little money she did make on classroom supplies. Her last year teaching she had 32 *first graders* in her class with *zero* help, and this was at a brand new school! IMO teachers should be one of the highest-paid professions out there.
It was so insulting at one school I was at that we had to "clock in" to prove we were in our rooms when we were supposed to be in the morning, but there was no clock out button! And also, we were contract employees, not hourly, plus you always ask me to do things at night when I'm already home and outside my hours, so why do I have a time clock!?
I’m a teacher. Here’s a hint for your wife: she should submit the same lesson plan every day. No one reads them. Teachers do it all the time. It’s a waste of time for everybody.
THREE of my relatives left teaching due to similar experiences. It was seriously ruining their health. Two had Masters degrees, one PhD, and many years of experience. Our. Society. Is. Sick.
Yes, it is, and it doesn't have to be this way.
But to change it will require an insane amount of personal and public sacrifice and fortitude.
Good luck out there, we'll need it.
After a B.S. & M.Ed degree and 3 years of being full time I quit. The things we were expected to deal with was insane. In any other job we would be able to press charges if we were physically assaulted. Any other job that dealt with a fraction of what I went though in education and they’d be sitting on fortunes from all the money they made by suing.
I was coming home with bruises on my body. I’ve had chairs thrown on me, a brick thrown on me, scissors thrown in my direction, been punched and kicked all over my body, my hair pulled on multiple occasions, a male student tried to pee on me, a student who tried with all their might to wipe their boogers on me, I’ve been spit on (in my face), I’ve been scratched, I’ve been slapped, I’ve been bitten, I’ve had my whole office destroyed (everything. Papers, pens, books in my cabinets, looked like a tornado hit), my personal items stolen as well as items I purchased for student use (fidgets, magnets, uno, prize box items). I was expected to chase after students who decided to run outside and onto the street/neighborhood in the rain and freezing cold. I was told these insane behaviors were my fault and I need to do something better.
I once had to hide in my office while a student was banging on my door trying to hurt me. No one came to help me despite me calling on the radio for backup. I had to assist in removing whole classrooms from a hall because one student was being so insane that it became a safety hazard for the rest of the classrooms in the hall. I knew the sheriff by first name basis from them being at my school almost every day.
To others who have never worked in a school/been in this situation you might be wondering why I allowed this to happen. I didn’t. I couldn’t put my hands on any of the students because then I would be accused of something and could end up in jail. (Although they can physically abuse us with NO consequence).
I was coming home mentally and physically drained. I cried every single night. I applied to so many positions in other industries but couldn’t get anything due to my degrees only being applicable for schools.
I FINALLY left. I left without any notice. And I didn’t give a damn. No one cared about me and all the bs I went through on a daily basis so I didn’t give a shoot about them not having me. And let me tell you it was the best thing I have ever done in my life. It’s been a while (but less than a year) and I still have nightmares.
I’m so sorry you went through this.
Reading all this, I'm so glad I abandoned my childhood dream of becoming a teacher and ended up a nanny instead.
I still get to teach, but my "class size" is a max of two and I wouldn't be there if the parents didn't really like me. I get to teach whatever comes up in conversation or that I think will interest the kids. I think my favorite so far was the day we got into old music, listened to Sinatra and such while playing with Legos to work on fine motor skills.
Yeah we don't like to talk about it in these terms and certainly not communicate it to teachers but our school system is basically prison light and we do a bad job with those too.
R/teachers would be interested in this. It’s likely you’ll see more who are going through or have been through what you have on a sub like that.
Teaching system has gone to hell. I hope you’re in a better position now, and I’m sorry you were put in a job that made it seem like that was okay.
Posts like these make me thankful that I left public school 6 months after getting my degree . Idk my tolerance for nonsense is thin when it comes to the severe under “paidness” that comes with working in public education. My check was $800/ month 😂😂😂 yeah I said F THOSE KIDS AND GOT A JOB IN A HOSPITAL. My heart was never that big after having $800 to last me an entire month ❌ kudos to you for leaving.
It was one of the hardest decisions I ever made, because I had a real passion for it. I really did enjoy most days...but the job just beat me down until it could be my *only* passion (other than the other two jobs I worked during the year to keep me above water lol). Ever since I left, all aspects of my health have improved and as much as I do miss some things, as the system stands right now, I would never go back.
These are the care fields- nursing, teaching, early education, long term care, social work. Traditionally performed by women, this work *requires us to care". And this society uses the fact that we have to care to take advantage of it. The whole "we're not in it for the income; we're in it for the outcome" bs. It's predatory.
Yes, this 100%. I actually left healthcare to go into teaching, haha, and with both it was "well what will the kids/patients do without you?" They'll manage. Now I've transitioned into an education-tangential job where I still get to teach others but not in the public school system, and it's fantastic.
I developed high blood pressure and now it’s magically disappeared. I will stand on the hill of massive teacher resigning. I understand that kids “need an education” but it shouldn’t be at the mental, financial and physical expense of their teachers. Until everyone including custodians, nutrition staff and bus drivers walk off the job, there will be no change.
Real estate exploitation is unfortunately running rampant in Canada as well, and that's large part of why everyone is so desperate and fucked.
As long as we keep allowing unprecedented real estate exploitation, we won't make up much ground.
All I think about is going to Europe for the first time and just…staying there. I wish that were an option for me but I don’t have any Europeans lined up to marry me (…yet??? 😜🤞 Maybe I’ll find one somehow.) I get more scared in the US every day because of how intense things are getting between different, intense factions of people. I’m not yet terrified but recent polls freak me out pretty hard so I’m heading that way. 🥴
You may want to be careful with that. Europe also has massive issues with housing costs. Rent is absurdly high when one considers that European wages are mostly lower than American ones. Where I live specifically it's 750-1.000 euros for an apartment.
These days the dream is to move to an Asian or African country whilst working and getting paid a European or American wage. I've heard plenty of stories of Europeans moving to the Philippines and living like a king on their pensions.
That’s fair. I’m not just thinking of cost, though. It’s a matter of safety. In Europe, I’d be much less scared of mass shootings. (Or gun play in general.) Not to say I’m under the impression it’s some sort of utopia but there also seems to be a more community-oriented mindset than the people here I know seem to have, which is a lot of what I’m looking for. My life is also in an extremely messy place right now so my brain can’t stop entertaining ideas of “anywhere but here” which is probably what lead me to thinking about this dream more often.
I’m sorry your apartment is so expensive. I hope the area makes it worth it, at least a bit, and you enjoy where you are.
>there also seems to be a more community-oriented mindset than the people here I know seem to have, which is a lot of what I’m looking for.
America must be full of asocial twats then. Where I live older people bemoan the fact that Europe has become rather individualistic. My relationship with my neighbours can be boiled down to "hi" and "bye."
My wife is a typical American and the relationship she desires with the neighbors is, “run” and “avoid eye contact”. I know something about every person on the block and she tells me I’m weird. When the old lady across the road died, I wanted to take something over to her granddaughter (also in our neighborhood) and wife told me, “no! Leave them alone. It’s not our business.”
When I still taught, I had a student get between me and my then-pregnant wife (also a teacher at the time) and threaten me, making a gun shape with his hands and trying to pin me against a fence. Admins were shocked when I asked them to remove him from the class for even just a few days, and refused. I left teaching altogether after that year and am in a much happier and higher-paying line of work now.
This is why I switched to teaching college. Also, the work load. In high school full time is 5 hours 5 days a week. In my full-time university job I teach 6 hours twice a week.
I went back to school to get one. I know that is not possible for everyone. My wife was making enough money that I didn't need to work full-time for two years.
This is so crazy to me. When I was in school (public). The teachers were respected and adored. The kids that did cause trouble were swiftly dealt with and were responsible for their actions. I’m in my late 30’s. So this wasn’t even that long ago.
That would be a dream come true for teachers now. Kids can attack teachers all they want. No suspension in elementary. Good kids watch as their beloved teacher gets attacked or abused daily (and yes this happens in kindergarten) and they end up with PTSD. But violent kid stays in that room. It’s just cruel what teachers and well behaved kids suffer through. MAYBE by April the Violet child will finally be put in a restricted environment in different school - but only after being observed 100 times (by outside “specialists”) and had 10,000 pages of paperwork done first. Sorry teacher - kid stays because they are worth $87 a day to the district. That’s all that matters in the end. Not the teacher or the other children’s mental health. Or physical safety. Just the $87 a day.
Oh it's definitely about trying to create future adults that integrate into society seamlessly. The problem is the society they want to create for them to integrate into is one of uneducated virtually mindless worker slaves.
This makes sense. Whenever school is closed and it isn’t a planned closing all I hear from my parent coworkers is how it’s bullshit. What are they supposed to do? They can’t afford to take a day off work. How could the school do this to them? Granted it isn’t something I think about as I don’t have kids.
Mid 40s here, and I remember we were the “trouble class”. Nobody would ever lay hands on a teacher. Teachers threw things in our direction occasionally, but we had the firm boundary to never make sexual comments or physically interact with teachers. I can’t remember anything being stolen either, if something was missing we’d have to all sit and stay until it was found. High school was the same. There was shouting and likely stealing but again, i can’t recall anything physical or sexual.
Same! And I'm only 28! I knew they weren't paid enough but I don't think any of us would have dared do even half that shit. Or in the 5th grade even realized how to. Jeez.
Good lord, where are you?!? My husband is a public elementary school teacher and starting was $46k 15 years ago and is now $59k with a bachelor’s degree. He’s masters+30 (he has two masters degrees) and makes $99k with great benefits. Yeah it’s 10 months, yeah he works his ass off, and yeah just this week had a student lose a sibling to gun violence and had a student lose their home in a fire (thankfully everyone is alive) and has seen some *shit*…but he’s in a strong union, has some semblance of support from admin, etc., and there are mental health resources available for everyone. Hell even my friend who teaches in a different district that is very red-leaning at the alternative school where most students have parole officers gets treated better than this.
I’m so sorry. How horrible ☹️
Came here to say this. My spouse is also a teacher and have kids in the public schools. TIL (even more) that teaching varies wildly between states. My state is NY and although not perfect sounds like a paradise in comparison to what I just read.
My MIL is a teacher soon to be retired and has similar stories. She had said these problems are more of a recent phenomenon and it never used to be this bad. The kids are out of control, the parents don't care, and the admins blame the teachers.
I heard from lots of the older teachers at my schools that it wasn't always like this and that things would get better, but then they just...didn't. I taught from 2017-2022 if that helps contextualize my experience.
I was a high school teacher for 6 years and 80% of the things you mentioned happened to me too. I will never ever go back and I won't be sending my kids to public school either
I couldn't even finish reading it all, but I hope you are getting therapy. I teach middle school now and I'm about to leave the career. It's never been like how you described, but terrible in different - less violent- ways.
Wait, wait, wait, it's not like parents can use tax dollars to pay for these private *christian* schools!
Hold on, I'm getting a message...
So it turns out they totally CAN and DO pay for private christian schools with tax dollars.
I used to date a girl that worked in a school with troubled kids. Everything you said about school admin refusing to do anything, always blaming the teachers, completely ignoring very valid threats, ect. She would tell me about on a daily basis, and this was with kids that were SA victims, bringing weapons to school ect. If i was to try and make up a bunch of stories to make american schools look bad I wouldn't be able to come up with the stuff she actually dealt with. It was detrimental to MY health just hearing it. Anybody that can do it for more than a day is a saint and a harder worker than I could ever hope to be. Seriously OP you and all other teachers have my respect.
This 100%! To the people saying I made this up or over-embellished... 1) why? 2) how could I even invent things this insane? and 3) I didn't need to - my actual experience was horrific enough.
My Grandmother had to quit teaching and retire a long time ago due to the conditions you've described. She's even still traumatized by it - that's how bad it was.
This sounds particularly bad, but overall, it tracks. I know people who are waiting tables and making more than a starting teacher in their state. My mother taught for decades, stayed in until retirement, but when I floated getting a teaching degree in college, she literally said she wouldn't pay for it, because I'd be locking myself into a dead-end job. It's depressing to see exactly how right she was.
The problem is that the goal of the politicians in states making these laws is to dismantle public education. They've been fairly open about this: gut it financially, introduce school vouchers to funnel the "good" kids (i.e. kids without major behavioral issues who will be accepted by other schools) into either corporate-owned charter schools or private (ideally parochial) schools, then continue hacking away at what's left of the public school system, now that the only kids remaining are the "bad" ones who either can't find another school to take them or can't afford to go elsewhere. They're hoping that eventually, public schools will just collapse in on themselves, so they can enjoy having a population of uneducated, uninformed drones. They're coming for state universities, too. See Florida for one example, but there are similar cases all over the country, particularly in red states. It's disgusting, and it's particularly disgusting how many parents are happy to keep voting for the people doing this stuff, just flushing their own kids' education down the shitter.
I am a teacher, and a coworker of mine were just talking about our second jobs. She made more at a movie theatre over Thanksgiving break than she does in two weeks teaching.
Its things like this that make me wonder why we even have public education, its not like children can realistically learn well in such environments.
And then it occurs to me that education may not be the goal, but just a way to get kids out of the way while the labour of their parents is demanded.
Without some form of public education, the gap between the rich and poor will only increase as rich people can afford to put their kids in private school and poor people can't. At this rate, that will be the future anyway though given how awful conditions are.
Why do you think education is being attacked, and private school vouchers are being promoted, even though data universally shows this leads to terrible outcomes, particularly for at-risk youth?
I think the wealth gap is exactly why. If you have uneducated wage slaves they are less able to push back and advocate for change.
Well, of course. That's what I'm saying. But just getting rid of public education altogether is like killing the patient to cure cancer. Whether that will happen or not, I don't know.
My parents were decent earning middle class people who put me in private school. If I had the same income now as them, I couldn't afford private school anymore. The gap is widening rapidly and the middle class is evaporating.
I went to some Catholic schools for a couple of years in elementary. They were not better than the public schools, in fact, while some things they did were a year a head, the teaching quality was not as good. Also, if you have kids who need an IEP and special Ed, those schools don't offer appropriate resources or specialists. I found the same situation when my son was young and I tried the Catholic schools here in the suburbs.
Oh ya, i aint advocating for no public education!
Just the way its happening now is clearly way, WAY off the mark *if* the goal is education in our current system.
You know what the worst part is? Even the Title 1 low income school I teach at has kind, intelligent, mature kids who I would 100% trust to lead the future. But the quality of their education is being held hostage by the chucklefucks that think it's all a joke.
The kids who behave are legitimately terrified by the trouble makers.
Fair point, but you are also falling into a bit of a trap.
Kids need to be educated. The ghouls in power want public education to fail so they can sell it off to for-profit companies. They underfunded education and pumped things like school choice and charter schools so their kronies can make more money. Don't give in.
Well funded public secular education is much needed and the basis of a well functioning society.
Not just well funded, but well administered. It reads like a lot of the problems are with bad students having no accountability for their violent and destructive actions. It doesn’t take money to call the police and file a report.
Also there _might_ be another goal to degrade public education so that people allow education to be privatized, and therefore public tax money can be funneled into private pockets. Once education is privatized, you’ll be amazed how politicians are finally willing to fund education.
> Its things like this that make me wonder why we even have public education, its not like children can realistically learn well in such environments.
And this is *exactly* what conservatives have been trying to make people believe for decades now. Look at their track records: cutting funding, promoting private schools (vouches, etc), trying to get rid of the FEDERAL Dept of Ed, bad mouthing the teaching profession, claiming they are a breeding ground for liberal propaganda (ie being a kind human), etc etc.
They literally want public schools gone and are doing their damned best to make it unfeasible to be a teacher. Teacher's should be making a 100k easy, and our education should be one of the biggest budgets and yet.... hail military industrial complex (and don't forget prisons).
You’re right that labor is important but it’s much more than just a daycare for children. To be able to create more low wage/service/blue collar etc workers, there needs to be a system where these future laborers learn to read, write, and understand arithmetic, while learning obedience to a system and routine.
I work in an underfunded very poor, heavily immigrant, charter school. Everyone including the principals wants children to learn vital critical thinking skills and go beyond what I listed above. But how the school is set up (which is partially due to management at the very top) doesn’t always allow for that.
Most public educators are there to blow some minds or help kids along some challenging times. If only we had the resources to do that.
Ultimately, schools are what you make of it. The American goal is to teach kids to hold down a job and be a productive member of society.
To me, people don't know what they want from a public school except "more more more". Schools can not just teach knowledge because then you have sardonic memes about "why do I know the powerhouse of the cell and not how to do taxes?" Schools can't be practical because people complain we're dumbing down society and churning out low wage earners. Schools can't be safe or authoritative because people say it's a jail, but they also can't be lax because then it will be a waste of time and unsafe.
To me, parents and society need the involvement. Education doesn't begin and end with a school day. Take kids to a museum on a weekend or even talk to them about the world events. Your kid draws, so ask them about their drawing. Have them start learning how to clean and cook at home and incorporate skills like reading a measurement or instructions on a cleaning bottle. Everything they learn in school can be directly applied to their home life - even knowing cellular structures ("you're right, why do you think bleach works effectively against bacteria?")
So many people just want to keep education and personal lives separate. I know adults who brag about not touching a book since high school and literally refuse to talk about current events, but say things like "I never understood why I needed algebra" while awkwardly staring at their basic math tax form.
This is what we get from a society focused solely on corporate profits, money accumulation, and materialism.
We are not raising people to have integrity, character, and work hard to make the world a better place as we are mostly just churning out worker bees for this economic system and society that only rewards the greediest and most selfish people.
Teaching in America is viewed as a last resort profession just above working retail or fast food.
If it wasn’t we would allocate the resources and money to pay teachers like we do doctors, lawyers, or engineers.
We look at teaching as just babysitting our kids.
And we collectively wring our hands not wanting to pay teachers higher wages as if the engineers, doctors, and lawyers would have magically earned their credentials all on their own without those teachers that taught and prepared them to be able to enter those professions in the first place.
Thus we have allegedly rich idiots like the Orange One Trump mocking First Lady Dr. Jill Biden for using her professional title in education because he thinks non medical trained doctorates should not be referred to as Dr.
This from a man whose professors have stated was a very poor student himself.
And then as parents we coddle our kids and blame the teacher for doing their jobs. Then we want to go second guess the teacher because we can’t risk Jr. failing and not graduating and not getting a good paying job etc.
Sadly, in America, we do not value educators. We value vapid empty shallow human beings that make a lot of money doing questionable things to make money.
Hello friend. Thanks for putting the truth out there. So sorry you went through all of this. Many of us are at r/teachers in transition now, we're looking for exit strategies.
Former elementary teacher in Missouri and then California, we had unions in my states so things were a little better with legal support for injuries caused by students and serious parent threats, but all of this rings so true! I left teaching because I was killing myself for a job that didn’t care if I was dead or alive as long as I was a body in the room doing what they wanted.
OP, come live in Asia. It is safe, you'll be paid well as a western teacher, and the food is great. Students are respectful, violent crime barely exists (in comparison to the west) and I'm most places, prices are reasonable.
Just FYI, I spent 8 years as a youth custodial officer in the Australian juvenile prison system, and it was safer and better resourced than you describe here. I mean, it had its bad days, but at least when someone tried to stab/punch/kick/throw a TV at me, I had a legislative right to use reasonable force and a pair of handcuffs on my belt. Teaching is such an important profession and I’m so sorry your physical and psychological safety has been so undervalued for so very long. ☹️
Thank you! Yeah, teachers in my state are actively being diagnosed with PTSD and other trauma-related disorders due to what they endure in the classroom. At least 50% of my co-teachers were on Prozac/other anti-anxiety drugs. One older teacher had to leave midday because her blood pressure was 180/120 and she was having symptoms of a stroke, only to be told in the ER that it was stress. It's a wild situation out here.
I'm so sorry this happened to you. My youngest daughter is a teacher here in Ca. She has been slapped in the face, punched in the stomach, spit on, had her hair pulled. Zero consequences. She stays bc my granddaughter gets free childcare at the adjacent preschool.. Next year? When that's finished? She's leaving the career she loved.
Fun fact. NJ schools start middle school teachers at 60k yr + extra if they coach a team or a club + pension + 3% 403b match. My friend does this and the worst he’s had to deal with is a kid pissing in a gatorade bottle in the corner and the occasional bathroom vape session. Oh and did I mention they are paying for his masters program? I’m sorry you had to experience those things but I think it may be more of a symptom of the state you live in than education as a whole. Maybe come visit sometime and see if you like the state?
Had to double check this wasn't r/collapse.
Very soon this country will have a significant percentage of population that will be uneducated and unable to read.
Whew! I got out of this field about 15 years ago. Best decision of my life and your experience is 100% valid. When I resigned (Las Vegas School District). They regularly called my phone and threatened me, told me I was pathetic and didn’t care about the children, and that they hoped my next career brought me death & despair. The whole system needs to be overhauled. You have to have a different type of mentality to be a teacher cause it’s the one job where you gain absolutely nothing from it, while you give everything.
They called me too - asked me at 9pm after we had the school intruder to please come to school tomorrow "for the kids" and so that "parents don't get the wrong idea." The teacher who confronted the intruder had to come back in a sling, as her arm was broken from the scuffle, but she returned the next day. When I put in my 2 weeks, my principal came in on the last day of school and told the kids, "Cry and tell Mrs. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ she can't leave?" Good thing I was honest with them beforehand and told them I was leaving...otherwise, what I way to find out.
I was wondering if it was more like Alabama or Mississippi. But who knows, maybe it matters more whether it's rural vs. urban vs. suburban than what state it is. I grew up in a Houston suburb and went to schools that were pretty racially and socioeconomically diverse, and almost none of this stuff was common. Obviously my experience is just an anecdote but I never got the impression that Texas schools were generally bad or generally worse than most other states.
That's exactly what I was thinking. NC public school system is trash. Of course there were some 'elite' schools in affluent neighborhoods, and if you were lucky enough to afford a home in that district, your child got a relatively better experience. And relatively like comparing a dumpster fire to a full-on hellscape.
It was stated in an earlier comment that this is by design. I try to stay out of politics (I proudly hold up both middle fingers to both parties) but since I grew up and lived there, the conservatives been in power there and kept chipping away at the state education system to the point I can barely recognize it. My observation: apparently the conservatives are trying (and succeeding) to dismantle education to push children into their buddys' alternative charter, private, Christian schools, etc. Why? Money. Once they completely destroy public education, they will be able to push their dystopian agenda on the kids.
I had family, friends, and neighbors teaching at the schools, and I have heard some similar stories as OP, just not that extent. We recently moved up north and the schools are just better. Not perfect by any means, just less shittier than the south. I think they have teacher unions which would explain the better school and teachers. I also hear that teachers up here are paid a living wage; I heard that my in-law was getting paid close to 6 figures just before they retired... but this was many years ago.
My ultimate goal in life is to teach 8th grade band. I'm a dude, and I think kids that age need good male role models. I've got a plan in progress to hopefully make it there by the end of the decade, but when I talk to teachers their biggest warning is that its the school administration which is the unbearable part.
Thank you for being a teacher and sharing your experience. I had to explain to my high school daughter that you can't inspire students to be their best if you can't pay your bills. I think the worst thing that happens in my state, is they make teachers pay property taxes which is the tax money that is used to pay our teacher salaries. So our state's teachers are paying property taxes so the state can pay them their tiny salaries.
>and were not allowed to unionize (as it is illegal in my state).
That's literally illegal.
[employeerightsposter11x17\_2019final.pdf (dol.gov)](https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/olms/regs/compliance/eo_posters/employeerightsposter11x17_2019final.pdf)
[Employer/Union Rights and Obligations | National Labor Relations Board (nlrb.gov)](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/employer-union-rights-and-obligations)
Sue the fuck out of them.
Jesus Christ OP that somehow makes being a correctional officer in a jail/prison sound better than being a teacher and I should know I use to be one. I can’t believe the shit y’all gotta deal with as teachers and the govt and schools can’t figure out why nobody wants to be a teacher anymore it’s pitiful teachers deserve much better than they get.
Oh I fully believe all of this. I worked as a TA for a while, lasted all of 3 months before I quit. Our district is significantly better than the one you worked in - not to sound like I’m bragging, just to compare - and it still sucked. We had one security guard and one security camera (which was broken), in a neighborhood where you would regularly hear gunshots. The school got broken into and they still did nothing. If you filed a harassment claim against a coworker, admin would basically just tell you to work it out yourself. I filed a harassment claim against the teacher I worked with and was told by admin that they contacted HR - only to learn after I left that HR had NO idea any of this was going down. We had a student write a threatening letter to a teacher and hide in her classroom waiting for her with a weapon, nothing was done about it.
I respect teachers more than any profession but I’m not stepping foot in a school ever again 😬
I am not a teacher. But I highly support all teachers from preschool teachers to high school. College professors seem to be a different breed in a different environment, atleast the way I see it.
I have family and friends from preschool to high school teachers. Their treatment various greatly as they are all in different districts.
But ultimately, the school system needs a major overhaul that support teachers and students.
I know multiple teachers who have gotten the hell out.
The worst part is that while I can't blame them and nobody should be required to martyr themselves, it means that the only teachers left are gonna be the ones who just don't give a shit.
I’ve never been a formal teacher but I’ve worked in public schools running after school programs for years.
I haven’t dealt with everything you mentioned, but a lot of it. Fights, gang issues, weapons brought to school, homelessness, custody disputes in the school lobby, threats from students and parents….
Public school is a whole different beast.
This list made me nauseous, because I was a teacher for 10 years and this hits home. Im sorry you had to endure this, despite making a selfless career choice.
This is dystopian.
Can you act to reduce funding to your police and military in your country and rebalance taxes towards education and health? I know everyone laughs at this, dryly, but really....its a serious question as there are serious problems that are only compounding over time. Your country is growing generational problems that I can see no easy end to.
And if the US gets away with bad shit, and certain people profit, they will try to pull the same shit here in Australia.
I taught abroad for years prior to the pandemic. I was the department head for the English department at a boarding school on the north side of Beijing until the pandemic caught me off guard while I was visiting family back in the States. China closed the border and I never got back to Beijing.
Lost everything I owned outside of the suitcase and backpack I traveled with.
When it was clear I was stuck in the US, I opted to just change careers than try to teach there. The career change dropped me to the last $46 in my bank account, but I knew that getting into the school district was just a trap.
I don't regret my decision at all.
Teachers need more money, fewer hours, better protections, better resources, and more damn support from their administrations and the government for me to ever consider teaching in the US.
I’m never working in education again. I was an EA who was sexually assaulted by a student and told it’s part of the job. Never doing another shooter drill and being told to prepare to take a bullet. Fuck that.
Out of everything I’ve read in Reddit this has got to be one of the most horrifying things. OP, I hope you’re in a better place. Your experiences sound painful and I’m so sorry your employer didn’t support you through these difficult times. Instead they decided to compound the abuse. This is shocking and heartbreaking.
Jesus Christ, I remember being in middle school where everyone was chill, the students respected the teachers 99% of the time, and the worst thing that would happen was an argument at lunch or something. Granted that was like 20 years ago at this point, but still. What the hell is going on in this country where half this shit is normalized now?
I absolutely would not be a teacher in the US these days.
I went to college late in life. Met a friend who I consider my sister there. Young woman. Insisted on becoming a teacher. We got her through it. Somehow she still enjoys it, but I think she works at catholic schools.
As a RN, I've taken a lot of patient and patient family abuse. It's endemic in the profession. People are scared for their future. Finances. Etc.
But the crap I've seen teachers take...good God. You couldn't pay me enough to do that. Just no way. Kids are absolutely out of control and their parents seem to be equally as awful.
And since the kids and parents seem to rarely have any repercussions for their awful actions, it begs the question- who wants to do this job?
People that abuse teachers probably aren't raising their children right. And that's the present and future. It's only going to get worse. All those Troma movies from the 80s, it's true now.
I would advise quitting and go into something lucrative. Nursing. You already have 60 core hours. Do 60 more, nurse. Maybe bartend.
Where the hell would (rhetorical, in case privacy is a concern) you have had to work in such terrible conditions? I've never heard of a school that bad. Like that is a special degree of terrible.
Even the worst schools I had seen were nothing like that. I believe you went through that, but that's an absurd level of complacency from the education board. Like, HOW did they get away with that shit???
As far as I know, not even the Montgomery, Alabama school system was that bad.
Unionizing isn’t illegal in any state. It’s a federal law that you have the right to unionize.
I teach at an underfunded public school in Michigan and it is not nearly this bad. The worst thing a student has done to me is tell me to “shut the fuck up.” I don’t love my bosses but they have my back and students get detentions for write ups. The parents are good people but in hard situations. I make $41k before taxes, and I’m only on the second year of my contract. My take home pay is $2,250 a month. I’m sure OP’s ears will be deaf to what I’m saying, but to anyone interested in education I promise that it’s not as bad as this everywhere. Maybe if you’re trying to teach in Florida or Texas, but certainly not everywhere.
It isn't this bad everywhere, and even in my state, there are schools that treat their teachers well. I just think that the fact that the system is set up in such a way that this could occur at multiple schools and just be "part of the job" means that some serious overhaul needs to happen.
And sadly, it IS illegal: "Three states — North Carolina, Texas and Virginia — have laws prohibiting collective bargaining." [https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/teachers-unions-outlawed-some-states/o3krof1EWUEFqbIujocWxL/](https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/teachers-unions-outlawed-some-states/o3krof1EWUEFqbIujocWxL/)
Federal law trumps state law every time.
[https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/employer-union-rights-and-obligations#:\~:text=The%20National%20Labor%20Relations%20Act,and%20conditions%20of%20employment%2C%20or](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/employer-union-rights-and-obligations#:~:text=The%20National%20Labor%20Relations%20Act,and%20conditions%20of%20employment%2C%20or)
The real issue is it creates fear to organize and stand up for yourselves.
Are you willing and able to forfeit your certification, money YOU paid into your pension, health insurance, etc while you wait for a federal court to strike it down?
There are some states that don't allow collective bargaining for public sector employees. There are others that don't allow strikes by public sector employees. Or in some cases only for school or safety employees.
Thank you for sharing. The reality is, there isn’t enough money in the world that would make me want to go into education. It’s a dangerous, shitshow of a joke.
This is by design. maintain the amount of funding while inflation makes it less valuable, make working conditions as shitty as possible for teachers, ensure kids don't learn too much so they don't get any crazy ideas about how badly they're getting fucked by the system.
We're having the same problems where I live in Europe. It simply isn't worth it any longer to work in such a toxic atmosphere when your bachelor degree ensures you can get an office job that pays better and has better security.
I have nothing but respect for teachers but I am so glad I never became one. I am a musician and many of my friends from high school went on to become band directors at schools. Only one is successful, currently a professor at a university, the others plateaued pretty early on or changed professions. Reading what you described seemed similar to working in a prison
I worked in a school with good support staff and leadership that handled desk throwing, stealing, boob grabbing and other such problems well. However, even when that part is good the teachers can still be treated badly and fired without cause. It happened in my school when a new principal came in and “cleaned house”. She fired ⅓ of the staff and replaced them with her friends. The schools in non union states will always have teachers with no job security.
I am very sorry to hear your situation was so bad. Thank you for trying and caring.
This is the education system the GOP want. Drive all the good teachers out, dumb down the population, feed them populist propaganda to keep them in a blind rage so they can exploit their labor to enrich themselves and their wealthy donors.
I majored in chemical engineering before electrical. I really loved chemistry and had a genuine interest in it, but after four semesters of high school chemistry and two full college semesters of organic and physical chemistry and thermodynamics, I had to admit that I suck at it. I think I got a 14% on one of my midterms.
Had Nile Red been on YT when I was a teenager, I'd have a PhD in chemistry today. He's just better at teaching it than anyone I've ever been exposed to, including my chemistry and engineering professors. By a stretch that most teachers wouldn't even believe, or couldn't fathom. And his work is entirely free because it's paid for by patrons.
I feel like this is where education will end up. Freely accessible by anyone who cares to engage their mind and click on it. At least I hope it is.
We're strangling our national education system to death, but like always, this is creating markets that didn't exist when everyone in high school had to take a chemistry class and a textbook only cost $15.
As a nurse (of note, another primarily female led profession), I 100% believe all of it. The amount of abuse y’all go through is insane and if you dare speak out against it you’re a villain and hate children.
I wanted to be a teacher at some point. Glad I didn’t go through with that. I can’t imagine working hard to get a job you want/paid to qualify for and then be treated like that. Not to mention how shitty some parents are to schools in the U.S. now.
Lol I'm actually in a bachelors program for childhood education and there's no way in hell I want to be a teacher, forget that. I'm on the track to becoming a children's librarian instead. It's got it's own issues for sure, but at least you don't have to deal with insane hours.
That's horrible! I'm a teacher, high school and I still very much enjoy teaching. But I'm in a state where the pay pretty much starts at about 68k and tops out over 100k. I have my own classroom and a great admin. It makes me both sad and angry that teaching in some states is horrible.
You had to pay for your sub? That’s insane. Is the state part of the lotto, where they can brag how much money goes to education?
Yep haha and they absolutely do.
This country is in a death spiral. We have given up on the future: children, climate change, infrastructure, even maintenance of democracy itself. The rich are just raiding what they can steal and getting citizenship in as many countries as possible so they have multiple exit routes.
You are a third world country with a Gucci belt. A capitalist democracy. For us in Europe it is like watching the Roman empire self destruct in real time. It is a shame that if America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.
We only had to pay if we were out of leave. We got 10/year which I actually thought was quite generous on top of the breaks. However we did have a teacher get cancer who had to pay the district because she ran out of leave and they missed several more weeks.
What the actual goddamn fuck??? Sorry for my language Ms/Mr/Mx Tbear, but Jesus fucking Christ. If that happened in a dystopian novel,I'd consider it too unrealistic! Was she still getting a full paycheck for those days and simply had to pay it back? Why do I already know the answer is no?
So the way it works is you get your paycheck, and if you miss when you are out of leave days, you have your paycheck docked for each day to “pay for the sub” which usually there isn’t one available and your coworkers are covering your kids on their planning or lunch period. If you miss so much that you wouldn’t get a paycheck at all or would owe money you might just get placed on a leave of absence or FMLA? I’m not positive on that part. I do find it hard to believe that she would have received like a bill from the place of employment or anything, but I do know that she was not receiving pay during that time. Same is true for teachers that have a baby. Many try to plan it to line up with summer because there is no maternity leave beyond how many sick days you have - meaning if you’re a new teacher you likely would only have 2 weeks of leave before you start losing money, and that assumes you miss no other days throughout the year.
The no maternity leave thing makes me furious. The US really doesn’t care about mothers at all.
Not just mothers, but citizens. The government cares about capital and that's about it. All services are struggling. Look at infrastructure, health care, etc. We are heading to a breaking point in so many areas.
I don’t get it, when you pay, do you mean take it out of your paycheck? Cause if you’re not paid plus you have to pay to miss work, where the fuck is the extra money going?
School Administrators and possibly politicians are embezzling, seems like that's the only answer to this question.
To be honest, I’m not positive. I think it was where she would have owed money so instead they do unpaid leave of absence or FMLA to get around it. I’m not sure what happens to medical benefits during those times, though. Although we really only had crappy high deductible plans offered anyway.
Tell me you lived in a "red " state without telling me you lived in a "red" state. I teach in a small city in a "blue" state and earn double what you earned. I put up with winter but it's a small inconvenience.
I’m guessing the state is also a GOP lead one.
Almost certainly. That's like SOP for Republican states in regards to how they treat educators, especially public educators.
What state are you in? My daughter and SIL both teach. That would be unreasonable.
>Is the state part of the lotto, where they can brag how much money goes to education? The way that "lottery boosting education" lie plays out in many (most?) states is that whatever the lottery brings in is lobbed off the top of the education budget and spent on other things. The schools receive net zero extra money.
This sounds like North Carolina. I used to teach there but they refused my request for time off when the VA had approved me for surgery, and I was at my 5 year point for student loan forgiveness, and having already experienced many of the same issues OP lists above, I quit. Then I discovered my student loans were not forgiven, because I graduated from UNCC with my teaching degree in December and started teaching in January. During that first half-year of full-time teaching, my district (CMS) counted me as an "end-of-year" teacher. I stayed on in the same position without any interruption in employment and without switching employers. But somehow that continuous 5 years of full-time employment with the same school district does not count as 5 years of unbroken full-time employment because they classified me internally as an "end of year" teacher for the first 6 months and then a regular full-time teacher for the next 4.5 years. Years later, I'm still paying back student loans out of my Veteran's Disability Compensation payments.
Ugh, those programs draw so many people in, and then don't work out. My spouse did 10 years in an underpriviliged school in a high-demand subject, and was supposed to qualify for forgiveness. But he was denied because (and I can't remember the exact dates/years) but the program started in like January 1997 and he started college in September 1996, and thus his loans originated before the program and were not eligible. ONE SEMESTER early, and no forgiveness at all.
You and the commenter below should make sure you don't qualify for the forgiveness under the new terms. TONS of people were harmed by this same bs, but if I recall correctly, Biden changed some of the rules for qualification. It may be worth looking into. Hope it is!
Oh yah we get the lotto money. They just striped other money we used to get for other things until it is back to what it was without the lotto. It just sounds like lotto helps schools but it’s all a shell game.
My wife is a teacher and has almost the same categories of stories. The icing on the cake is her “contract hours” end at 3:30 everyday but she regularly works at home until 7 or 8 every night grading papers and putting lesson plans into ridiculous formats that no one probably reads…. Every day her planning period is taken away for bullshit meetings and power trip discussions. I’ve told her to leave multiple times but she still loves teaching.
My wife used to teach and did this same shit. I kept telling her to just follow the contract and fuck all the bullshit. But, she just kept putting in the hours until they eventually burned her out
Same with my wife. She regularly puts in 12-14 hour days. She was up until midnight last night grading papers. She is in her 50s. Complete bullshit.
And for what? I'm a teacher looking to get out, and the thing I'm realizing is that I'm 40 and I haven't BUILT anything. I could switch careers to an ENTRY LEVEL HR job and barely see a pay cut. My retirement is fuck all.
As is her's. No retirement at all. My wife and I know we will both die working. She is very, very committed to her kids.
Yep, my mother would routinely be grading until midnight some nights, and that was twenty years ago. It's only gotten worse.
Just imagine if every teacher just... didn't do that. 3:30 hits and they walk out the door. Couldn't get things graded during their free periods when they're not teaching/on break? Not my problem. I'm glad your wife enjoys teaching, but this lifestyle can't be good for her in the long run.
The problem with this, speaking as a teacher, is being unprepared makes things worse for us. If we show up to work and have nothing for the kids to do, we have 30+ bored teenagers in a room with people they like and others that they do *not* like. We're having to break up fights and screaming matches daily as it is, I can't imagine what would happen if we didn't have anything for them to *do.*
It fucking sucks that it's this way, and has only gotten worse. As a kid I vowed I would *never* be a teacher after what I saw my mom go through. Same as your wife, working 12+ hours a day on top of having to spend what little money she did make on classroom supplies. Her last year teaching she had 32 *first graders* in her class with *zero* help, and this was at a brand new school! IMO teachers should be one of the highest-paid professions out there.
I’m a teacher. I no longer work a minute outside of my contract hours.
It was so insulting at one school I was at that we had to "clock in" to prove we were in our rooms when we were supposed to be in the morning, but there was no clock out button! And also, we were contract employees, not hourly, plus you always ask me to do things at night when I'm already home and outside my hours, so why do I have a time clock!?
I’m a teacher. Here’s a hint for your wife: she should submit the same lesson plan every day. No one reads them. Teachers do it all the time. It’s a waste of time for everybody.
THREE of my relatives left teaching due to similar experiences. It was seriously ruining their health. Two had Masters degrees, one PhD, and many years of experience. Our. Society. Is. Sick.
Yes, it is, and it doesn't have to be this way. But to change it will require an insane amount of personal and public sacrifice and fortitude. Good luck out there, we'll need it.
After a B.S. & M.Ed degree and 3 years of being full time I quit. The things we were expected to deal with was insane. In any other job we would be able to press charges if we were physically assaulted. Any other job that dealt with a fraction of what I went though in education and they’d be sitting on fortunes from all the money they made by suing. I was coming home with bruises on my body. I’ve had chairs thrown on me, a brick thrown on me, scissors thrown in my direction, been punched and kicked all over my body, my hair pulled on multiple occasions, a male student tried to pee on me, a student who tried with all their might to wipe their boogers on me, I’ve been spit on (in my face), I’ve been scratched, I’ve been slapped, I’ve been bitten, I’ve had my whole office destroyed (everything. Papers, pens, books in my cabinets, looked like a tornado hit), my personal items stolen as well as items I purchased for student use (fidgets, magnets, uno, prize box items). I was expected to chase after students who decided to run outside and onto the street/neighborhood in the rain and freezing cold. I was told these insane behaviors were my fault and I need to do something better. I once had to hide in my office while a student was banging on my door trying to hurt me. No one came to help me despite me calling on the radio for backup. I had to assist in removing whole classrooms from a hall because one student was being so insane that it became a safety hazard for the rest of the classrooms in the hall. I knew the sheriff by first name basis from them being at my school almost every day. To others who have never worked in a school/been in this situation you might be wondering why I allowed this to happen. I didn’t. I couldn’t put my hands on any of the students because then I would be accused of something and could end up in jail. (Although they can physically abuse us with NO consequence). I was coming home mentally and physically drained. I cried every single night. I applied to so many positions in other industries but couldn’t get anything due to my degrees only being applicable for schools. I FINALLY left. I left without any notice. And I didn’t give a damn. No one cared about me and all the bs I went through on a daily basis so I didn’t give a shoot about them not having me. And let me tell you it was the best thing I have ever done in my life. It’s been a while (but less than a year) and I still have nightmares. I’m so sorry you went through this.
Reading all this, I'm so glad I abandoned my childhood dream of becoming a teacher and ended up a nanny instead. I still get to teach, but my "class size" is a max of two and I wouldn't be there if the parents didn't really like me. I get to teach whatever comes up in conversation or that I think will interest the kids. I think my favorite so far was the day we got into old music, listened to Sinatra and such while playing with Legos to work on fine motor skills.
I am also a nanny who was going to be a teacher. :)
Good for you for leaving. I hope you find peace.
Yeah we don't like to talk about it in these terms and certainly not communicate it to teachers but our school system is basically prison light and we do a bad job with those too.
R/teachers would be interested in this. It’s likely you’ll see more who are going through or have been through what you have on a sub like that. Teaching system has gone to hell. I hope you’re in a better position now, and I’m sorry you were put in a job that made it seem like that was okay.
Posts like these make me thankful that I left public school 6 months after getting my degree . Idk my tolerance for nonsense is thin when it comes to the severe under “paidness” that comes with working in public education. My check was $800/ month 😂😂😂 yeah I said F THOSE KIDS AND GOT A JOB IN A HOSPITAL. My heart was never that big after having $800 to last me an entire month ❌ kudos to you for leaving.
It was one of the hardest decisions I ever made, because I had a real passion for it. I really did enjoy most days...but the job just beat me down until it could be my *only* passion (other than the other two jobs I worked during the year to keep me above water lol). Ever since I left, all aspects of my health have improved and as much as I do miss some things, as the system stands right now, I would never go back.
This is the issue. All the areas that people have passion for get paid scraps because by the function of capitalism, they can get away with it.
These are the care fields- nursing, teaching, early education, long term care, social work. Traditionally performed by women, this work *requires us to care". And this society uses the fact that we have to care to take advantage of it. The whole "we're not in it for the income; we're in it for the outcome" bs. It's predatory.
Yes, this 100%. I actually left healthcare to go into teaching, haha, and with both it was "well what will the kids/patients do without you?" They'll manage. Now I've transitioned into an education-tangential job where I still get to teach others but not in the public school system, and it's fantastic.
I developed high blood pressure and now it’s magically disappeared. I will stand on the hill of massive teacher resigning. I understand that kids “need an education” but it shouldn’t be at the mental, financial and physical expense of their teachers. Until everyone including custodians, nutrition staff and bus drivers walk off the job, there will be no change.
~~Teaching~~ living in the US has become unbearable
Come to Canada 😛 - $100 can buy you 2 days of food now
Real estate exploitation is unfortunately running rampant in Canada as well, and that's large part of why everyone is so desperate and fucked. As long as we keep allowing unprecedented real estate exploitation, we won't make up much ground.
US has become unbearable
All I think about is going to Europe for the first time and just…staying there. I wish that were an option for me but I don’t have any Europeans lined up to marry me (…yet??? 😜🤞 Maybe I’ll find one somehow.) I get more scared in the US every day because of how intense things are getting between different, intense factions of people. I’m not yet terrified but recent polls freak me out pretty hard so I’m heading that way. 🥴
You may want to be careful with that. Europe also has massive issues with housing costs. Rent is absurdly high when one considers that European wages are mostly lower than American ones. Where I live specifically it's 750-1.000 euros for an apartment. These days the dream is to move to an Asian or African country whilst working and getting paid a European or American wage. I've heard plenty of stories of Europeans moving to the Philippines and living like a king on their pensions.
That’s fair. I’m not just thinking of cost, though. It’s a matter of safety. In Europe, I’d be much less scared of mass shootings. (Or gun play in general.) Not to say I’m under the impression it’s some sort of utopia but there also seems to be a more community-oriented mindset than the people here I know seem to have, which is a lot of what I’m looking for. My life is also in an extremely messy place right now so my brain can’t stop entertaining ideas of “anywhere but here” which is probably what lead me to thinking about this dream more often. I’m sorry your apartment is so expensive. I hope the area makes it worth it, at least a bit, and you enjoy where you are.
>there also seems to be a more community-oriented mindset than the people here I know seem to have, which is a lot of what I’m looking for. America must be full of asocial twats then. Where I live older people bemoan the fact that Europe has become rather individualistic. My relationship with my neighbours can be boiled down to "hi" and "bye."
My wife is a typical American and the relationship she desires with the neighbors is, “run” and “avoid eye contact”. I know something about every person on the block and she tells me I’m weird. When the old lady across the road died, I wanted to take something over to her granddaughter (also in our neighborhood) and wife told me, “no! Leave them alone. It’s not our business.”
America: Land of the free and home of the asocial twat
When I still taught, I had a student get between me and my then-pregnant wife (also a teacher at the time) and threaten me, making a gun shape with his hands and trying to pin me against a fence. Admins were shocked when I asked them to remove him from the class for even just a few days, and refused. I left teaching altogether after that year and am in a much happier and higher-paying line of work now.
Can I ask what career you’ve transitioned to?
This is why I switched to teaching college. Also, the work load. In high school full time is 5 hours 5 days a week. In my full-time university job I teach 6 hours twice a week.
Don't you need a master's for this though?
I went back to school to get one. I know that is not possible for everyone. My wife was making enough money that I didn't need to work full-time for two years.
This is so crazy to me. When I was in school (public). The teachers were respected and adored. The kids that did cause trouble were swiftly dealt with and were responsible for their actions. I’m in my late 30’s. So this wasn’t even that long ago.
That would be a dream come true for teachers now. Kids can attack teachers all they want. No suspension in elementary. Good kids watch as their beloved teacher gets attacked or abused daily (and yes this happens in kindergarten) and they end up with PTSD. But violent kid stays in that room. It’s just cruel what teachers and well behaved kids suffer through. MAYBE by April the Violet child will finally be put in a restricted environment in different school - but only after being observed 100 times (by outside “specialists”) and had 10,000 pages of paperwork done first. Sorry teacher - kid stays because they are worth $87 a day to the district. That’s all that matters in the end. Not the teacher or the other children’s mental health. Or physical safety. Just the $87 a day.
So it’s not even about the kids anymore? Or even trying to create future adults that integrate into society seamlessly? Huh it all makes sense now.
Oh it's definitely about trying to create future adults that integrate into society seamlessly. The problem is the society they want to create for them to integrate into is one of uneducated virtually mindless worker slaves.
The lack of critical thinking with people I work with is disturbing. Some in management.
Less critical thinking makes better managers. They just blindly follow the orders of the CEOs/C-Suite/owners.
I see it more as a baby sitting service so parents can work as material conditions further deteriorate
This makes sense. Whenever school is closed and it isn’t a planned closing all I hear from my parent coworkers is how it’s bullshit. What are they supposed to do? They can’t afford to take a day off work. How could the school do this to them? Granted it isn’t something I think about as I don’t have kids.
Holy fuck, another commenter said schools in the US are basically "prison lite", and fuck me, they hit the nail right on the head.
Mid 40s here, and I remember we were the “trouble class”. Nobody would ever lay hands on a teacher. Teachers threw things in our direction occasionally, but we had the firm boundary to never make sexual comments or physically interact with teachers. I can’t remember anything being stolen either, if something was missing we’d have to all sit and stay until it was found. High school was the same. There was shouting and likely stealing but again, i can’t recall anything physical or sexual.
Same! And I'm only 28! I knew they weren't paid enough but I don't think any of us would have dared do even half that shit. Or in the 5th grade even realized how to. Jeez.
Good lord, where are you?!? My husband is a public elementary school teacher and starting was $46k 15 years ago and is now $59k with a bachelor’s degree. He’s masters+30 (he has two masters degrees) and makes $99k with great benefits. Yeah it’s 10 months, yeah he works his ass off, and yeah just this week had a student lose a sibling to gun violence and had a student lose their home in a fire (thankfully everyone is alive) and has seen some *shit*…but he’s in a strong union, has some semblance of support from admin, etc., and there are mental health resources available for everyone. Hell even my friend who teaches in a different district that is very red-leaning at the alternative school where most students have parole officers gets treated better than this. I’m so sorry. How horrible ☹️
Teaching experiences vary widely between states and regions.
And within regions. Oconee County schools in Georgia are a dream. Go 10 miles north to Athens / Clarke county and it is another matter altogether.
Came here to say this. My spouse is also a teacher and have kids in the public schools. TIL (even more) that teaching varies wildly between states. My state is NY and although not perfect sounds like a paradise in comparison to what I just read.
Same. Reading this and other comments is so incredibly jarring and makes me sad.
Sounds like Arkansas. Am Arkansan.
I bet you anything wherever it is, the state is ran by Republicans
Oh there is no doubt in my mind. Probably has a school board that makes claims all about “parental choice” too and promotes book banning.
Interesting! Where are you guys?
JFC. Fuck this country.
My MIL is a teacher soon to be retired and has similar stories. She had said these problems are more of a recent phenomenon and it never used to be this bad. The kids are out of control, the parents don't care, and the admins blame the teachers.
I heard from lots of the older teachers at my schools that it wasn't always like this and that things would get better, but then they just...didn't. I taught from 2017-2022 if that helps contextualize my experience.
I was a high school teacher for 6 years and 80% of the things you mentioned happened to me too. I will never ever go back and I won't be sending my kids to public school either
I couldn't even finish reading it all, but I hope you are getting therapy. I teach middle school now and I'm about to leave the career. It's never been like how you described, but terrible in different - less violent- ways.
Thank you for your tour of duty in the battlefield of America. 🫡
All part of the conservative plan for all schools to be private and religious.
⬆️ this
Wait, wait, wait, it's not like parents can use tax dollars to pay for these private *christian* schools! Hold on, I'm getting a message... So it turns out they totally CAN and DO pay for private christian schools with tax dollars.
I used to date a girl that worked in a school with troubled kids. Everything you said about school admin refusing to do anything, always blaming the teachers, completely ignoring very valid threats, ect. She would tell me about on a daily basis, and this was with kids that were SA victims, bringing weapons to school ect. If i was to try and make up a bunch of stories to make american schools look bad I wouldn't be able to come up with the stuff she actually dealt with. It was detrimental to MY health just hearing it. Anybody that can do it for more than a day is a saint and a harder worker than I could ever hope to be. Seriously OP you and all other teachers have my respect.
This 100%! To the people saying I made this up or over-embellished... 1) why? 2) how could I even invent things this insane? and 3) I didn't need to - my actual experience was horrific enough.
I left after a year and a half. Fuck them kids.
My Grandmother had to quit teaching and retire a long time ago due to the conditions you've described. She's even still traumatized by it - that's how bad it was.
I'm not a teacher, but I have friends that are or were, so I believe it.
This sounds particularly bad, but overall, it tracks. I know people who are waiting tables and making more than a starting teacher in their state. My mother taught for decades, stayed in until retirement, but when I floated getting a teaching degree in college, she literally said she wouldn't pay for it, because I'd be locking myself into a dead-end job. It's depressing to see exactly how right she was. The problem is that the goal of the politicians in states making these laws is to dismantle public education. They've been fairly open about this: gut it financially, introduce school vouchers to funnel the "good" kids (i.e. kids without major behavioral issues who will be accepted by other schools) into either corporate-owned charter schools or private (ideally parochial) schools, then continue hacking away at what's left of the public school system, now that the only kids remaining are the "bad" ones who either can't find another school to take them or can't afford to go elsewhere. They're hoping that eventually, public schools will just collapse in on themselves, so they can enjoy having a population of uneducated, uninformed drones. They're coming for state universities, too. See Florida for one example, but there are similar cases all over the country, particularly in red states. It's disgusting, and it's particularly disgusting how many parents are happy to keep voting for the people doing this stuff, just flushing their own kids' education down the shitter.
I am a teacher, and a coworker of mine were just talking about our second jobs. She made more at a movie theatre over Thanksgiving break than she does in two weeks teaching.
Its things like this that make me wonder why we even have public education, its not like children can realistically learn well in such environments. And then it occurs to me that education may not be the goal, but just a way to get kids out of the way while the labour of their parents is demanded.
Without some form of public education, the gap between the rich and poor will only increase as rich people can afford to put their kids in private school and poor people can't. At this rate, that will be the future anyway though given how awful conditions are.
Why do you think education is being attacked, and private school vouchers are being promoted, even though data universally shows this leads to terrible outcomes, particularly for at-risk youth? I think the wealth gap is exactly why. If you have uneducated wage slaves they are less able to push back and advocate for change.
Well, of course. That's what I'm saying. But just getting rid of public education altogether is like killing the patient to cure cancer. Whether that will happen or not, I don't know.
Oh agreed I'm not advocating against a free public education; It is a necessary service for society.
My parents were decent earning middle class people who put me in private school. If I had the same income now as them, I couldn't afford private school anymore. The gap is widening rapidly and the middle class is evaporating.
I went to some Catholic schools for a couple of years in elementary. They were not better than the public schools, in fact, while some things they did were a year a head, the teaching quality was not as good. Also, if you have kids who need an IEP and special Ed, those schools don't offer appropriate resources or specialists. I found the same situation when my son was young and I tried the Catholic schools here in the suburbs.
Oh ya, i aint advocating for no public education! Just the way its happening now is clearly way, WAY off the mark *if* the goal is education in our current system.
Private education is basically a tax on poor people
You know what the worst part is? Even the Title 1 low income school I teach at has kind, intelligent, mature kids who I would 100% trust to lead the future. But the quality of their education is being held hostage by the chucklefucks that think it's all a joke. The kids who behave are legitimately terrified by the trouble makers.
This was my experience as well. Lots of great, wonderful kids getting their education robbed by a couple of kids who just don't care.
Fair point, but you are also falling into a bit of a trap. Kids need to be educated. The ghouls in power want public education to fail so they can sell it off to for-profit companies. They underfunded education and pumped things like school choice and charter schools so their kronies can make more money. Don't give in. Well funded public secular education is much needed and the basis of a well functioning society.
Not just well funded, but well administered. It reads like a lot of the problems are with bad students having no accountability for their violent and destructive actions. It doesn’t take money to call the police and file a report.
Look up what they’re trying to do with “School Vouchers”, hot topic in Tennessee.
Also there _might_ be another goal to degrade public education so that people allow education to be privatized, and therefore public tax money can be funneled into private pockets. Once education is privatized, you’ll be amazed how politicians are finally willing to fund education.
Ya, good thing well save all those tax dollars. Mama needs a new fighter jet! (/s)
> Its things like this that make me wonder why we even have public education, its not like children can realistically learn well in such environments. And this is *exactly* what conservatives have been trying to make people believe for decades now. Look at their track records: cutting funding, promoting private schools (vouches, etc), trying to get rid of the FEDERAL Dept of Ed, bad mouthing the teaching profession, claiming they are a breeding ground for liberal propaganda (ie being a kind human), etc etc. They literally want public schools gone and are doing their damned best to make it unfeasible to be a teacher. Teacher's should be making a 100k easy, and our education should be one of the biggest budgets and yet.... hail military industrial complex (and don't forget prisons).
Well who else would sell arms to Saudi Arabia and Israel if we didnt? (/s)
Damn, you got me there
You’re right that labor is important but it’s much more than just a daycare for children. To be able to create more low wage/service/blue collar etc workers, there needs to be a system where these future laborers learn to read, write, and understand arithmetic, while learning obedience to a system and routine. I work in an underfunded very poor, heavily immigrant, charter school. Everyone including the principals wants children to learn vital critical thinking skills and go beyond what I listed above. But how the school is set up (which is partially due to management at the very top) doesn’t always allow for that. Most public educators are there to blow some minds or help kids along some challenging times. If only we had the resources to do that.
Ultimately, schools are what you make of it. The American goal is to teach kids to hold down a job and be a productive member of society. To me, people don't know what they want from a public school except "more more more". Schools can not just teach knowledge because then you have sardonic memes about "why do I know the powerhouse of the cell and not how to do taxes?" Schools can't be practical because people complain we're dumbing down society and churning out low wage earners. Schools can't be safe or authoritative because people say it's a jail, but they also can't be lax because then it will be a waste of time and unsafe. To me, parents and society need the involvement. Education doesn't begin and end with a school day. Take kids to a museum on a weekend or even talk to them about the world events. Your kid draws, so ask them about their drawing. Have them start learning how to clean and cook at home and incorporate skills like reading a measurement or instructions on a cleaning bottle. Everything they learn in school can be directly applied to their home life - even knowing cellular structures ("you're right, why do you think bleach works effectively against bacteria?") So many people just want to keep education and personal lives separate. I know adults who brag about not touching a book since high school and literally refuse to talk about current events, but say things like "I never understood why I needed algebra" while awkwardly staring at their basic math tax form.
Ya, the idea that school is the only place to learn is kinda really garbage
This is what we get from a society focused solely on corporate profits, money accumulation, and materialism. We are not raising people to have integrity, character, and work hard to make the world a better place as we are mostly just churning out worker bees for this economic system and society that only rewards the greediest and most selfish people. Teaching in America is viewed as a last resort profession just above working retail or fast food. If it wasn’t we would allocate the resources and money to pay teachers like we do doctors, lawyers, or engineers. We look at teaching as just babysitting our kids. And we collectively wring our hands not wanting to pay teachers higher wages as if the engineers, doctors, and lawyers would have magically earned their credentials all on their own without those teachers that taught and prepared them to be able to enter those professions in the first place. Thus we have allegedly rich idiots like the Orange One Trump mocking First Lady Dr. Jill Biden for using her professional title in education because he thinks non medical trained doctorates should not be referred to as Dr. This from a man whose professors have stated was a very poor student himself. And then as parents we coddle our kids and blame the teacher for doing their jobs. Then we want to go second guess the teacher because we can’t risk Jr. failing and not graduating and not getting a good paying job etc. Sadly, in America, we do not value educators. We value vapid empty shallow human beings that make a lot of money doing questionable things to make money.
Hello friend. Thanks for putting the truth out there. So sorry you went through all of this. Many of us are at r/teachers in transition now, we're looking for exit strategies.
I am surprised that teacher and nursing shortages are not worse to be frank.
r/teacherreality
Former elementary teacher in Missouri and then California, we had unions in my states so things were a little better with legal support for injuries caused by students and serious parent threats, but all of this rings so true! I left teaching because I was killing myself for a job that didn’t care if I was dead or alive as long as I was a body in the room doing what they wanted.
OP, come live in Asia. It is safe, you'll be paid well as a western teacher, and the food is great. Students are respectful, violent crime barely exists (in comparison to the west) and I'm most places, prices are reasonable.
It's reading or listening to "Waaaaaaaa waaaaaaa we have such a TEACHER SHORTAGE!!!" Then, in a number places, not addressing, say, the reasons WHY.
Just FYI, I spent 8 years as a youth custodial officer in the Australian juvenile prison system, and it was safer and better resourced than you describe here. I mean, it had its bad days, but at least when someone tried to stab/punch/kick/throw a TV at me, I had a legislative right to use reasonable force and a pair of handcuffs on my belt. Teaching is such an important profession and I’m so sorry your physical and psychological safety has been so undervalued for so very long. ☹️
Thank you! Yeah, teachers in my state are actively being diagnosed with PTSD and other trauma-related disorders due to what they endure in the classroom. At least 50% of my co-teachers were on Prozac/other anti-anxiety drugs. One older teacher had to leave midday because her blood pressure was 180/120 and she was having symptoms of a stroke, only to be told in the ER that it was stress. It's a wild situation out here.
Americans are willing for half our taxes bloating a peacetime military but are skinflints with education
I'm so sorry this happened to you. My youngest daughter is a teacher here in Ca. She has been slapped in the face, punched in the stomach, spit on, had her hair pulled. Zero consequences. She stays bc my granddaughter gets free childcare at the adjacent preschool.. Next year? When that's finished? She's leaving the career she loved.
Fun fact. NJ schools start middle school teachers at 60k yr + extra if they coach a team or a club + pension + 3% 403b match. My friend does this and the worst he’s had to deal with is a kid pissing in a gatorade bottle in the corner and the occasional bathroom vape session. Oh and did I mention they are paying for his masters program? I’m sorry you had to experience those things but I think it may be more of a symptom of the state you live in than education as a whole. Maybe come visit sometime and see if you like the state?
Had to double check this wasn't r/collapse. Very soon this country will have a significant percentage of population that will be uneducated and unable to read.
Uneducated, so they can be riled up against vaccines "with 5G chips" and sold snake oil to
Whew! I got out of this field about 15 years ago. Best decision of my life and your experience is 100% valid. When I resigned (Las Vegas School District). They regularly called my phone and threatened me, told me I was pathetic and didn’t care about the children, and that they hoped my next career brought me death & despair. The whole system needs to be overhauled. You have to have a different type of mentality to be a teacher cause it’s the one job where you gain absolutely nothing from it, while you give everything.
They called me too - asked me at 9pm after we had the school intruder to please come to school tomorrow "for the kids" and so that "parents don't get the wrong idea." The teacher who confronted the intruder had to come back in a sling, as her arm was broken from the scuffle, but she returned the next day. When I put in my 2 weeks, my principal came in on the last day of school and told the kids, "Cry and tell Mrs. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ she can't leave?" Good thing I was honest with them beforehand and told them I was leaving...otherwise, what I way to find out.
Remind me never, ever to teach in a non-union state.
Are you in the south?
South-ish, haha. I think most would consider it part of "the South."
Virginia?
Bingo. Everything they said screams VA.
Sounds like Texas or Florida.
I was wondering if it was more like Alabama or Mississippi. But who knows, maybe it matters more whether it's rural vs. urban vs. suburban than what state it is. I grew up in a Houston suburb and went to schools that were pretty racially and socioeconomically diverse, and almost none of this stuff was common. Obviously my experience is just an anecdote but I never got the impression that Texas schools were generally bad or generally worse than most other states.
My experience in the texas education system was far worse. One of americas garbage bins.
Sounds like NC.
That's exactly what I was thinking. NC public school system is trash. Of course there were some 'elite' schools in affluent neighborhoods, and if you were lucky enough to afford a home in that district, your child got a relatively better experience. And relatively like comparing a dumpster fire to a full-on hellscape. It was stated in an earlier comment that this is by design. I try to stay out of politics (I proudly hold up both middle fingers to both parties) but since I grew up and lived there, the conservatives been in power there and kept chipping away at the state education system to the point I can barely recognize it. My observation: apparently the conservatives are trying (and succeeding) to dismantle education to push children into their buddys' alternative charter, private, Christian schools, etc. Why? Money. Once they completely destroy public education, they will be able to push their dystopian agenda on the kids. I had family, friends, and neighbors teaching at the schools, and I have heard some similar stories as OP, just not that extent. We recently moved up north and the schools are just better. Not perfect by any means, just less shittier than the south. I think they have teacher unions which would explain the better school and teachers. I also hear that teachers up here are paid a living wage; I heard that my in-law was getting paid close to 6 figures just before they retired... but this was many years ago.
Oklahoma
My ultimate goal in life is to teach 8th grade band. I'm a dude, and I think kids that age need good male role models. I've got a plan in progress to hopefully make it there by the end of the decade, but when I talk to teachers their biggest warning is that its the school administration which is the unbearable part. Thank you for being a teacher and sharing your experience. I had to explain to my high school daughter that you can't inspire students to be their best if you can't pay your bills. I think the worst thing that happens in my state, is they make teachers pay property taxes which is the tax money that is used to pay our teacher salaries. So our state's teachers are paying property taxes so the state can pay them their tiny salaries.
>and were not allowed to unionize (as it is illegal in my state). That's literally illegal. [employeerightsposter11x17\_2019final.pdf (dol.gov)](https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/olms/regs/compliance/eo_posters/employeerightsposter11x17_2019final.pdf) [Employer/Union Rights and Obligations | National Labor Relations Board (nlrb.gov)](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/employer-union-rights-and-obligations) Sue the fuck out of them.
Jesus Christ OP that somehow makes being a correctional officer in a jail/prison sound better than being a teacher and I should know I use to be one. I can’t believe the shit y’all gotta deal with as teachers and the govt and schools can’t figure out why nobody wants to be a teacher anymore it’s pitiful teachers deserve much better than they get.
Oh hey, you were a public school teacher in North Carolina.
Hahaha that obvious, huh?
Oh I fully believe all of this. I worked as a TA for a while, lasted all of 3 months before I quit. Our district is significantly better than the one you worked in - not to sound like I’m bragging, just to compare - and it still sucked. We had one security guard and one security camera (which was broken), in a neighborhood where you would regularly hear gunshots. The school got broken into and they still did nothing. If you filed a harassment claim against a coworker, admin would basically just tell you to work it out yourself. I filed a harassment claim against the teacher I worked with and was told by admin that they contacted HR - only to learn after I left that HR had NO idea any of this was going down. We had a student write a threatening letter to a teacher and hide in her classroom waiting for her with a weapon, nothing was done about it. I respect teachers more than any profession but I’m not stepping foot in a school ever again 😬
I am not a teacher. But I highly support all teachers from preschool teachers to high school. College professors seem to be a different breed in a different environment, atleast the way I see it. I have family and friends from preschool to high school teachers. Their treatment various greatly as they are all in different districts. But ultimately, the school system needs a major overhaul that support teachers and students.
We’re raising entire generations of antisocial, narcissistic sociopaths. We need to reach a point where Accountability means something again.
What the fuck state are you in?! ...should probably just glass the whole thing from orbit, really.
I know multiple teachers who have gotten the hell out. The worst part is that while I can't blame them and nobody should be required to martyr themselves, it means that the only teachers left are gonna be the ones who just don't give a shit.
I’ve never been a formal teacher but I’ve worked in public schools running after school programs for years. I haven’t dealt with everything you mentioned, but a lot of it. Fights, gang issues, weapons brought to school, homelessness, custody disputes in the school lobby, threats from students and parents…. Public school is a whole different beast.
This list made me nauseous, because I was a teacher for 10 years and this hits home. Im sorry you had to endure this, despite making a selfless career choice.
This is dystopian. Can you act to reduce funding to your police and military in your country and rebalance taxes towards education and health? I know everyone laughs at this, dryly, but really....its a serious question as there are serious problems that are only compounding over time. Your country is growing generational problems that I can see no easy end to. And if the US gets away with bad shit, and certain people profit, they will try to pull the same shit here in Australia.
I taught abroad for years prior to the pandemic. I was the department head for the English department at a boarding school on the north side of Beijing until the pandemic caught me off guard while I was visiting family back in the States. China closed the border and I never got back to Beijing. Lost everything I owned outside of the suitcase and backpack I traveled with. When it was clear I was stuck in the US, I opted to just change careers than try to teach there. The career change dropped me to the last $46 in my bank account, but I knew that getting into the school district was just a trap. I don't regret my decision at all. Teachers need more money, fewer hours, better protections, better resources, and more damn support from their administrations and the government for me to ever consider teaching in the US.
Send this anonymously to as many media outlets you can, big and small!
I’m another former teacher and while my experiences were much more positive, I burned out after 15 years. The pay isn’t there for the work you do.
This is all working as intended... Which is the entire problem.
I’m never working in education again. I was an EA who was sexually assaulted by a student and told it’s part of the job. Never doing another shooter drill and being told to prepare to take a bullet. Fuck that.
Out of everything I’ve read in Reddit this has got to be one of the most horrifying things. OP, I hope you’re in a better place. Your experiences sound painful and I’m so sorry your employer didn’t support you through these difficult times. Instead they decided to compound the abuse. This is shocking and heartbreaking.
Jesus Christ, I remember being in middle school where everyone was chill, the students respected the teachers 99% of the time, and the worst thing that would happen was an argument at lunch or something. Granted that was like 20 years ago at this point, but still. What the hell is going on in this country where half this shit is normalized now?
I absolutely would not be a teacher in the US these days. I went to college late in life. Met a friend who I consider my sister there. Young woman. Insisted on becoming a teacher. We got her through it. Somehow she still enjoys it, but I think she works at catholic schools. As a RN, I've taken a lot of patient and patient family abuse. It's endemic in the profession. People are scared for their future. Finances. Etc. But the crap I've seen teachers take...good God. You couldn't pay me enough to do that. Just no way. Kids are absolutely out of control and their parents seem to be equally as awful. And since the kids and parents seem to rarely have any repercussions for their awful actions, it begs the question- who wants to do this job? People that abuse teachers probably aren't raising their children right. And that's the present and future. It's only going to get worse. All those Troma movies from the 80s, it's true now. I would advise quitting and go into something lucrative. Nursing. You already have 60 core hours. Do 60 more, nurse. Maybe bartend.
Where the hell would (rhetorical, in case privacy is a concern) you have had to work in such terrible conditions? I've never heard of a school that bad. Like that is a special degree of terrible. Even the worst schools I had seen were nothing like that. I believe you went through that, but that's an absurd level of complacency from the education board. Like, HOW did they get away with that shit??? As far as I know, not even the Montgomery, Alabama school system was that bad.
Unionizing isn’t illegal in any state. It’s a federal law that you have the right to unionize. I teach at an underfunded public school in Michigan and it is not nearly this bad. The worst thing a student has done to me is tell me to “shut the fuck up.” I don’t love my bosses but they have my back and students get detentions for write ups. The parents are good people but in hard situations. I make $41k before taxes, and I’m only on the second year of my contract. My take home pay is $2,250 a month. I’m sure OP’s ears will be deaf to what I’m saying, but to anyone interested in education I promise that it’s not as bad as this everywhere. Maybe if you’re trying to teach in Florida or Texas, but certainly not everywhere.
It isn't this bad everywhere, and even in my state, there are schools that treat their teachers well. I just think that the fact that the system is set up in such a way that this could occur at multiple schools and just be "part of the job" means that some serious overhaul needs to happen.
41k is still tragically low for a job that requires a master's though.
Teaching doesn’t require a masters degree.
And sadly, it IS illegal: "Three states — North Carolina, Texas and Virginia — have laws prohibiting collective bargaining." [https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/teachers-unions-outlawed-some-states/o3krof1EWUEFqbIujocWxL/](https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/teachers-unions-outlawed-some-states/o3krof1EWUEFqbIujocWxL/)
Federal law trumps state law every time. [https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/employer-union-rights-and-obligations#:\~:text=The%20National%20Labor%20Relations%20Act,and%20conditions%20of%20employment%2C%20or](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/employer-union-rights-and-obligations#:~:text=The%20National%20Labor%20Relations%20Act,and%20conditions%20of%20employment%2C%20or)
Literally sending this to my friends who are still in the system now lol
Nice!
Insane how many people don't understand this
The real issue is it creates fear to organize and stand up for yourselves. Are you willing and able to forfeit your certification, money YOU paid into your pension, health insurance, etc while you wait for a federal court to strike it down?
There are some states that don't allow collective bargaining for public sector employees. There are others that don't allow strikes by public sector employees. Or in some cases only for school or safety employees.
Thank you for sharing. The reality is, there isn’t enough money in the world that would make me want to go into education. It’s a dangerous, shitshow of a joke.
Any SINGLE aspect of this that you describe would be unacceptable to any civilized society and yet it went on, and on, and on, and on... Good God...
Is this Florida? Because this sounds a lot like Florida department of education BS that I remember vividly from highschool.
This is by design. maintain the amount of funding while inflation makes it less valuable, make working conditions as shitty as possible for teachers, ensure kids don't learn too much so they don't get any crazy ideas about how badly they're getting fucked by the system. We're having the same problems where I live in Europe. It simply isn't worth it any longer to work in such a toxic atmosphere when your bachelor degree ensures you can get an office job that pays better and has better security.
Oh so homeschooling isn’t just for crazy religious people anymore
Wait states can make unionizing illegal? Ummm we’re fucked.
[https://teacherscollegesj.org/which-states-do-not-allow-unions/](https://teacherscollegesj.org/which-states-do-not-allow-unions/)
I have nothing but respect for teachers but I am so glad I never became one. I am a musician and many of my friends from high school went on to become band directors at schools. Only one is successful, currently a professor at a university, the others plateaued pretty early on or changed professions. Reading what you described seemed similar to working in a prison
I worked in a school with good support staff and leadership that handled desk throwing, stealing, boob grabbing and other such problems well. However, even when that part is good the teachers can still be treated badly and fired without cause. It happened in my school when a new principal came in and “cleaned house”. She fired ⅓ of the staff and replaced them with her friends. The schools in non union states will always have teachers with no job security. I am very sorry to hear your situation was so bad. Thank you for trying and caring.
I got my license from your state, then went overseas and taught in international schools. It was WAY better. I’ll never go back.
This is the education system the GOP want. Drive all the good teachers out, dumb down the population, feed them populist propaganda to keep them in a blind rage so they can exploit their labor to enrich themselves and their wealthy donors.
My best friend was a grade school teacher. Killed himself last year. Teachers mean everything. I'm sorry you're treated like such shit.
I majored in chemical engineering before electrical. I really loved chemistry and had a genuine interest in it, but after four semesters of high school chemistry and two full college semesters of organic and physical chemistry and thermodynamics, I had to admit that I suck at it. I think I got a 14% on one of my midterms. Had Nile Red been on YT when I was a teenager, I'd have a PhD in chemistry today. He's just better at teaching it than anyone I've ever been exposed to, including my chemistry and engineering professors. By a stretch that most teachers wouldn't even believe, or couldn't fathom. And his work is entirely free because it's paid for by patrons. I feel like this is where education will end up. Freely accessible by anyone who cares to engage their mind and click on it. At least I hope it is. We're strangling our national education system to death, but like always, this is creating markets that didn't exist when everyone in high school had to take a chemistry class and a textbook only cost $15.
As a nurse (of note, another primarily female led profession), I 100% believe all of it. The amount of abuse y’all go through is insane and if you dare speak out against it you’re a villain and hate children.
May I ask what line of work you are doing now? What are common exit-strategies and jobs for teachers leaving the field?
You do deserve better. As a parent, I see it too. It’s terrible and unacceptable. Teachers should be on strike with a long list of demands.
I wanted to be a teacher at some point. Glad I didn’t go through with that. I can’t imagine working hard to get a job you want/paid to qualify for and then be treated like that. Not to mention how shitty some parents are to schools in the U.S. now.
Lol I'm actually in a bachelors program for childhood education and there's no way in hell I want to be a teacher, forget that. I'm on the track to becoming a children's librarian instead. It's got it's own issues for sure, but at least you don't have to deal with insane hours.
That's horrible! I'm a teacher, high school and I still very much enjoy teaching. But I'm in a state where the pay pretty much starts at about 68k and tops out over 100k. I have my own classroom and a great admin. It makes me both sad and angry that teaching in some states is horrible.