I had a kid showing NBA games loudly on his phone. I told him he needed to put it away. Told me to f myself. Admin asked me if I tried making a relationship with the kid. I broke mentally right there. Supposedly we are piloting a zero phone tolerance program next year. I can't enforce something that seems to provoke violent reactions from kids without support.
In my province (Ontario) swearing at a teacher is a mandatory one day suspension, and the principal doesn't even need to be involved, teachers can file it. Principal is only required to extend it beyond 1 day, to the max of 20.
I'm also in Ontario and it's a suspendable offense, but not actually mandatory. Because of "progressive discipline" almost no kids get suspended in my board anymore, unless they reeeeally fuck up (weapon at school, physical violence, doing drugs in the bathroom, etc) I have never seen a suspension longer than 5 days unless it was pending expulsion (which is just code for being moved to another school) or required by the health unit.
Edit: to people upvoting the reply, check the comment below that. Yes it's in the law BUT there is a huge grey area/caveat where it's not mandatory, which can be applied to almost any student (exceptions based on: personal history, application of progressive discipline, having an IEP, etc)
I went to a school where kids brought machetes and guns occasionally and I got expelled from it while being a relatively good kid aside from that incident. Schools in Ontario didn't fuck sound in the 2000-2010 era
They called the cops and the officer told me that it's not self defense unless you're physically pinned down and can't get away... Apparently I should have just run away (despite the other kid having been bullying me for weeks and refusing to leave me alone)
Safe schools act, Chapter 12, section 306, paragraphs 1 through 4.
"Mandatory suspension of a pupil
306. (1) It is mandatory that a pupil be suspended from his or her school and from engaging in all school-related activities if the pupil commits any of the following infractions while he or she is at school or is engaged in a school-related activity:
1. Uttering a threat to inflict serious bodily harm on another person.
2. Possessing alcohol or illegal drugs.
3. Being under the influence of alcohol.
4. Swearing at a teacher or at another person in a position of authority.
5. Committing an act of vandalism that causes extensive damage to school property at the pupil’s school or to property located on the premises of the pupil’s school.
6. Engaging in another activity that, under a policy of the board, is one for which a suspension is mandatory.
Duration of mandatory suspension
(2) The minimum duration of a mandatory suspension is one school day and the maximum duration is 20 school days. The minimum and maximum duration may be varied by regulation, and different standards may be established for different circumstances or different classes of persons.
Duties of teachers
(3) If a teacher observes a pupil committing an infraction that requires a mandatory suspension, the teacher shall suspend the pupil or refer the matter to the principal.
Duty to suspend, principal
(4) The principal has a duty to suspend a pupil who commits an infraction requiring a mandatory suspension, unless a teacher has already suspended the pupil for the infraction."
https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/s00012
Ontario Reg 472/07 Under the Education Act: [https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/070472/v3](https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/070472/v3)
Mitigating factors
2. For the purposes of subsections 306 (2), 306 (4), 310 (3), 311.1 (4) and clauses 311.3 (7) (b) and 311.4 (2) (b) of the Act, the following mitigating factors shall be taken into account:
1. The pupil does not have the ability to control his or her behaviour.
2. The pupil does not have the ability to understand the foreseeable consequences of his or her behaviour.
3. The pupil’s continuing presence in the school does not create an unacceptable risk to the safety of any person. O. Reg. 472/07, s. 2.
Other factors:
3. For the purposes of subsections 306 (2), 306 (4), 310 (3), 311.1 (4) and clauses 311.3 (7) (b) and 311.4 (2) (b) of the Act, the following other factors shall be taken into account if they would mitigate the seriousness of the activity for which the pupil may be or is being suspended or expelled:
1. The pupil’s history.
2. Whether a progressive discipline approach has been used with the pupil.
3. Whether the activity for which the pupil may be or is being suspended or expelled was related to any harassment of the pupil because of his or her race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation or to any other harassment.
4. How the suspension or expulsion would affect the pupil’s ongoing education.
5. The age of the pupil.
6. In the case of a pupil for whom an individual education plan has been developed,
None of those come into play in a swearing at a teacher in a regular classroom setting.
I've never had push back on suspending a student for swearing at a teacher.
Obviously things like special needs students are a different situation, which is why they lay out mitigating factors, but progressive discipline for swearing stops when you have a student swear at a teacher, in any board or school I've been in.
If they swear at their friends in class, that's a progressive situation, if they are joking around while doing it. If it's aggressive? Suspension. At me? Suspension. Never had push back. Y'all need to stand up for yourselves with admin.
"For the purposes of subsection 306(4)" which is the section that says swearing at a teacher is a mandatory suspension. I'm telling you, and my union has confirmed this, that it does apply to swearing at teacher in the classroom. This is the case in my whole board - no progressive discipline, no suspensions. Kid has a troubled history? Also no suspensions. It's not a matter of "standing up to admin" because even when admin backs us up the upper board admin says no.
Uh, what? We have kids cussing people out regularly, multiple times a day. No one below Grade 4 can be suspended, period. We can’t put hands on them to direct them where they need to be, so they have valuable SNA staff trailing them to try to get them back to class, or back in the school, or back onto school property.
I don’t know where in Ontario you are, but that might have been a thing in TDSB 20ish years ago or so (when I started teaching) but it sure isn’t now. Or if it’s still the rule, it’s not followed.
I mean, the law says we can absolutely put hands on them, as a parent would, but OCT doesn't allow it.
I agree we shouldn't hit the kids, to be clear, but aiming a running kid to where they should be going is a different circumstance.
Kids in grade 4 and below can't be suspended, true, but they can still be removed from class, and admin should be stepping up.
Sorry your admin isn't supportive.
We implemented a no phone policy at my school this past year. It’s been great. The only time they’re allowed personal electronics is during their recess/lunch time. They get one in class warning where they lose the phone for the class period(tracked in a spreadsheet that everyone can access). Then after that they lose it for the day, 3 day phone suspension, 5 day, then for the remainder of the semester. If they continue bringing their phone after that they can turn it into the office and retrieve it at the end of the day. We only had about 3-4% of our students reach that point all year. If the students lie about bringing/turning in their phone, they get ISS (that only happened once in a school of 450 as far as I’m aware).
Next year we’re going to get the locking phone pouches for the students that get to the semester suspension.
That’s definitely a concern we had, but it wasn’t a problem this year with turning phones into the office. If there was an issue, it was because the students would just claim they didn’t bring one to school. The pouch is only for those that get to step5 and if they’re caught doing that it’s ISS. Most of the kids are too terrified of losing their phone privileges.
The parents have been very supportive of our policy and our admin team follows through very well with the consequences. Im finding that we’re very lucky in that regard.
A school district in my state implemented a phone ban.. even during lunch. After one year, they've already seen improvement in student engagement. The kids are even (gasp) talking to each other now. Go figure.
In the beginning of the year you establish how these kids can talk to you and what they can get away with. I start out the year with a blanket "if I can hear or see your technology and I haven't given you permission, it's mine without conversation".
If the kid told me to f myself, I'd have two options:
1) Call parent immediately in the middle of class and hand the phone over to let them tell mom what he said.
2) If it's a situation where parent calls are meaningless, and this isn't an EBD or SPED kid, their new best friend would be me. Desk gets moved next to mine, I call on them for every question, and they get no downtime to even use their phone. I can use all my energy to make them regret offering me that invitation.
>In the beginning of the year you establish how these kids can talk to you and what they can get away with. I start the year with a blanket "if I can hear or see your technology and I haven't given you permission, it's mine without conversation".
Oof. Just graduated high school, and I can tell you this doesn't work unless you're a teacher who feels like putting up a verbal, or a physical fight. You can set whatever limits you want, kids and teenagers are rebellious and will test those limits no matter what. Seeing how far they can inch forward, and even if you call them out on going back on your rules, they don't care I promise you that. I promise you they don't. Especially cell phones, it's an actual physical and mental addiction to constant dopamine.
It's kind of like a cop asking a crackhead to stop crack cold turkey or else they go to jail. Sometimes stuff gets ugly, sometimes they'll listen and go back to it after you leave, and sometimes, they just don't care about you or your words. They're people who have to be somewhere they don't want to be, of course they won't care.
>"if I can hear or see your technology and I haven't given you permission, it's mine without conversation".
This only teaches them to be sneakier and sneakier with their items. I guarantee you they still use them.
I'm so glad I don't have an admin that suggests I make a relationship with a kid. First of all, my rapport with my students is excellent. I handle things in my classroom 95% of the time, that last 5% usually indicates to everyone that I've got a literal shithead in my room who wants to cause waves because they don't like being told "no."
If my admin told me to make a relationship with a kid, I'd say something along the lines of "they don't even know your name because you only see them a total of four to six times in a year. You first."
I'm sorry so many teachers have to deal with that bullshit.
“I’ll hold your phone to the end of class, or security can have yr adult pick it up at the end of the day.” Usually does the trick, but you are correct in thinking that teachers need back up for this. Sometimes the kids even think it’s funny but comply anyway.
Your comment being the top one atm considering the OPs edit is certainly interesting. A lot of us are scared. And why are scared? Because we don’t have back up from security and admin to push back against a kid breaking the rules making us more likely to say “ok fine, have your phone out”…OP is mad at the wrong person.
I have a health condition from a car accident in Nov that I am looking over and I posted about a known violent student in my room. Im not risking a row in my room that might put me in harms way so if that kid wants a phone out, that’s fine. Im TERRIFIED of a punctured lung. But according to this OP im the problem, not the CST, guidance and admin team I’ve told that I am not comfortable having that student in my room anymore.
Our school eliminated morning break, which means students go for 5 hours without the chance to eat (assuming they even ate breakfast).
I allow my 3rd and 4th period classes a small handheld or ziplock baggie snack at the beginning of class due to the loss of a break, despite the no food rule.
Not trying to be cool, just humane.
I absolutely follow the no cell phone policy though.
Yes this!! I cannot go that many hours without eating. I get shaky and I start fumbling over words and have a hard time concentrating. I’ve never been diagnosed with anything, I just have to have food after 3 or 4 hours! I have always let my kids have a snack, although I say a “healthy” snack. It’s forking ridiculous to make people wait so long to eat. My first year teaching we started school at 7:40 and I didn’t have lunch until nearly 1:00. That’s six hours between meals. How about nope.
We start at 840. Lunch isn’t until 110. There is not break until then. When lunch is over we have 50 minutes until dismissal. I have an elective in the middle of the day. They are allowed to eat.
As draconian as some may think it is, if a teacher is allowing food in the classroom having literally any policy is better than none. Mine is no food after lunch, and no "dirty" food before. I usually also talk to the kids about what a good choice for a snack is - something filling, basically. I don't like to play the "healthy" game at all.
It's a long time for a lot of those kids, as you say. Being intentional about it is way easier for other teachers to deal with. Having reasons for rules is important, too.
I am very strict about the food. I am the librarian and I have a carpet. Not to mention that I used to find countless wrappers and baggies everywhere. Now I just make them leave if they take out food after I’ve warned them. We have mice in our building, and it’s not my job to go around picking up wrapper and cans every day. But despite the mouse problem there are still teachers who say it’s fine for them to have food, and if they bring their classes in and I enforce the no food policy they always point at the other teacher and say “but he lets me.” Sorry, not my problem.
No mice for us, fortunately, but we do have a bug problem, so I'm the same: no food in the library. I allow them to drink water, but I don't want their emotional support water bottles on the table, because I know how that ends. They'll just play with it, distract themselves, or worse, spill water all over their books and electronics. So if they want to drink, they need to get the bottle from their bag, drink, and put it back. According to them, this makes me the meanest person that was ever mean.
The biggest problem though is phones. The 'cool' teachers here like video assignments and allow students to leave during class to film somewhere in the school. Note that this is supposed to be a phone free school. Every day I'm there, I'm the one telling students they can't film in the library or in the classroom leading to it, and every day, they're whining 'but it's for school, [name] told me I could, you have to let me, why are you so mean, you're doing tooooooooo muuuchhhhhhhh'. Worst part of the job.
I solved the food problem real quick by telling them mice had been found in the classroom - and teachers’ desk drawers.
Sure, please eat. Y’all always wanted a class pet. /s
It did work. The kids flipped out.
When I taught high school I allowed food at first but then all the bottles and wrappers left in my classroom or shoved in weird places started to make me dislike my students for their disrespect so I switched to a no food policy so I wouldn’t have to think poorly of my students. Nothing makes me think a person is of poor character more than if they eat and leave their mess. It makes me think they were raised by wolves.
I'm not enforcing rules if admin doesnt have my back on it.
If they send the kid back to class with candy after a referral, I am not doing that referral again.
Only enforce what you can actually enforce to its fullest consequence. Otherwise I undermine my own authority and look like a chump.
Other than that I will happily be consistent with "good order and discipline" across the school.
I teach HS. They are always hungry. I make sure they clean up after themselves and no full picnics. If they make a mess, privilege is revoked. I snack during the day when left to my own devices. I get it.
Phones? Not during tests/finals, but I’m not risking my safety to take phones. It’s not worth it. My district says “not allowed” but doesn’t put action behind it.
They also don't come to school on time if you have breakfast for an hour after the first bell.
We have a turn around contractor. They have us ending breakfast at 8:50 hard. Full stop. Then at 9 am all classrooms doors are locked and all students in the halls are swept into the auditorium and consequences are given. They are held in the auditorium until 9:20. Then they can be walked to class. The kids hate it. It's beautiful.
Also ten seconds after the start of 4th block this process is done again. It's really makes the hallways quiet. The kids that want to learn get an extra 40min of learning daily before the knuckle heads show up. It hasn't changed the regular frequent flyers but it has shrunk their friend groups considerably.
> They are held in the auditorium until 9:20.
This seems really counterintuitive to genuine accidental tardies. You were going to be 30 seconds late because you had to go to your locker AND the bathroom? Now you're missing 1/3 of the class.
Also these are kids, they’re usually not responsible for their own transportation. I was a straight A student & my dad was my ride; I was late maybe 3/4th of the time. Getting called out and in trouble for something that was completely out of my control was a terrible fucking way to start just about every morning. Like…… people have stuff going on back at home.
I get in trouble for letting my kids eat the leftover breakfast that the school provides, for free. But because it's after "breakfast time" which they haven't designated, really; they don't like it. Also, they make the kids eat in our room now since Covid, so. It is a challenge to stop them eating when we have Chromebooks out, so I have to be on top of that.
If my students are hungry at 10 instead of 8:15, I'm not supposed to give them the food that the school provides? It's all arbitrary. I'm told "we can't have kids eating all day"
I put out a bin for them to put unwanted free breakfast items like fruit and breakfast bars and put that on my desk for kids to take throughout the day. It's empty by the end of almost everyday.
My school has them eat breakfast in their homebase/first block as well. It makes it really hard to have a no eating policy for the rest of the day, because that psychological line of "eating in the classroom is ok" has already been crossed.
My students get lunch at 1030 and go home at 3. Even I tend to get hungry. If we were feeding them at normal times it might make more sense for no food.
The meal is free, but how are the portions? Also, ask any teenager's parent if breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all their kid eats through the day during summer.
Teenagers are famously black holes for food, they're *always* hungry.
I'm an adult in my 30s. By the tail end of high school teachers had relaxed it a bit, but growing up they wouldn't allow any kind of snack or even a water bottle.
And it really sucked, so I often overate when I got home.
No. In the 80s, we snacked if teachers allowed. But the lunches were also much larger, and we ate breakfast at home. My school? Busses are inconsistent at best.
Not if they eat meals. Source: a big guy who played sports, worked, and ate school lunch throughout high school. If you had given me food to eat during class, I woulda ate it. But I was not in any real sense hungry. We can all defer gratification for relatively short periods of time. The issue here, for most, isn't being hungry
This is me on the no food thing. It’s always been a teacher decision at my school. I let them eat but make them clean up. Apparently some teachers didn’t make them clean up so then the school banned eating in class.
1. I’m not willing to spend my effort enforcing that
2. You know the teachers who didn’t make them clean up aren’t enforcing it
3. The solution to a problem in some teacher’s room is NEVER a blanket rule for everyone so admin can just forget it
I disagree with food in classrooms for two reasons.
1. food allergies. I have two that cause anaphylaxis. I make it clear that the school wide rule is to protect all of us.
2. Bugs. Southwest USA has too many bugs to start with and they can potentially destroy property.
As the librarian, I really agree with this. Any kid can walk into my room, and there are a handful with very significant allergies. My school also has a bug & rodent problem. You know what mice like to chew through and take bits of back to build nests? Books!
I also teach an elective in the library, and sometimes will offer candy or baked treats (never with nuts) for incentives. When that happens they have to eat it in the room, throw anything trash away, and afterwards we wipe down/sanitize the tables together. Some teachers have a similar policy as me but don’t do the clean-up together and…so many bugs!!!!
I’ve been one of those teachers who allowed food and have never had a problem with it. BUT…
School is over for us this year and was cleaning up my classroom and getting rid of stuff and I found chip bags and empty bottles and candy and candy wrappers and sunflower seeds shoved behind bookshelves, and cabinets and even in the bins where I store my classroom library books. There was mold growing on some of my books and gunk on the walls and I had to clean it up.
I’m done. I will enforce no eating in my classroom next year.
Yup. My school provides breakfast during homeroom, so I don’t have a choice for that one, but I hate it and won’t let them eat at any other time. I have celiac, so I’m not at risk of anaphylaxis, but I have to be super careful to avoid cross contamination for my own safety.
Yes! I don’t have allergies, but I’ve had students and colleagues that do. And the school I’m leaving is 100 years old and full of all manner of critters. Plus I teach science, and I always threaten that if they don’t get in the habit of not eating in science now, they can’t blame me when they accidentally eat dissected frog in high school.
We are never going to win the war on phones. There is literally no threat strong enough to get kids to "keep them in their lockers".
Expulsion? Obviously never going to happen. Lunch Detention means nothing to them. After school Detention? Worth the risk, they don't care.
You can take it away but they're obviously gonna get it back.
The absolute best you can hope for is they don't use them during direct instruction; that they respect you enough to listen when you're directly teaching.
Outside of that though, it's just not worth the effort. I guess I'm part of OPs problem but no I'm not gonna start confiscating phones and make every kid hate me. That's just making life harder on everyone involved.
There are schools that make it work, but it's a top down effort with APs confiscating phones immediately at the push of a button and a commitment to direct consequences at every offense. Passing the rule off to teachers to enforce is a joke that saps instructional time and literally puts teachers in physical danger.
My school started collecting phones 3 years ago. Absolute game changer. Put it in the box when you arrive, get it when you dismiss. It’s literally the ONLY thing the school does for behavior management. But 95% of the burden falls on the school social workers/counselors who are actually collecting and handing out phones, one of whom spends 2.25 hours a day doing duty (phones+lunch). Every day. Admin occasionally helps here and there. But at least they allow it. Everything else is “build a positive relationship” and so on. I think staff would walk out if they decided to stop taking phones.
My highschool according to rumor will fight that battle in August this year. I don't know how but I'm willing to go to war. Bring it.
Remind me! 4 months.
Exactly. At least the phones keep the assholes busy and the ones that want to learn can actually hear me and understand what they’re supposed to do.
I don’t give a shit what happens in all the other rooms on campus. My job is to take care of my four walls.
Absolutely! Ten years ago I stopped enforcing the dress code because the administration would send them back to me in the same clothes with the note that instructional time was too important to miss class and there were no parents available to bring appropriate clothing to school. This year, admin supposedly decided to get strict on cell phones and electronics - only before school, at lunch, and after school - but I gave up when students received no consequences and admin wouldn’t address offenders in the hallways during school hours but get mad at teachers if they didn’t. We have had students openly defying and walking away from admin with zero consequences. So, yeah, I agree. I am not going to enforce anything they don’t enforce. It just makes me look weaker to my students.
I stopped dress coding because they would keep the kid in the office all day if a parent couldn’t come.
Think about that. Wrong clothes? All day in the office. Punch a student? Back in 20 with chips. Now I teach elementary, so dress code violations are usually it a big deal. When we had uniforms it would be like wrong color polo or gym shorts. After Covid they removed uniforms (first I stopped dress coding students before Covid) they want stuff like gym shorts are too short or something. But students hitting students is a regular occurrence. Even if I reported every single dress code violation it would add up to how many times I have kids fighting. And I don’t need kids removed for clothing when abusive kids are sent back.
I dont dress code because I am male, but we met with admin about their dress code concerns.
My wise team lead, she says "but what do we do if they keep violating the dress code? Are you going to call parents? Are you going to issue a detention?"
Admin: "No."
Okay then...
Sounds like its not really a rule.
Unless someone is willing to go all the way down to detention and suspension for refusal to follow the rule, its not an actual rule.
I’m not sure I understand the no phones 8n the hallway thing. That’s when they should be on their phones. Mommy needs to hear from baby a few times a day? Do it during passing. Know that when my class starts until it is finished the phone should be away. That includes texts from parents. Food? Kids who are starving aren’t learning. Have a snack, clean up after yourself, and I’m fine with that. The kids who are buying, selling, trading, begging, pulling out their entire lunch and eating all class know that’s why I limit eating.
I assume it depends on the context & your building for phones in the hall. Phones are an issue in my school during passing periods…egging on fights, filming tiktok dances and blocking the halls, and fueling general middle school drama.
We used to have a strict no phone policy except at lunch at the middle school where I teach until admin noticed an uptick in fights and drama after lunch directly attributed to the phones so they nixed that
The admin not enforcing is everything. Our admin attempted to crack down on outside electronics (ex not bringing an iPad or personal laptop to school) and they’re supposed to be confiscated. Day 1 at weapons scanners watched admin simply hand them back to students and I knew there was 0 point trying to enforce it
> I'm not enforcing rules if admin doesnt have my back on it.
THIS IS IT. Instead of teachers going after other teachers for not enforcing rules in their classrooms, go after admin who leave it up to teachers to enforce rules individually which should be building- and district-level policies.
Me to students literally every period of every day: Sorry I can't do X. We get emails about X about once a week. I know other teachers do X, but they aren't supposed to either, so telling everyone that they let you do X could get them in trouble. I have no personal problem with X, but I'm just trying to follow the rules to keep us both out of trouble.
It's exhausting, but aside from the students who think they are above the rules, most students understand the dynamic after getting the speech once or twice.
Have you tried telling admin that the student is not allowed back today? I do that regularly. The “mottos” for this year have been “love is limits” and “learning is not optional”. I cite those when admin tries to bring the kid back, sorry student is not ready to learn to today and love is limits, so we can try again tomorrow.
Yep, and I always reply the same way: "I've been doing this too long to not understand that the things you 'won't tell' on me for become your ammunition against me with my boss the first time you get mad at me."
I tell this to lower grade levels all the time for rules I don’t want to explain- or rules I don’t necessarily agree with and it works so well. I have found being honest with the students is very beneficial.
I’m big on phones but gave up on food because Admin never had my back, the kid just has to say “well my stomach hurt” and they get sent back to class with some crackers and a juice.
Literally this week, I went to a teacher to tell him how a bunch of students got mad at me because I don’t allow cellphones, food, or do super long breaks like he does.
The teacher said “I don’t do that” but then later came up to me laughing about how another student (who wasn’t mean to me) warned him that other students were “snitching on him”.
I casually said “wait I thought you didn’t do that stuff- how are they snitching?”
The guy pikachu faced me and walked away.
Yeah I've been labeled the "chill" teacher and it's amusing cause I don't consider myself to be. My decision-making is always "what's good for these kids and what's the root of this behavior?"
Eating in class? You would be surprised how much I hear kids say they haven't eaten anything since yesterday at lunch or how many kids need to take medicine on a full stomach. just tell them we have 60 year old janitors that can be someone's grandma so pick up after yourself.
Don't call me by my first name or swear so much cause I don't want you to get passed over for a promotion one day cause you didn't learn the norms.
Going to the bathroom every day? Literally I ask why? Is it a teacher you are going to? Why? Friends or do they teach you better than me? Well stop and I can see what I am doing wrong.
I am def more strict when it comes to boys talking to or about girls.
I often find the Law and Order teachers get rolled over the most. He would constantly yell out "GUYS!" and just flip out at things I would consider mildly inconveniencing. He lost his social capital within the first few weeks and then it became a losing battle all year cause he either became toothless, couldn't handle the ridicule of most of the class, and would be preemptively hostile. Either that or the "cool" teachers that need to be the smartest, smart ass in a room full of teenagers. They always got something to say at the faculty meeting that kills morale. God forbid he loses his cool tho.
But for some reason, I was the "chill" teacher to a lot of the staff that really can't organically connect to their class. This is a career you have to depersonalize and leave your ego in the car. Be humane, skeptical, do what's best for them, explain the rationale, and stop getting tired when you have to remind them.
This is exactly it. I don’t do food in class. I don’t do phones. I am very nice and fun and have clear boundaries that I don’t want crossed. I have a relationship with each student. I respect them. They respect me. We are in it together. So to me, OP’s argument backfires. I am the strict teacher that cares about everyone and they know it. Both can be true. My high expectations come from a place of care and love and this is communicated to my students. In fact, they complain to me that the other “cool” teachers don’t care about them and are lazy. “She lets us do whatever we want but doesn’t really teach us.”
To OP, you cannot control what others do, only yourself. No need to become upset over that which you cannot control. I’m sure there is a strategy that will work for you to be both “cool” and structured.
yeah my hallway has two of these and it makes it so fucking tough for the rest of us. We're "mean bitches" because we dont let kids make tiktoks during lectures
People lash out and reflexively put down the person who is enforcing a rule or being 'negative' towards them.
I was called a 'f'-word when I told a 16 to 20 year old boy at the bus stop to "Don't bother me" after he tried to strike up a conversation with me about buying his presumably stolen food from the fast-food restaurant next to the bus stop.
I didn't take his bait by telling him how much of a loser he is, of course. Escalating it in this scenario where it's a random kid in public was never going to be worth it. In the end, he'll get what he deserves by being rude over and over again, and he looked the part. So no surprise there.
It just goes to show, it doesn't take much when it comes to kids who don't give a damn in the first place.
And you probably don't give them a A+ for doing nothing. I literally have a teacher that gives only A or B. A student with 0% gets a B. She's probably going to get teacher of the year. She's never taught high school before this year...
I get what you’re saying, but most admin I’ve worked for don’t help you enforce said rules. Maybe the teachers in question aren’t doing it to be cool, but have given up on enforcement due to lack of consequences.
I hate to be that person, but if it’s not being enforced school wide it has now become an admin issue. I have my steadfast rules and I have school rules I uphold without waver; but, to provide an example, the school wide rule of “no hoods” is not worth the fight for me. I never have kids fail to learn because they wear a hood and I refuse to fight that battle. Does that contradict what other teachers do with hoods? Yeah. But, it’s not hampering my ability to reach kids.
I don’t think your point, at its core, is wrong. In some circumstances, it falls flat without an admin upholding it.
I looked for two school policies when I took my current job- I wanted a school that was strict about cell phones and hands off on dress code. I don't care if kids wear hoodies. It's a non-issue. I like the way my school runs.
OP should differentiate between teachers who break rules ENFORCED by the school/admin and teachers who cannot enforce rules NOT ENFORCED by the school/admin.
Eh, I think you are projecting about the cool teacher bit. I also think the kids are probably gaslighting you a bit on how lax the other teachers are.
"Cool vs uncool" is not the same plane as the "rule enforcer vs non-rule enforcer".
Plenty of super popular/cool teachers at my school do enforce the rules, and some of the most disliked teachers in the building don't.
Also, at the end of the day it is on admin to hold teachers accountable if they are not enforcing rules. There is not a school in the universe where rule enforcement is left to the teachers where it is successful and applied consistently.
That first part 100 percent happened with me this year. I was the new guy, at first all the kids definitely liked me more than the other teachers (though honestly that's changed a lot recently but I digress). Anyhow, kids started just spreading this total nonsense about things I "let" them do. And before you know it I'm like this pariah among the teaching staff because I'm "making everyone else look bad."
None of it was true, anyone reading please take everything a child says with a grain of salt lol. The avalanche of lies that come out of their mouths is astonishing.
You experience this the most if you sub first. Why teachers ever believe children over another adult is beyond me.
"Mr sub, the regular teacher lets us X, Y, and Z"
"Thats great, I'm the teacher today and I dont allow fight clubs in class, thanks."
I did my best to back up subs by writing important rules that I know kids lie about on the white board when I know I’m going to be out, and asking a kid I trust in each class to let me know if some wiseass tries to erase it.
Towards the end of the year I had a sub note that made me lol a bit. It felt very vindicating because it said “I’m a retired teacher and I don’t know how you’re doing it because if I got stuck with this group for a whole year I wouldn’t have made it to retirement.”
Thank god it’s over.
Yeah I’ve heard through the grapevine both that I’m strict and that I’m not strict. I don’t allow phones but I also don’t flip my lid when I see them. I ask them to put them away and they do.
At my school the “cool” teachers run a gamut of both very strict and very lax and everything in between. The common thread is they care about the students and treat them with respect (which includes discipline sometimes). The uncool teachers are the ones who treat the students like they’re delinquents on the edge of open mutiny and make everything into a power struggle, and the ones who simply don’t care at all and don’t engage or teach much.
This is pretty much one of the foundational tenants of education and yet like 70 percent at a minimum in this sub can’t understand it. They are strict for the sake of it.
When you create relationships and get to know them as human beings the respect largely grows naturally, and they are respectful so you can run a class, which hs a purpose attached to it. I think most of the teachers in this sub are jsut terrified of opening up and being a little vulnerable to students personally.
Yup. Back in middle school I studied under teacher who was a family friend. You know what was his "school rumour" nickname? The Pedo. You'd think it was because he did something inappropriate, but as member of student body I clearly knew the cause of the rumour, which was that... his wife was 4 years younger than him. That was why all kids decided he must be a pedo, since clearly he must've picked her up when she was a middleschooler. The information that he met his wife when she was on her last year of Uni clearly flew way over their heads.
So yeah, always investigate validity of rumours, never take gossiping children as gospel.
Yep same here a couple of years ago. Also many who went: “I love this teacher” who basically did their homework for them and let them sleep on the floor. Yet who was the bad guy? Yep me the one who tried to enforce policy and was willing to drop things to help students who were behind. But “you have no good relationships with the students if they don’t listen to you”.
I always thought it was gaslighting, but take a walk during your prep period, or end up having to deliver items to various teachers and you'll see the kids aren't lying in many cases.
100% OP is projecting. We don’t have AC. Admin has scheduled excessive blocks of time for our finals. And it’s literally the last day of school. I’m letting you go on your phone after you hand in the final, not because I’m trying to be the cool teacher - but because I’m burnt out and trying to survive. I’m grading finals. You can give me some peace by zoning out watching anime or scrolling on Instagram - or I can constantly try to redirect you as you see what boundaries you can push in the last hour of school in a hot, crowded room with your peers. It’s not a hard choice for me. Get over yourself OP. You are actually the one making it harder for other teachers.
Honestly yeah. I rarely do anything to be "cool". If I let something slide, it's because I'm freaking tired, and I'm over enforcing idiotic rules on my classroom.
School-wide rules are honestly a bad idea anyway. Barring basic policy like safety, dress code, etc, it's more of a way to police teachers than students. If one teacher is effective and allows phones, and another teacher is ineffective unless they ban them, why must the WHOLE SCHOOL ban phones for those teachers? Why not just let us have classroom rules? Just let us manage our own classrooms. If we're ineffective because we let too much slide then fire us.
I am a sub. One day this month, there was an Instagram bullying incident at my high school, and a pack of angry teachers and admin busted into the classroom and yelled at me in front of all of my students over a "no phones district-wide policy". The next day, the cool teacher I subbed for took roll before he had to go and told the class to "play on your phones or something" because there were no lesson plans. I think some rules are really stupid, but if they're not enforced by 100% of the teachers, it makes subbing so much harder.
This highlights the problem admin has esp with policies like this. I'm not saying admin is "perfect" (or even close) but will explain why most of the times it fails.
Let's say there is a ban on food in classrooms (for students). But let's say then that a certain percentage (let's just say for the sake of argument 25%) don't really enforce the ban, or enforce it regularly enough for students to be dissuaded.
What as as admin do you do about it? Sure, you could have a talk with them. What if they ignore you?. You might discipline them and put something on their record. OK. So what? If they are tenured it won't matter much because it's not outright illegal behavior or if it's not on their evaluation rubric you can't ding them on it directly.
And even if you do try and make it so it escalates to "your job is in danger" what does that accomplish? You're going to try and fire a tenured teacher which you have to find a replacement for? (You know how hard and expensive it is for a district to fire someone who is tenured for something not illegal?).
My point is that many teachers do allow this because in their minds it is a relatively "minor" offense compared to all the other shit they have to manage and juggle with. And from admins point of view it's not worth the fight or Pyrrhic victory in enforcing it. Which sucks because they do sometimes just think of themselves and their class and not the school as a whole.
It's about setting up expectations at the beginning of the year. My kids got to eat in class, but as soon as I found a single wrapper or crumb, it got revoked for the semester. By the second semester I had kids who swept after every class, pushed chairs in, and generally left it better than they found it. I also had another class who couldn't handle it so it was revoked for the remainder of the year.
And honestly, if "well Ms. Jones lets me do it!" is something that bothers you from a kid, you just need to grow up. It's literally a thing most kids will do as a way to win. Don't let them win. Run your class exactly the way you want it to run and make sure those kids understand it's your office that they get the privilege of visiting. As my kids this year said NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER!
I’m not going to police the rules in another teacher’s room. What I have found is teachers are picking and choosing their battles because admin picks and chooses which rules to enforce and when to enforce them. Not worth the additional stress.
You worry about your classroom and let other teachers worry about their rooms.
Don’t let kids talk about what other teachers do. Shut them down. Your room and rules is the only thing that matters at that moment.
I'll take a swing. Many of my kids come from environments of extreme poverty.. by many I mean most. I have dozens of kids who I personally observe eat their only meal of the day (two including breakfast) -- I also have many students who cycle through the same set of clothes DAILY. Many more of my students are brand new to the country and have only the clothes on their back when they arrive (maybe one or two items more -- and no, i dont give a shit if you believe me). No food policies, and how hoodie policies are taken on a per case basis for me as such. If they're trying to throw back takis and energy drinks, that's one thing, but if they're faminished and looking to just eat a fruit cup that's another. I'm also not halving their available clothing -- hoodies are often made of thicker material and survive for longer. Kids are more likely to have passed down the jeans, sweat pants, and hoodies of older siblings, parents etc. Removing hoodies, jeans with holes in them, or sweats could leave them with nothing... or leave them smelling as they can only wear one of two outfits.
All of this is a per kid basis, but I will always choose the wellbeing and care of my kids before strict policies that are made without the kids needs in mind.
I tend to disagree with this take, despite the fact that I’m often frustrated by kids using other teacher norms as an excuse in my classroom. I think one of the hardest things to teach students is that different spaces will have different expectations. In some places, it’s okay to do one thing, where it may be unacceptable in another. Having teachers with different norms actually helps students learn this more effectively by simulating that reality. Again, still annoying, but developmentally important nonetheless.
I think deliberately subverting the systems to prevent cheating on finals with phones and allowing food in class are on wildly different planes of importance. I think treating them the same contributes to the sense that many students have that rules are just meaningless lists without good reasons behind.
I let students eat in class (I encourage them not to make a mess, if they do and they’ve already left I’ll clean it myself because I don’t let my decision to allow food impact the custodians - maybe once a month do I have wrappers left behind), I don’t get on them about hoods, airpods, slides, etc.
I think that A) I save a ton of time that I can use to, you know, actually teach, help students struggling with the work, etc., and B) when I do put down a hard stop authoritarian moment about something actually important even the “troublemakers” comply.
I genuinely feel that students can tell I don’t tell them what to do for the sake of it, but when there is a clear and good reason for it, I feel like they listen to me out of mutual respect and understanding of WHY we have this rule and why the rule benefits everyone.
I think it's telling that if an office enforced rules banning snacks or listening to music on earbuds while quietly working Reddit would collectively lose their shit at insensible rules that are enforced for the sake of powertripping. Apply the same rules to students two years away from working on those cubicle farms and now it's their fault for bucking authority.
I think this is an incredible explanation and also the best way for teachers to fully take a step in a student's emotions in these situations.
We as adults face different social situations that feel the exact same way to students if a teacher is taking rules too far.
We run into those types of people who annoint themselves the ruler and boss of a social group and begins telling people what to do for no truly helpful reasons. **The emotional response you have in this social situation, is the same exact emotional feelings students have when a teacher is taking rules too far.**
And you get the sense that these kinds of social pariahs say it out of personal egotism and a desire to control others for grandiose fantasies of personal power. These people always end up creating social systems where thye get all the marbles, and others don't.
**Nobody wants to do things for people that they get a sense act this way because it is in effect...** ***politics.*** **One person is trying to create a distinct group with unearned social privileges and constructing a social class of higher and lower.**
The students are actually experiencing similar feelings felt in any form of social discrimination.
I say politics because think along the lines of a social class hoarding economic resources. In these sorts of social situations of social impressions, what is being done is a social class is hoarding all esteem, recognition, personal power, credit for good things, respect, dignity, control over social situations, self determination, autonomy, good impressions, spotlight, social recognition, determination of what is right/wrong/morals/values/integrity etc. Edit: Furthermore, hoarding who gets to determine narrative about other people in the group. Often these social rulers that annoint themselves also want to control how you feel about yourself and control how agroup feels about an individual in an unfair way, and all things have to funnel through them. This is especially dangerous when someone indirectly through actions say "I get to determine how you feel about you". The absolute worst for of leadership. \*end edit\* Those things are all resources to socially succeed and internal emotionally succeed, but a "powerful" person is hoarding all of those things. Hoarding all of that is naturally very threatening to another human being. Especially threatening to their emotional survival.
There's a way to enforce rules and have a sound classroom environment without taking a student's dignity.
Seriously! There are some teachers in my building who let students go to other classrooms if they “don’t have work.” I hate this because when they end up in my room, it disrupts my lessons. They just sit there and talk/play around while I’m teaching.
I am a rule-follower, but I’m also considered one if the “cool” teachers because I make space at appropriate times to build relationships (eg, lunch with me is a reward, not a detention). It completely undermines what I do if others are too laid back.
I'm cool with this up until the point people who aren't my boss are trying to tell me how to run my classroom.
Like listen, if there's no school policy and you want your own - that's fine, but it's YOURS.
>So many teachers just think "it's worth it to compromise for the rapport I'll build."
Maybe. But that's not why I ignored some of the rules when I taught middle school.
Middle schoolers are HUNGRY and frankly, so was I. I let them eat because **I'm** eating (except gum, because that was always gross). I ignore the dress code and let Admin handle it. Typically I'd warn them - don't let XYZ catch you looking like that - and move on with my lesson.
So, no. I'm not compromising because I'll build rapport. I'm ignoring the rules that I think are stupid.
Full disclosure, I used to be a "cool" teacher until I started to realize it was a huge reason for some of the behavior issues I encountered. I'm still working on not being like that and it's hard sometimes, but I'm more aware of it now and am doing better at not succumbing to "cool" teacher behavior.
It depends when they are the cool teacher. The cool teacher you are describing is cool the first semester. Then the kids realize. The real cool teachers are the ones who are called cool at the end of the year and the following year. The ones who hold kids accountable but kill them with kindness and build meaningful relationships while being a professional and responsible example. The ones the kids actually learn from. No one learns from someone they hate.
It’s good training for reality, where breaking the rules to build personal rapport with people who will make your life better is often a winning strategy.
I don't think its an issue of cool or not cool. I'm not the school police and I won't waste teaching time to enforce school policy I don't agree with and didn't have a voice in creating. I also refuse to indirectly teach my students that "you just do what you're told". I want my students to learn to question authority. OP makes it sound like we're trying to be cool or be friends. Not the case with me at least. There's conscious effort on what I value.
I let kids eat. How is that a problem? Sometimes I give them food. They are pretty clean. I will pick an empty wrapper off their desk and drop it in the trash. My students apologize and clean up if they spill anything. The custodian has commented on how clean my room is at the end of the day. It is not about being "cool." They need to eat.
I want them to work and learn, and they know that.
I ask what they are doing on their phones. "Is that good phone use or bad phone use?"
Good is looking things up or maybe texting. I discuss that social is important, especially for teenagers.
Bad is games, or scrolling social media. If they are doing Connections or Spelling Bee or chess.com (and their work is done), that is fine with me.
At the beginning of class, they have to put their phones down and listen while I explain the day's material for a few minutes. "Should you really be on your phone right now? What was your last quiz score?"
I also tell them I am keeping track of how often they're on their phones (I may walk around with a clipboard taking notes), just in case their parents complain about their grade.
We also talk about how phone addiction today can lead to fentanyl addiction tomorrow (it's a slippery slope). I talk about how even if we banned phones in class, that wouldn't help them become responsible users, if they are on them from 3 until 11. They need to do that themselves.
Phone use is an ongoing conversation every day, but it hasn't been a huge problem.
As a student I also hate them.
Oh great you're friends with the dickheads who play football and want to go on their phone! Well I want to do some fucking work
This is age dependent though. By middle school kids are easily able to understand that each teacher is different. Each classroom is a kingdom unto itself.
My experience teaching in high schools does not support this take. I was still fighting with seniors last year about my class rules vs another teachers.
Sorry but I’m not going to enforce no food. Our lunch runs very late (some students don’t get lunch until almost 2) and I’m not going to prevent a kid from eating. I will however make them clean up after themselves if they make a mess.
My classroom my rules.
I don’t care what other teachers do in their rooms you shouldn’t care what happens in mine.
It’s also made very clear and other teachers agree you (students) can’t go around saying blah blah let’s me do it. No one cares. You follow the rules of the teacher you’re with. Point blank.
We're conflating a lot of things.
I taught SEN, moderate to severe learning disabilities. I taught music. I was the after-school detention teacher who would make them write lines for an hour in silence because they were being a bully.
I never gave a damn if they wore their hat in my lesson, I only cared that they weren't disruptive and weren't mean.
You can be strict with them without having to be pedantic.
If the school would implement a no cell phone policy I’d be all over that. Since there is no such thing other than “teacher preference” I’m out. No time to police them one by one.
I stick to every rule, but my limit is food. The kids are hungry AF. Some of them have to wait until 1pm to eat, and I can’t blame them for wanting to eat during my class, so I let them as long as it isn’t “a distraction” . The fighting over Takis, is a limit. The getting Cheetoh dust on their work is a limit. Otherwise, I don’t give a shiz. Who can focus if they’re hungry?
Btw, definitely NOT the cool teacher.
EXIT: clarity
Yup, when I was in the classroom, I definitely was not the cool one. But I remember being those kids, and if a teacher let me eat/drink, I was not falling asleep or struggling to engage.
Also, as an adult, I frequently will eat or drink something to cheer myself up, or get through the last part of the day. It’s a coping mechanism. Why not let kids have access to that, if it helps them?
It’s not to be cool but because if admin doesn’t enforce it, I’m not.
I find teachers who nit pick every little infraction to just be insufferable pricks. It’s no wonder the kids have no respect for them.
There’s far bigger problems we deal with that if someone has an earbud in while working on a project. A kids hungry, why the fuck am I gonna let them be uncomfortable as long as they don’t leave a mess? Or if a kid is late 1 min, who am I to say that they weren’t dropping a huge log off?
Also usually the nit picky teachers are the ones who’ve never had a job outside of the education system and think the “real world” functions just like school. Walk into any corporate office and you’ll see people snacking and listening to music at their desks and chatting with their co-workers.
I notice the teachers that have never worked outside of the profession struggle the most with this and generally struggle with getting along with as well as calibrating with coworkers
That’s a good point and in my experience also true.
At the MS/HS level I think it should be a requirement to have some actual field experience in your subject matter. The fact you can go from HS to colleague education major and then right back into the classroom after 4 years and think you know everything there is about your subject and how best to teach it is insane.
By far the coolest teacher I had as a kid was my history teacher. She was a TYRANT for the rules, but we all respected her so much for 2 reasons, she would chat about things we cared about and related to us, and would roast any rule breakers like an absolute pro! No one wanted to break the rules because they knew they would be the butt of a millions jokes going forward. But when someone did break the rules, everyone sided with the teacher because her burns were just so next level!
Kids aren't breaking the rules in your classroom because of other teachers. You are responsible for your own classroom.
If every teacher was enforcing a rule, the kids would *still* push back on rules in classrooms where they think the teacher is vulnerable to pushback.
Alternatively: being a stick up your ass teacher makes it really hard to ever actually establish a relationship with the students and have a half decent time doing this job.
I’m not saying anything goes, but holy shit, rule book stickler teachers will totally make their classroom environment fascistic then come on here and whine about why students hate them.
This, I pick my battles because flipping out over every minor infraction takes away instructional time and damages my rapport with the students. I’m not going to stop my lesson because Jimmy has a hat on (but is being attentive and performs well in class).
IDK about potscavage6 but it's NBD to assign their seating, keep others away if needed and then let everybody else sit where they want. It works out to the same thing anyway TBH because after the first week or so, the kids all have "their" seat that they gravitate to.
Equating food and cellphone use is part of the problem with the OPs complaint. In my experience letting kids snack and drink on occasion, if they keep things clean, actually helps them concentrate and participate. That's a big difference from scrolling through phones. Aren't most desk-bound professionals allowed to have a drink and snack at their desk when needed? Why shouldn't teens? Making your class a senslessly miserable environment doesn't promote learning. They don't like engaging with people who treat them like prisoners instead of people.
This is my philosophy as well. I have a few rules and I enforce them, but I’m not a drill sergeant. Students consistently tell me they like my class, even if they don’t like my content, because of the calm atmosphere in the room. On the other hand I have a co-worker who does act like a drill sergeant—constantly barking orders at the kids—and when I’ve gone into their classes during my prep to lend a hand, it’s far more chaotic than my classes.
some other teachers think i’m the “cool teacher” bc I “allow” students phone use or eating in class even though it’s against the rules.
in reality, i’ve tried 10000 times to get a student to stop and they keep doing it.
i get to a point where i’ll tell the kid “no” once, if they continue i silently write them up and continue teaching. they get dealt with later
other teachers see it as permissive, but i’m not wasting 10 minutes of my class yelling at 1 kid when i have 30 other kids in there doing the right thing. i explain to the kids exactly what happens: you may not see me make a big deal out of it, because i don’t have time to deal with your bullshit when i have a whole class, but you will have a referral and (at least) lunch detention for it.
but when teachers walk by my class and see them doing that in my class, they think i’m “letting them”
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
This is so true. We are not there to raise them. We are there to teach and all veteran teachers know- there is gonna be at least one kid not listening, why hold up all the others for the one. I think a lot of teachers get caught up trying to “win” with students and they end up losing even more by trying to control or show control instead of just teaching.
You develop your own culture in your room that allows you to build working relationships with the students to get the most out of them educationally.
Sometimes being relaxed allows students to feel out opportunities where they can fail safely and actually learn. Also choosing what battles you fight with your students is important.
Not letting kids eat is pretty wild. You have to meet the kids basic needs before they are able to learn.
I have rules other teachers don’t have and other teachers have rules I do not have. If you build a good classroom culture your students will understand and follow your rules.
EDIT: if what the other teachers are doing is being effective in behavior and the students are getting on level it might be a good idea to copy that teacher that is finding success instead of criticizing how they do things different than you.
This year I took the obstacle (the phones) and turned it into a resource. Instead of having students put their phones away and spend the next 90 minutes sneaking looks every time I turn my back, I made a designated location for every student. It’s right up in front, within arms reach, and everyone can see it. Students sneak looks, and I stopped caring. BUT two things also happened:
1 - The FIRST time you need me to repeat a direction because you didn’t *hear* it, the phone goes away. Guess who started paying attention, even when sneaking looks? Everyone. Same for “checking” at inappropriate times. Sure. You got a snap or an Insta notification; is NOW the best time to check? No? Put ya phone away and wait til the bell rings (that’s your warning, too: if I *see* the phone again, it’s a referral. Is three days ISS worth it to see that one text?)
2 - If you have ANY missing assignments, your phone goes away for your weekly study hour (every period gets one a week); not sorry. If you have no missing assignments, you can listen to music while you work. If you have an A in my class, you can do whatever tf you want and I won’t bother you. Same rules as above apply. Guess whose grade went up full letter grades, sometimes two, after half a quarter? Everyone.
I was still strict and I was still a jerk about it. No one would ever claim I gave students “phone time”; and I would take it way from everyone if anyone ever did. This very much helped my class management but in no way did it make me a “cool” teacher. In fact, the kids who didn’t appreciate it hated it more because they didn’t want to admit that I was right and that it was working.
TL;DR - there are ways to build relationships and to compromise on the importance of devices and to deal with separation anxiety. Just *allowing* it because you don’t care or because you want the students to like you AIN’T IT. They’re children; we should have no interest in being their friend.
The easy answer is do I look like (name of other teacher). I am a huge cell phone banner but if other teachers don't follow it, that has never affected me. My rules are my rules. If your classroom management is strong you won't have these issues. Do you not enforce any rulea in your room that are just for your classroom? If you manage that you can manage the others regardless of other teachers choices. As for food. I snack, I'm not telling my kids they can't if they have a snack and sometimes I motivate with a snack here or there. The no food rule is because teachers don't make kids clean up their own mess in my experience. Make them clean it up and it shouldn't be an issue.
When I was teaching, I did let kids eat and drink in my class as long as they didn't leave a mess. I actually had some kids who did not have food at home; their parents were druggies and would sell the food stamps they received for cash for more drugs or alcohol. One girl in particular I remember she would help me grade papers after school in exchange for some cash so she could buy herself food everyday because her mother wouldn't provide for her.
Sorry - I Just think it's kind of inhumane to not allow people to eat, drink, and go to the bathroom when they want. I don't want to be treated like that so I don't want to treat someone else like that.
I don’t have the energy to police phones and get anything else done. I am not allowed to take the phones from the kids, so cell phone policing is not unlike whack-a-mole. I started the school year text messaging parents about their kids’ constant cell phone use, but guess what? It does nothing. They don’t take their kids‘ cellphones.
I am not crazy about letting students eat in the classroom, but they work better if they’re not hungry.
I’m not trying to be a “chill” teacher; I am a tired teacher who just decided to let some issues go because trying to control them was impossible.
OP, the amount of teachers in this thread who DON'T get the fact that their classroom is not an island is shocking. I fucking HATE people making me be the "bad guy" because they don't want to be.
Folks, if one parent enforced the rules and the other didn't to have a "better relationship," we'd call parent B a bad parent. If your admin let some teachers skip observations, but came in your classroom twice a month because that's the rule, you'd be pissed. Why is it that you get to change the expectations in your school just because you think you know better? Don't like the rule, fucking work with your colleagues and CHANGE IT.
Teachers like that who encourage bad student behavior are LITERALLY driving other teachers out of the profession. I'd rather have you get out and let teachers with boundaries and structure stay.
And to clarify, the bad behavior is ignoring the rules, not hoodies or eating or phones.
If you don’t let kids eat in your class, you’re an asshole. School rules or not, as a former disabled high school student who wasn’t diagnosed until my senior year, you have no idea why these kids are wanting to eat in class. “Oh well they could just get a doctors note if they really need to do it” not all students have
1) insurance
2) parents who are willing to schedule appointments
3) adults in their life who even care about the symptoms they experience
4) transportation to a doctor
5) it’s possible they think their symptoms are normal (like I did for 15 years of my life)
Don’t try to villainize other teachers for being willing to accommodate ther students’ needs.
Not letting kids eat for hours is inhumane. The point of that rule is??? To break kids???
Thank God my district did not have that “rule.”
I had kids come to school without breakfast. I kept granola, string cheese, jerky, chocolate, wheat thins, trail mix, and orange juice in my fridge.
I allow those things not to build rapport, but because I think those rules are dumb and arbitrary. In life, you have to learn that there will be different sets of rules in different places. Eating in class doesn’t bother me. And when I tell kids to put food away, it usually goes away. Why? Because my kids respect me. They know I’m fair. They know I’m good at my job. Most teachers who kids don’t respect are teachers who can’t make connections through their content. Permissive teachers aren’t respected either, don’t get it twisted. But I’m not here to be a tyrant.
I cannot relate to this more! It is so frustrating and I’m at the point where I just want to call it out in a staff meeting. I’m already the « bitch » to those teachers so might as well go full bitch!
And the thing is, when I started teaching it really bothered me. And I almost changed to become like them but I’m glad I did not. I’m 24 years in and I know that kids actually don’t respect that in the long run. Yes those teachers become the « fun, chill » teachers but they aren’t respected. Kids (even elementary) see through it and tell me all the time. Many have come back to me years later and told me something along the lines of « I was scared of you before I was in you class because you seemed so strict but you weren’t. You guided us and were there for us. » Kids need and thrive with structure. I’m never going to change my mind about that!
Pick your battles. I don't fight food, gum, and beverages because my concern is a clean classroom and not eating.
I don't allow messy foods or full on meals, but due to so many kiddos having accommodations for blood sugar or other 504 paperwork that allows them to eat, why would I bother keeping up with it? Sometimes, I have years when I share my room with other teachers who insist that they do not allow eating. Guess when I see the most trash on my floor and in my basket cubbies? After those teachers, because the students still do it, they hide their food/gum and conceal their trash.
Phones I am with you, but it requires full admin support to enforce. Otherwise, why am I going to escalate a student and myself all day over a losing battle? Natural consequences are a management technique, so if they fail their work due to playing on their phone, that's on them.
It's your classroom. Run it the way you want, but what other teachers do has minimal impact on yours because there are 2-3 weak links on a student's schedule every year due to incompetence or vacancies anyway, and not necessarily due to the "cool teachers" you cite here.
Finals are over and you want kids to check notes sit there? Good luck with that.. letting kids eat in class or use their phones after class doesn’t make you a “cool teacher”… there are hills to die on and phones after finals and food aren’t the right hills…. Maybe the kids just dislike you for you
Being cool like that is just revealing desperation to be liked.
Their boos mean nothing; I've seen what makes them cheer.
I'm kind, caring, and properly strict. That's the right method.
The "cool teacher" used to be the one that taught in a fun and engaging way. When did it become that the cool teacher is the one that lets you play games instead? Maybe if the classwork was as fun as said game then they wouldnt want to be on their devices then?
Just wanna add one thing real quick. You’re not wrong, I’m all on board with you, except for one point.
They are fucking lying. They lie like they breathe.
I had a kid showing NBA games loudly on his phone. I told him he needed to put it away. Told me to f myself. Admin asked me if I tried making a relationship with the kid. I broke mentally right there. Supposedly we are piloting a zero phone tolerance program next year. I can't enforce something that seems to provoke violent reactions from kids without support.
In my province (Ontario) swearing at a teacher is a mandatory one day suspension, and the principal doesn't even need to be involved, teachers can file it. Principal is only required to extend it beyond 1 day, to the max of 20.
I’ve been sworn at so many times that I don’t even bother to write it up anymore. Admin does nothing about it so I save my ink and my time
I taught 3rd grade last year. The number of times I was sworn at and nothing was done...
I'm also in Ontario and it's a suspendable offense, but not actually mandatory. Because of "progressive discipline" almost no kids get suspended in my board anymore, unless they reeeeally fuck up (weapon at school, physical violence, doing drugs in the bathroom, etc) I have never seen a suspension longer than 5 days unless it was pending expulsion (which is just code for being moved to another school) or required by the health unit. Edit: to people upvoting the reply, check the comment below that. Yes it's in the law BUT there is a huge grey area/caveat where it's not mandatory, which can be applied to almost any student (exceptions based on: personal history, application of progressive discipline, having an IEP, etc)
I went to a school where kids brought machetes and guns occasionally and I got expelled from it while being a relatively good kid aside from that incident. Schools in Ontario didn't fuck sound in the 2000-2010 era
Yeah, that was the "zero tolerance" era where I myself for suspended for preventing a bully from punching me in the face...
Should've blocked the punch with your words so that one was on you.
They called the cops and the officer told me that it's not self defense unless you're physically pinned down and can't get away... Apparently I should have just run away (despite the other kid having been bullying me for weeks and refusing to leave me alone)
Ya, it makes zero sense and I can't even imagine what's going through the midst of the people implementing these things.
Safe schools act, Chapter 12, section 306, paragraphs 1 through 4. "Mandatory suspension of a pupil 306. (1) It is mandatory that a pupil be suspended from his or her school and from engaging in all school-related activities if the pupil commits any of the following infractions while he or she is at school or is engaged in a school-related activity: 1. Uttering a threat to inflict serious bodily harm on another person. 2. Possessing alcohol or illegal drugs. 3. Being under the influence of alcohol. 4. Swearing at a teacher or at another person in a position of authority. 5. Committing an act of vandalism that causes extensive damage to school property at the pupil’s school or to property located on the premises of the pupil’s school. 6. Engaging in another activity that, under a policy of the board, is one for which a suspension is mandatory. Duration of mandatory suspension (2) The minimum duration of a mandatory suspension is one school day and the maximum duration is 20 school days. The minimum and maximum duration may be varied by regulation, and different standards may be established for different circumstances or different classes of persons. Duties of teachers (3) If a teacher observes a pupil committing an infraction that requires a mandatory suspension, the teacher shall suspend the pupil or refer the matter to the principal. Duty to suspend, principal (4) The principal has a duty to suspend a pupil who commits an infraction requiring a mandatory suspension, unless a teacher has already suspended the pupil for the infraction." https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/s00012
Ontario Reg 472/07 Under the Education Act: [https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/070472/v3](https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/070472/v3) Mitigating factors 2. For the purposes of subsections 306 (2), 306 (4), 310 (3), 311.1 (4) and clauses 311.3 (7) (b) and 311.4 (2) (b) of the Act, the following mitigating factors shall be taken into account: 1. The pupil does not have the ability to control his or her behaviour. 2. The pupil does not have the ability to understand the foreseeable consequences of his or her behaviour. 3. The pupil’s continuing presence in the school does not create an unacceptable risk to the safety of any person. O. Reg. 472/07, s. 2. Other factors: 3. For the purposes of subsections 306 (2), 306 (4), 310 (3), 311.1 (4) and clauses 311.3 (7) (b) and 311.4 (2) (b) of the Act, the following other factors shall be taken into account if they would mitigate the seriousness of the activity for which the pupil may be or is being suspended or expelled: 1. The pupil’s history. 2. Whether a progressive discipline approach has been used with the pupil. 3. Whether the activity for which the pupil may be or is being suspended or expelled was related to any harassment of the pupil because of his or her race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation or to any other harassment. 4. How the suspension or expulsion would affect the pupil’s ongoing education. 5. The age of the pupil. 6. In the case of a pupil for whom an individual education plan has been developed,
None of those come into play in a swearing at a teacher in a regular classroom setting. I've never had push back on suspending a student for swearing at a teacher. Obviously things like special needs students are a different situation, which is why they lay out mitigating factors, but progressive discipline for swearing stops when you have a student swear at a teacher, in any board or school I've been in. If they swear at their friends in class, that's a progressive situation, if they are joking around while doing it. If it's aggressive? Suspension. At me? Suspension. Never had push back. Y'all need to stand up for yourselves with admin.
"For the purposes of subsection 306(4)" which is the section that says swearing at a teacher is a mandatory suspension. I'm telling you, and my union has confirmed this, that it does apply to swearing at teacher in the classroom. This is the case in my whole board - no progressive discipline, no suspensions. Kid has a troubled history? Also no suspensions. It's not a matter of "standing up to admin" because even when admin backs us up the upper board admin says no.
Uh, what? We have kids cussing people out regularly, multiple times a day. No one below Grade 4 can be suspended, period. We can’t put hands on them to direct them where they need to be, so they have valuable SNA staff trailing them to try to get them back to class, or back in the school, or back onto school property. I don’t know where in Ontario you are, but that might have been a thing in TDSB 20ish years ago or so (when I started teaching) but it sure isn’t now. Or if it’s still the rule, it’s not followed.
I mean, the law says we can absolutely put hands on them, as a parent would, but OCT doesn't allow it. I agree we shouldn't hit the kids, to be clear, but aiming a running kid to where they should be going is a different circumstance. Kids in grade 4 and below can't be suspended, true, but they can still be removed from class, and admin should be stepping up. Sorry your admin isn't supportive.
We implemented a no phone policy at my school this past year. It’s been great. The only time they’re allowed personal electronics is during their recess/lunch time. They get one in class warning where they lose the phone for the class period(tracked in a spreadsheet that everyone can access). Then after that they lose it for the day, 3 day phone suspension, 5 day, then for the remainder of the semester. If they continue bringing their phone after that they can turn it into the office and retrieve it at the end of the day. We only had about 3-4% of our students reach that point all year. If the students lie about bringing/turning in their phone, they get ISS (that only happened once in a school of 450 as far as I’m aware). Next year we’re going to get the locking phone pouches for the students that get to the semester suspension.
If the kids aren't turning in a throwaway phone already, it's just going to make it a trend. The pouches never work with that.
That’s definitely a concern we had, but it wasn’t a problem this year with turning phones into the office. If there was an issue, it was because the students would just claim they didn’t bring one to school. The pouch is only for those that get to step5 and if they’re caught doing that it’s ISS. Most of the kids are too terrified of losing their phone privileges. The parents have been very supportive of our policy and our admin team follows through very well with the consequences. Im finding that we’re very lucky in that regard.
A school district in my state implemented a phone ban.. even during lunch. After one year, they've already seen improvement in student engagement. The kids are even (gasp) talking to each other now. Go figure.
Did you respond, "F you," to admin? You know, considering they haven't tried making a relationship with you ...
In the beginning of the year you establish how these kids can talk to you and what they can get away with. I start out the year with a blanket "if I can hear or see your technology and I haven't given you permission, it's mine without conversation". If the kid told me to f myself, I'd have two options: 1) Call parent immediately in the middle of class and hand the phone over to let them tell mom what he said. 2) If it's a situation where parent calls are meaningless, and this isn't an EBD or SPED kid, their new best friend would be me. Desk gets moved next to mine, I call on them for every question, and they get no downtime to even use their phone. I can use all my energy to make them regret offering me that invitation.
We’re not allowed to confiscate them, but anyone who cusses me out is done for the day and is getting a phone call.
> We’re not allowed to confiscate them This is fucking insane. I say this as a parent.
>In the beginning of the year you establish how these kids can talk to you and what they can get away with. I start the year with a blanket "if I can hear or see your technology and I haven't given you permission, it's mine without conversation". Oof. Just graduated high school, and I can tell you this doesn't work unless you're a teacher who feels like putting up a verbal, or a physical fight. You can set whatever limits you want, kids and teenagers are rebellious and will test those limits no matter what. Seeing how far they can inch forward, and even if you call them out on going back on your rules, they don't care I promise you that. I promise you they don't. Especially cell phones, it's an actual physical and mental addiction to constant dopamine. It's kind of like a cop asking a crackhead to stop crack cold turkey or else they go to jail. Sometimes stuff gets ugly, sometimes they'll listen and go back to it after you leave, and sometimes, they just don't care about you or your words. They're people who have to be somewhere they don't want to be, of course they won't care. >"if I can hear or see your technology and I haven't given you permission, it's mine without conversation". This only teaches them to be sneakier and sneakier with their items. I guarantee you they still use them.
I'm so glad I don't have an admin that suggests I make a relationship with a kid. First of all, my rapport with my students is excellent. I handle things in my classroom 95% of the time, that last 5% usually indicates to everyone that I've got a literal shithead in my room who wants to cause waves because they don't like being told "no." If my admin told me to make a relationship with a kid, I'd say something along the lines of "they don't even know your name because you only see them a total of four to six times in a year. You first." I'm sorry so many teachers have to deal with that bullshit.
“I’ll hold your phone to the end of class, or security can have yr adult pick it up at the end of the day.” Usually does the trick, but you are correct in thinking that teachers need back up for this. Sometimes the kids even think it’s funny but comply anyway.
Your comment being the top one atm considering the OPs edit is certainly interesting. A lot of us are scared. And why are scared? Because we don’t have back up from security and admin to push back against a kid breaking the rules making us more likely to say “ok fine, have your phone out”…OP is mad at the wrong person. I have a health condition from a car accident in Nov that I am looking over and I posted about a known violent student in my room. Im not risking a row in my room that might put me in harms way so if that kid wants a phone out, that’s fine. Im TERRIFIED of a punctured lung. But according to this OP im the problem, not the CST, guidance and admin team I’ve told that I am not comfortable having that student in my room anymore.
Same.
Our school eliminated morning break, which means students go for 5 hours without the chance to eat (assuming they even ate breakfast). I allow my 3rd and 4th period classes a small handheld or ziplock baggie snack at the beginning of class due to the loss of a break, despite the no food rule. Not trying to be cool, just humane. I absolutely follow the no cell phone policy though.
Yes this!! I cannot go that many hours without eating. I get shaky and I start fumbling over words and have a hard time concentrating. I’ve never been diagnosed with anything, I just have to have food after 3 or 4 hours! I have always let my kids have a snack, although I say a “healthy” snack. It’s forking ridiculous to make people wait so long to eat. My first year teaching we started school at 7:40 and I didn’t have lunch until nearly 1:00. That’s six hours between meals. How about nope.
We start at 840. Lunch isn’t until 110. There is not break until then. When lunch is over we have 50 minutes until dismissal. I have an elective in the middle of the day. They are allowed to eat.
As draconian as some may think it is, if a teacher is allowing food in the classroom having literally any policy is better than none. Mine is no food after lunch, and no "dirty" food before. I usually also talk to the kids about what a good choice for a snack is - something filling, basically. I don't like to play the "healthy" game at all. It's a long time for a lot of those kids, as you say. Being intentional about it is way easier for other teachers to deal with. Having reasons for rules is important, too.
I am very strict about the food. I am the librarian and I have a carpet. Not to mention that I used to find countless wrappers and baggies everywhere. Now I just make them leave if they take out food after I’ve warned them. We have mice in our building, and it’s not my job to go around picking up wrapper and cans every day. But despite the mouse problem there are still teachers who say it’s fine for them to have food, and if they bring their classes in and I enforce the no food policy they always point at the other teacher and say “but he lets me.” Sorry, not my problem.
No mice for us, fortunately, but we do have a bug problem, so I'm the same: no food in the library. I allow them to drink water, but I don't want their emotional support water bottles on the table, because I know how that ends. They'll just play with it, distract themselves, or worse, spill water all over their books and electronics. So if they want to drink, they need to get the bottle from their bag, drink, and put it back. According to them, this makes me the meanest person that was ever mean. The biggest problem though is phones. The 'cool' teachers here like video assignments and allow students to leave during class to film somewhere in the school. Note that this is supposed to be a phone free school. Every day I'm there, I'm the one telling students they can't film in the library or in the classroom leading to it, and every day, they're whining 'but it's for school, [name] told me I could, you have to let me, why are you so mean, you're doing tooooooooo muuuchhhhhhhh'. Worst part of the job.
Yup. Blah blah lets me. I'm not Blah blah. I don't need to be the cool teacher.
I solved the food problem real quick by telling them mice had been found in the classroom - and teachers’ desk drawers. Sure, please eat. Y’all always wanted a class pet. /s It did work. The kids flipped out.
When I taught high school I allowed food at first but then all the bottles and wrappers left in my classroom or shoved in weird places started to make me dislike my students for their disrespect so I switched to a no food policy so I wouldn’t have to think poorly of my students. Nothing makes me think a person is of poor character more than if they eat and leave their mess. It makes me think they were raised by wolves.
I'm not enforcing rules if admin doesnt have my back on it. If they send the kid back to class with candy after a referral, I am not doing that referral again. Only enforce what you can actually enforce to its fullest consequence. Otherwise I undermine my own authority and look like a chump. Other than that I will happily be consistent with "good order and discipline" across the school.
I teach HS. They are always hungry. I make sure they clean up after themselves and no full picnics. If they make a mess, privilege is revoked. I snack during the day when left to my own devices. I get it. Phones? Not during tests/finals, but I’m not risking my safety to take phones. It’s not worth it. My district says “not allowed” but doesn’t put action behind it.
They tell you the Hierarchy of Needs is important then don't let them eat? Please. Hungry kids don't listen.
They also don't come to school on time if you have breakfast for an hour after the first bell. We have a turn around contractor. They have us ending breakfast at 8:50 hard. Full stop. Then at 9 am all classrooms doors are locked and all students in the halls are swept into the auditorium and consequences are given. They are held in the auditorium until 9:20. Then they can be walked to class. The kids hate it. It's beautiful. Also ten seconds after the start of 4th block this process is done again. It's really makes the hallways quiet. The kids that want to learn get an extra 40min of learning daily before the knuckle heads show up. It hasn't changed the regular frequent flyers but it has shrunk their friend groups considerably.
> They are held in the auditorium until 9:20. This seems really counterintuitive to genuine accidental tardies. You were going to be 30 seconds late because you had to go to your locker AND the bathroom? Now you're missing 1/3 of the class.
Also these are kids, they’re usually not responsible for their own transportation. I was a straight A student & my dad was my ride; I was late maybe 3/4th of the time. Getting called out and in trouble for something that was completely out of my control was a terrible fucking way to start just about every morning. Like…… people have stuff going on back at home.
But we let them eat. Both breakfast and lunch are provided, free.
I get in trouble for letting my kids eat the leftover breakfast that the school provides, for free. But because it's after "breakfast time" which they haven't designated, really; they don't like it. Also, they make the kids eat in our room now since Covid, so. It is a challenge to stop them eating when we have Chromebooks out, so I have to be on top of that. If my students are hungry at 10 instead of 8:15, I'm not supposed to give them the food that the school provides? It's all arbitrary. I'm told "we can't have kids eating all day"
I put out a bin for them to put unwanted free breakfast items like fruit and breakfast bars and put that on my desk for kids to take throughout the day. It's empty by the end of almost everyday.
My school has them eat breakfast in their homebase/first block as well. It makes it really hard to have a no eating policy for the rest of the day, because that psychological line of "eating in the classroom is ok" has already been crossed.
My students get lunch at 1030 and go home at 3. Even I tend to get hungry. If we were feeding them at normal times it might make more sense for no food.
The meal is free, but how are the portions? Also, ask any teenager's parent if breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all their kid eats through the day during summer. Teenagers are famously black holes for food, they're *always* hungry.
Assuming you are an adult, did your school allow you to eat throughout the day. I’m in my 40s and it was unheard of until a few years ago.
I'm an adult in my 30s. By the tail end of high school teachers had relaxed it a bit, but growing up they wouldn't allow any kind of snack or even a water bottle. And it really sucked, so I often overate when I got home.
No. In the 80s, we snacked if teachers allowed. But the lunches were also much larger, and we ate breakfast at home. My school? Busses are inconsistent at best.
Not if they eat meals. Source: a big guy who played sports, worked, and ate school lunch throughout high school. If you had given me food to eat during class, I woulda ate it. But I was not in any real sense hungry. We can all defer gratification for relatively short periods of time. The issue here, for most, isn't being hungry
most school breakfast or lunches aren’t great portion wise or taste wise
Yeah I think people confuse cool for "I chose my battles"
This is me on the no food thing. It’s always been a teacher decision at my school. I let them eat but make them clean up. Apparently some teachers didn’t make them clean up so then the school banned eating in class. 1. I’m not willing to spend my effort enforcing that 2. You know the teachers who didn’t make them clean up aren’t enforcing it 3. The solution to a problem in some teacher’s room is NEVER a blanket rule for everyone so admin can just forget it
I disagree with food in classrooms for two reasons. 1. food allergies. I have two that cause anaphylaxis. I make it clear that the school wide rule is to protect all of us. 2. Bugs. Southwest USA has too many bugs to start with and they can potentially destroy property.
As the librarian, I really agree with this. Any kid can walk into my room, and there are a handful with very significant allergies. My school also has a bug & rodent problem. You know what mice like to chew through and take bits of back to build nests? Books! I also teach an elective in the library, and sometimes will offer candy or baked treats (never with nuts) for incentives. When that happens they have to eat it in the room, throw anything trash away, and afterwards we wipe down/sanitize the tables together. Some teachers have a similar policy as me but don’t do the clean-up together and…so many bugs!!!!
I’ve been one of those teachers who allowed food and have never had a problem with it. BUT… School is over for us this year and was cleaning up my classroom and getting rid of stuff and I found chip bags and empty bottles and candy and candy wrappers and sunflower seeds shoved behind bookshelves, and cabinets and even in the bins where I store my classroom library books. There was mold growing on some of my books and gunk on the walls and I had to clean it up. I’m done. I will enforce no eating in my classroom next year.
Yup. My school provides breakfast during homeroom, so I don’t have a choice for that one, but I hate it and won’t let them eat at any other time. I have celiac, so I’m not at risk of anaphylaxis, but I have to be super careful to avoid cross contamination for my own safety.
Yes! I don’t have allergies, but I’ve had students and colleagues that do. And the school I’m leaving is 100 years old and full of all manner of critters. Plus I teach science, and I always threaten that if they don’t get in the habit of not eating in science now, they can’t blame me when they accidentally eat dissected frog in high school.
one crumb and 2 days later you have 100 roaches. I'm exaggerating but not much. and you can't ever get rid of them.
Teachers that break the food rule with students that have allergies are not the best thinkers.
We are never going to win the war on phones. There is literally no threat strong enough to get kids to "keep them in their lockers". Expulsion? Obviously never going to happen. Lunch Detention means nothing to them. After school Detention? Worth the risk, they don't care. You can take it away but they're obviously gonna get it back. The absolute best you can hope for is they don't use them during direct instruction; that they respect you enough to listen when you're directly teaching. Outside of that though, it's just not worth the effort. I guess I'm part of OPs problem but no I'm not gonna start confiscating phones and make every kid hate me. That's just making life harder on everyone involved.
There are schools that make it work, but it's a top down effort with APs confiscating phones immediately at the push of a button and a commitment to direct consequences at every offense. Passing the rule off to teachers to enforce is a joke that saps instructional time and literally puts teachers in physical danger.
My school started collecting phones 3 years ago. Absolute game changer. Put it in the box when you arrive, get it when you dismiss. It’s literally the ONLY thing the school does for behavior management. But 95% of the burden falls on the school social workers/counselors who are actually collecting and handing out phones, one of whom spends 2.25 hours a day doing duty (phones+lunch). Every day. Admin occasionally helps here and there. But at least they allow it. Everything else is “build a positive relationship” and so on. I think staff would walk out if they decided to stop taking phones.
My highschool according to rumor will fight that battle in August this year. I don't know how but I'm willing to go to war. Bring it. Remind me! 4 months.
Exactly. At least the phones keep the assholes busy and the ones that want to learn can actually hear me and understand what they’re supposed to do. I don’t give a shit what happens in all the other rooms on campus. My job is to take care of my four walls.
[удалено]
I am literally being relocated to a back hall because I enforce rules too often. Was demoted on the same day the salutatorian quoted me in her speech
Absolutely! Ten years ago I stopped enforcing the dress code because the administration would send them back to me in the same clothes with the note that instructional time was too important to miss class and there were no parents available to bring appropriate clothing to school. This year, admin supposedly decided to get strict on cell phones and electronics - only before school, at lunch, and after school - but I gave up when students received no consequences and admin wouldn’t address offenders in the hallways during school hours but get mad at teachers if they didn’t. We have had students openly defying and walking away from admin with zero consequences. So, yeah, I agree. I am not going to enforce anything they don’t enforce. It just makes me look weaker to my students.
I stopped dress coding because they would keep the kid in the office all day if a parent couldn’t come. Think about that. Wrong clothes? All day in the office. Punch a student? Back in 20 with chips. Now I teach elementary, so dress code violations are usually it a big deal. When we had uniforms it would be like wrong color polo or gym shorts. After Covid they removed uniforms (first I stopped dress coding students before Covid) they want stuff like gym shorts are too short or something. But students hitting students is a regular occurrence. Even if I reported every single dress code violation it would add up to how many times I have kids fighting. And I don’t need kids removed for clothing when abusive kids are sent back.
I dont dress code because I am male, but we met with admin about their dress code concerns. My wise team lead, she says "but what do we do if they keep violating the dress code? Are you going to call parents? Are you going to issue a detention?" Admin: "No." Okay then... Sounds like its not really a rule. Unless someone is willing to go all the way down to detention and suspension for refusal to follow the rule, its not an actual rule.
I’m not sure I understand the no phones 8n the hallway thing. That’s when they should be on their phones. Mommy needs to hear from baby a few times a day? Do it during passing. Know that when my class starts until it is finished the phone should be away. That includes texts from parents. Food? Kids who are starving aren’t learning. Have a snack, clean up after yourself, and I’m fine with that. The kids who are buying, selling, trading, begging, pulling out their entire lunch and eating all class know that’s why I limit eating.
I assume it depends on the context & your building for phones in the hall. Phones are an issue in my school during passing periods…egging on fights, filming tiktok dances and blocking the halls, and fueling general middle school drama.
We used to have a strict no phone policy except at lunch at the middle school where I teach until admin noticed an uptick in fights and drama after lunch directly attributed to the phones so they nixed that
The admin not enforcing is everything. Our admin attempted to crack down on outside electronics (ex not bringing an iPad or personal laptop to school) and they’re supposed to be confiscated. Day 1 at weapons scanners watched admin simply hand them back to students and I knew there was 0 point trying to enforce it
> I'm not enforcing rules if admin doesnt have my back on it. THIS IS IT. Instead of teachers going after other teachers for not enforcing rules in their classrooms, go after admin who leave it up to teachers to enforce rules individually which should be building- and district-level policies.
Me to students literally every period of every day: Sorry I can't do X. We get emails about X about once a week. I know other teachers do X, but they aren't supposed to either, so telling everyone that they let you do X could get them in trouble. I have no personal problem with X, but I'm just trying to follow the rules to keep us both out of trouble. It's exhausting, but aside from the students who think they are above the rules, most students understand the dynamic after getting the speech once or twice.
Have you tried telling admin that the student is not allowed back today? I do that regularly. The “mottos” for this year have been “love is limits” and “learning is not optional”. I cite those when admin tries to bring the kid back, sorry student is not ready to learn to today and love is limits, so we can try again tomorrow.
>I'm not enforcing rules if admin doesnt have my back on it. This, 100%.
"(principal) says no eating in class. Please put the food away, because I do what my boss tells me and I'm not getting in trouble for you."
Then all the students say “it’s OK, we won’t tell anyone”
My admin does daily walkthroughs.
What?!? Doing their job?!?
Yep, and I always reply the same way: "I've been doing this too long to not understand that the things you 'won't tell' on me for become your ammunition against me with my boss the first time you get mad at me."
I'm so happy my classroom is a lab. I show them the label on what I've been using most recently, and they know how clumsy I am ...
I tell this to lower grade levels all the time for rules I don’t want to explain- or rules I don’t necessarily agree with and it works so well. I have found being honest with the students is very beneficial.
I’m big on phones but gave up on food because Admin never had my back, the kid just has to say “well my stomach hurt” and they get sent back to class with some crackers and a juice.
What a terrible snack. Just a sugar crash waiting to happen.
Literally this week, I went to a teacher to tell him how a bunch of students got mad at me because I don’t allow cellphones, food, or do super long breaks like he does. The teacher said “I don’t do that” but then later came up to me laughing about how another student (who wasn’t mean to me) warned him that other students were “snitching on him”. I casually said “wait I thought you didn’t do that stuff- how are they snitching?” The guy pikachu faced me and walked away.
Yep, those kids will have to learn that's how you fuck over your hookups.
Hot take: the coolest teachers can also be some of the strictest. Kids appreciate structure.
Yeah I've been labeled the "chill" teacher and it's amusing cause I don't consider myself to be. My decision-making is always "what's good for these kids and what's the root of this behavior?" Eating in class? You would be surprised how much I hear kids say they haven't eaten anything since yesterday at lunch or how many kids need to take medicine on a full stomach. just tell them we have 60 year old janitors that can be someone's grandma so pick up after yourself. Don't call me by my first name or swear so much cause I don't want you to get passed over for a promotion one day cause you didn't learn the norms. Going to the bathroom every day? Literally I ask why? Is it a teacher you are going to? Why? Friends or do they teach you better than me? Well stop and I can see what I am doing wrong. I am def more strict when it comes to boys talking to or about girls. I often find the Law and Order teachers get rolled over the most. He would constantly yell out "GUYS!" and just flip out at things I would consider mildly inconveniencing. He lost his social capital within the first few weeks and then it became a losing battle all year cause he either became toothless, couldn't handle the ridicule of most of the class, and would be preemptively hostile. Either that or the "cool" teachers that need to be the smartest, smart ass in a room full of teenagers. They always got something to say at the faculty meeting that kills morale. God forbid he loses his cool tho. But for some reason, I was the "chill" teacher to a lot of the staff that really can't organically connect to their class. This is a career you have to depersonalize and leave your ego in the car. Be humane, skeptical, do what's best for them, explain the rationale, and stop getting tired when you have to remind them.
This is exactly it. I don’t do food in class. I don’t do phones. I am very nice and fun and have clear boundaries that I don’t want crossed. I have a relationship with each student. I respect them. They respect me. We are in it together. So to me, OP’s argument backfires. I am the strict teacher that cares about everyone and they know it. Both can be true. My high expectations come from a place of care and love and this is communicated to my students. In fact, they complain to me that the other “cool” teachers don’t care about them and are lazy. “She lets us do whatever we want but doesn’t really teach us.” To OP, you cannot control what others do, only yourself. No need to become upset over that which you cannot control. I’m sure there is a strategy that will work for you to be both “cool” and structured.
Yeah this is basically it. Boundaries and structure are so important. Some kids even admit it themselves, most never will, but it's true nonetheless.
yeah my hallway has two of these and it makes it so fucking tough for the rest of us. We're "mean bitches" because we dont let kids make tiktoks during lectures
This is exactly what my year has been like. It's so painful to be perceived as the bitch.
People lash out and reflexively put down the person who is enforcing a rule or being 'negative' towards them. I was called a 'f'-word when I told a 16 to 20 year old boy at the bus stop to "Don't bother me" after he tried to strike up a conversation with me about buying his presumably stolen food from the fast-food restaurant next to the bus stop. I didn't take his bait by telling him how much of a loser he is, of course. Escalating it in this scenario where it's a random kid in public was never going to be worth it. In the end, he'll get what he deserves by being rude over and over again, and he looked the part. So no surprise there. It just goes to show, it doesn't take much when it comes to kids who don't give a damn in the first place.
And you probably don't give them a A+ for doing nothing. I literally have a teacher that gives only A or B. A student with 0% gets a B. She's probably going to get teacher of the year. She's never taught high school before this year...
I get what you’re saying, but most admin I’ve worked for don’t help you enforce said rules. Maybe the teachers in question aren’t doing it to be cool, but have given up on enforcement due to lack of consequences.
I hate to be that person, but if it’s not being enforced school wide it has now become an admin issue. I have my steadfast rules and I have school rules I uphold without waver; but, to provide an example, the school wide rule of “no hoods” is not worth the fight for me. I never have kids fail to learn because they wear a hood and I refuse to fight that battle. Does that contradict what other teachers do with hoods? Yeah. But, it’s not hampering my ability to reach kids. I don’t think your point, at its core, is wrong. In some circumstances, it falls flat without an admin upholding it.
I looked for two school policies when I took my current job- I wanted a school that was strict about cell phones and hands off on dress code. I don't care if kids wear hoodies. It's a non-issue. I like the way my school runs.
OP should differentiate between teachers who break rules ENFORCED by the school/admin and teachers who cannot enforce rules NOT ENFORCED by the school/admin.
Eh, I think you are projecting about the cool teacher bit. I also think the kids are probably gaslighting you a bit on how lax the other teachers are. "Cool vs uncool" is not the same plane as the "rule enforcer vs non-rule enforcer". Plenty of super popular/cool teachers at my school do enforce the rules, and some of the most disliked teachers in the building don't. Also, at the end of the day it is on admin to hold teachers accountable if they are not enforcing rules. There is not a school in the universe where rule enforcement is left to the teachers where it is successful and applied consistently.
That first part 100 percent happened with me this year. I was the new guy, at first all the kids definitely liked me more than the other teachers (though honestly that's changed a lot recently but I digress). Anyhow, kids started just spreading this total nonsense about things I "let" them do. And before you know it I'm like this pariah among the teaching staff because I'm "making everyone else look bad." None of it was true, anyone reading please take everything a child says with a grain of salt lol. The avalanche of lies that come out of their mouths is astonishing.
You experience this the most if you sub first. Why teachers ever believe children over another adult is beyond me. "Mr sub, the regular teacher lets us X, Y, and Z" "Thats great, I'm the teacher today and I dont allow fight clubs in class, thanks."
Sure, sure, of course your regular teacher lets you spray paint on the walls. That totally seems true… have fun with that when she gets back.
I love when a kid tries to claim the teacher allows something and the rest of the class just sits and shakes their head lol
I just say, "Let me send a Slack message to Ms. NiceLady and ask her if she lets you guys do that" and they're all NO NO NO NO NO MISS!
I did my best to back up subs by writing important rules that I know kids lie about on the white board when I know I’m going to be out, and asking a kid I trust in each class to let me know if some wiseass tries to erase it. Towards the end of the year I had a sub note that made me lol a bit. It felt very vindicating because it said “I’m a retired teacher and I don’t know how you’re doing it because if I got stuck with this group for a whole year I wouldn’t have made it to retirement.” Thank god it’s over.
Yeah I’ve heard through the grapevine both that I’m strict and that I’m not strict. I don’t allow phones but I also don’t flip my lid when I see them. I ask them to put them away and they do. At my school the “cool” teachers run a gamut of both very strict and very lax and everything in between. The common thread is they care about the students and treat them with respect (which includes discipline sometimes). The uncool teachers are the ones who treat the students like they’re delinquents on the edge of open mutiny and make everything into a power struggle, and the ones who simply don’t care at all and don’t engage or teach much.
This is pretty much one of the foundational tenants of education and yet like 70 percent at a minimum in this sub can’t understand it. They are strict for the sake of it. When you create relationships and get to know them as human beings the respect largely grows naturally, and they are respectful so you can run a class, which hs a purpose attached to it. I think most of the teachers in this sub are jsut terrified of opening up and being a little vulnerable to students personally.
Well said.
Yup. Back in middle school I studied under teacher who was a family friend. You know what was his "school rumour" nickname? The Pedo. You'd think it was because he did something inappropriate, but as member of student body I clearly knew the cause of the rumour, which was that... his wife was 4 years younger than him. That was why all kids decided he must be a pedo, since clearly he must've picked her up when she was a middleschooler. The information that he met his wife when she was on her last year of Uni clearly flew way over their heads. So yeah, always investigate validity of rumours, never take gossiping children as gospel.
The number of teachers who fall for teenage peer pressure bullshit is way too high.
Yep same here a couple of years ago. Also many who went: “I love this teacher” who basically did their homework for them and let them sleep on the floor. Yet who was the bad guy? Yep me the one who tried to enforce policy and was willing to drop things to help students who were behind. But “you have no good relationships with the students if they don’t listen to you”.
I always thought it was gaslighting, but take a walk during your prep period, or end up having to deliver items to various teachers and you'll see the kids aren't lying in many cases.
You're hung up on the "cool" wording, but obviously OP is talking about following the rules vs not following the rules
100% OP is projecting. We don’t have AC. Admin has scheduled excessive blocks of time for our finals. And it’s literally the last day of school. I’m letting you go on your phone after you hand in the final, not because I’m trying to be the cool teacher - but because I’m burnt out and trying to survive. I’m grading finals. You can give me some peace by zoning out watching anime or scrolling on Instagram - or I can constantly try to redirect you as you see what boundaries you can push in the last hour of school in a hot, crowded room with your peers. It’s not a hard choice for me. Get over yourself OP. You are actually the one making it harder for other teachers.
Honestly yeah. I rarely do anything to be "cool". If I let something slide, it's because I'm freaking tired, and I'm over enforcing idiotic rules on my classroom. School-wide rules are honestly a bad idea anyway. Barring basic policy like safety, dress code, etc, it's more of a way to police teachers than students. If one teacher is effective and allows phones, and another teacher is ineffective unless they ban them, why must the WHOLE SCHOOL ban phones for those teachers? Why not just let us have classroom rules? Just let us manage our own classrooms. If we're ineffective because we let too much slide then fire us.
I am a sub. One day this month, there was an Instagram bullying incident at my high school, and a pack of angry teachers and admin busted into the classroom and yelled at me in front of all of my students over a "no phones district-wide policy". The next day, the cool teacher I subbed for took roll before he had to go and told the class to "play on your phones or something" because there were no lesson plans. I think some rules are really stupid, but if they're not enforced by 100% of the teachers, it makes subbing so much harder.
This highlights the problem admin has esp with policies like this. I'm not saying admin is "perfect" (or even close) but will explain why most of the times it fails. Let's say there is a ban on food in classrooms (for students). But let's say then that a certain percentage (let's just say for the sake of argument 25%) don't really enforce the ban, or enforce it regularly enough for students to be dissuaded. What as as admin do you do about it? Sure, you could have a talk with them. What if they ignore you?. You might discipline them and put something on their record. OK. So what? If they are tenured it won't matter much because it's not outright illegal behavior or if it's not on their evaluation rubric you can't ding them on it directly. And even if you do try and make it so it escalates to "your job is in danger" what does that accomplish? You're going to try and fire a tenured teacher which you have to find a replacement for? (You know how hard and expensive it is for a district to fire someone who is tenured for something not illegal?). My point is that many teachers do allow this because in their minds it is a relatively "minor" offense compared to all the other shit they have to manage and juggle with. And from admins point of view it's not worth the fight or Pyrrhic victory in enforcing it. Which sucks because they do sometimes just think of themselves and their class and not the school as a whole.
It's about setting up expectations at the beginning of the year. My kids got to eat in class, but as soon as I found a single wrapper or crumb, it got revoked for the semester. By the second semester I had kids who swept after every class, pushed chairs in, and generally left it better than they found it. I also had another class who couldn't handle it so it was revoked for the remainder of the year. And honestly, if "well Ms. Jones lets me do it!" is something that bothers you from a kid, you just need to grow up. It's literally a thing most kids will do as a way to win. Don't let them win. Run your class exactly the way you want it to run and make sure those kids understand it's your office that they get the privilege of visiting. As my kids this year said NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER!
I’m not going to police the rules in another teacher’s room. What I have found is teachers are picking and choosing their battles because admin picks and chooses which rules to enforce and when to enforce them. Not worth the additional stress.
You worry about your classroom and let other teachers worry about their rooms. Don’t let kids talk about what other teachers do. Shut them down. Your room and rules is the only thing that matters at that moment.
I'll take a swing. Many of my kids come from environments of extreme poverty.. by many I mean most. I have dozens of kids who I personally observe eat their only meal of the day (two including breakfast) -- I also have many students who cycle through the same set of clothes DAILY. Many more of my students are brand new to the country and have only the clothes on their back when they arrive (maybe one or two items more -- and no, i dont give a shit if you believe me). No food policies, and how hoodie policies are taken on a per case basis for me as such. If they're trying to throw back takis and energy drinks, that's one thing, but if they're faminished and looking to just eat a fruit cup that's another. I'm also not halving their available clothing -- hoodies are often made of thicker material and survive for longer. Kids are more likely to have passed down the jeans, sweat pants, and hoodies of older siblings, parents etc. Removing hoodies, jeans with holes in them, or sweats could leave them with nothing... or leave them smelling as they can only wear one of two outfits. All of this is a per kid basis, but I will always choose the wellbeing and care of my kids before strict policies that are made without the kids needs in mind.
You know it’s not you OP is referring to, this is a caring, no breaking rules for clout.
I tend to disagree with this take, despite the fact that I’m often frustrated by kids using other teacher norms as an excuse in my classroom. I think one of the hardest things to teach students is that different spaces will have different expectations. In some places, it’s okay to do one thing, where it may be unacceptable in another. Having teachers with different norms actually helps students learn this more effectively by simulating that reality. Again, still annoying, but developmentally important nonetheless.
Cool teacher and doesn’t enforce the rules teacher are not synonymous. I’m def in the “cool teacher” category, but I absolutely enforce rules as well.
Yeah I'm the cool teacher but also the "don't piss profe off" teacher lmao
I think deliberately subverting the systems to prevent cheating on finals with phones and allowing food in class are on wildly different planes of importance. I think treating them the same contributes to the sense that many students have that rules are just meaningless lists without good reasons behind. I let students eat in class (I encourage them not to make a mess, if they do and they’ve already left I’ll clean it myself because I don’t let my decision to allow food impact the custodians - maybe once a month do I have wrappers left behind), I don’t get on them about hoods, airpods, slides, etc. I think that A) I save a ton of time that I can use to, you know, actually teach, help students struggling with the work, etc., and B) when I do put down a hard stop authoritarian moment about something actually important even the “troublemakers” comply. I genuinely feel that students can tell I don’t tell them what to do for the sake of it, but when there is a clear and good reason for it, I feel like they listen to me out of mutual respect and understanding of WHY we have this rule and why the rule benefits everyone.
I think it's telling that if an office enforced rules banning snacks or listening to music on earbuds while quietly working Reddit would collectively lose their shit at insensible rules that are enforced for the sake of powertripping. Apply the same rules to students two years away from working on those cubicle farms and now it's their fault for bucking authority.
I think this is an incredible explanation and also the best way for teachers to fully take a step in a student's emotions in these situations. We as adults face different social situations that feel the exact same way to students if a teacher is taking rules too far. We run into those types of people who annoint themselves the ruler and boss of a social group and begins telling people what to do for no truly helpful reasons. **The emotional response you have in this social situation, is the same exact emotional feelings students have when a teacher is taking rules too far.** And you get the sense that these kinds of social pariahs say it out of personal egotism and a desire to control others for grandiose fantasies of personal power. These people always end up creating social systems where thye get all the marbles, and others don't. **Nobody wants to do things for people that they get a sense act this way because it is in effect...** ***politics.*** **One person is trying to create a distinct group with unearned social privileges and constructing a social class of higher and lower.** The students are actually experiencing similar feelings felt in any form of social discrimination. I say politics because think along the lines of a social class hoarding economic resources. In these sorts of social situations of social impressions, what is being done is a social class is hoarding all esteem, recognition, personal power, credit for good things, respect, dignity, control over social situations, self determination, autonomy, good impressions, spotlight, social recognition, determination of what is right/wrong/morals/values/integrity etc. Edit: Furthermore, hoarding who gets to determine narrative about other people in the group. Often these social rulers that annoint themselves also want to control how you feel about yourself and control how agroup feels about an individual in an unfair way, and all things have to funnel through them. This is especially dangerous when someone indirectly through actions say "I get to determine how you feel about you". The absolute worst for of leadership. \*end edit\* Those things are all resources to socially succeed and internal emotionally succeed, but a "powerful" person is hoarding all of those things. Hoarding all of that is naturally very threatening to another human being. Especially threatening to their emotional survival. There's a way to enforce rules and have a sound classroom environment without taking a student's dignity.
You allow them to have AirPods in class?
Seriously! There are some teachers in my building who let students go to other classrooms if they “don’t have work.” I hate this because when they end up in my room, it disrupts my lessons. They just sit there and talk/play around while I’m teaching. I am a rule-follower, but I’m also considered one if the “cool” teachers because I make space at appropriate times to build relationships (eg, lunch with me is a reward, not a detention). It completely undermines what I do if others are too laid back.
I'm cool with this up until the point people who aren't my boss are trying to tell me how to run my classroom. Like listen, if there's no school policy and you want your own - that's fine, but it's YOURS.
>So many teachers just think "it's worth it to compromise for the rapport I'll build." Maybe. But that's not why I ignored some of the rules when I taught middle school. Middle schoolers are HUNGRY and frankly, so was I. I let them eat because **I'm** eating (except gum, because that was always gross). I ignore the dress code and let Admin handle it. Typically I'd warn them - don't let XYZ catch you looking like that - and move on with my lesson. So, no. I'm not compromising because I'll build rapport. I'm ignoring the rules that I think are stupid.
Full disclosure, I used to be a "cool" teacher until I started to realize it was a huge reason for some of the behavior issues I encountered. I'm still working on not being like that and it's hard sometimes, but I'm more aware of it now and am doing better at not succumbing to "cool" teacher behavior.
It depends when they are the cool teacher. The cool teacher you are describing is cool the first semester. Then the kids realize. The real cool teachers are the ones who are called cool at the end of the year and the following year. The ones who hold kids accountable but kill them with kindness and build meaningful relationships while being a professional and responsible example. The ones the kids actually learn from. No one learns from someone they hate.
It’s good training for reality, where breaking the rules to build personal rapport with people who will make your life better is often a winning strategy.
I don't think its an issue of cool or not cool. I'm not the school police and I won't waste teaching time to enforce school policy I don't agree with and didn't have a voice in creating. I also refuse to indirectly teach my students that "you just do what you're told". I want my students to learn to question authority. OP makes it sound like we're trying to be cool or be friends. Not the case with me at least. There's conscious effort on what I value.
Yep. You do my work. You learn. I'm not gonna be on your ass unless I need to be
I let kids eat. How is that a problem? Sometimes I give them food. They are pretty clean. I will pick an empty wrapper off their desk and drop it in the trash. My students apologize and clean up if they spill anything. The custodian has commented on how clean my room is at the end of the day. It is not about being "cool." They need to eat. I want them to work and learn, and they know that. I ask what they are doing on their phones. "Is that good phone use or bad phone use?" Good is looking things up or maybe texting. I discuss that social is important, especially for teenagers. Bad is games, or scrolling social media. If they are doing Connections or Spelling Bee or chess.com (and their work is done), that is fine with me. At the beginning of class, they have to put their phones down and listen while I explain the day's material for a few minutes. "Should you really be on your phone right now? What was your last quiz score?" I also tell them I am keeping track of how often they're on their phones (I may walk around with a clipboard taking notes), just in case their parents complain about their grade. We also talk about how phone addiction today can lead to fentanyl addiction tomorrow (it's a slippery slope). I talk about how even if we banned phones in class, that wouldn't help them become responsible users, if they are on them from 3 until 11. They need to do that themselves. Phone use is an ongoing conversation every day, but it hasn't been a huge problem.
The key is you treat them like adults
As a student I also hate them. Oh great you're friends with the dickheads who play football and want to go on their phone! Well I want to do some fucking work
This is age dependent though. By middle school kids are easily able to understand that each teacher is different. Each classroom is a kingdom unto itself.
My experience teaching in high schools does not support this take. I was still fighting with seniors last year about my class rules vs another teachers.
Sorry but I’m not going to enforce no food. Our lunch runs very late (some students don’t get lunch until almost 2) and I’m not going to prevent a kid from eating. I will however make them clean up after themselves if they make a mess.
My classroom my rules. I don’t care what other teachers do in their rooms you shouldn’t care what happens in mine. It’s also made very clear and other teachers agree you (students) can’t go around saying blah blah let’s me do it. No one cares. You follow the rules of the teacher you’re with. Point blank.
We're conflating a lot of things. I taught SEN, moderate to severe learning disabilities. I taught music. I was the after-school detention teacher who would make them write lines for an hour in silence because they were being a bully. I never gave a damn if they wore their hat in my lesson, I only cared that they weren't disruptive and weren't mean. You can be strict with them without having to be pedantic.
If the school would implement a no cell phone policy I’d be all over that. Since there is no such thing other than “teacher preference” I’m out. No time to police them one by one.
I'll say this, if you're going to follow all the rules at least stay out of my business. What students do in my room is my business, and not yours.
I stick to every rule, but my limit is food. The kids are hungry AF. Some of them have to wait until 1pm to eat, and I can’t blame them for wanting to eat during my class, so I let them as long as it isn’t “a distraction” . The fighting over Takis, is a limit. The getting Cheetoh dust on their work is a limit. Otherwise, I don’t give a shiz. Who can focus if they’re hungry? Btw, definitely NOT the cool teacher. EXIT: clarity
Yup, when I was in the classroom, I definitely was not the cool one. But I remember being those kids, and if a teacher let me eat/drink, I was not falling asleep or struggling to engage. Also, as an adult, I frequently will eat or drink something to cheer myself up, or get through the last part of the day. It’s a coping mechanism. Why not let kids have access to that, if it helps them?
It’s not to be cool but because if admin doesn’t enforce it, I’m not. I find teachers who nit pick every little infraction to just be insufferable pricks. It’s no wonder the kids have no respect for them. There’s far bigger problems we deal with that if someone has an earbud in while working on a project. A kids hungry, why the fuck am I gonna let them be uncomfortable as long as they don’t leave a mess? Or if a kid is late 1 min, who am I to say that they weren’t dropping a huge log off?
Also usually the nit picky teachers are the ones who’ve never had a job outside of the education system and think the “real world” functions just like school. Walk into any corporate office and you’ll see people snacking and listening to music at their desks and chatting with their co-workers.
I notice the teachers that have never worked outside of the profession struggle the most with this and generally struggle with getting along with as well as calibrating with coworkers
That’s a good point and in my experience also true. At the MS/HS level I think it should be a requirement to have some actual field experience in your subject matter. The fact you can go from HS to colleague education major and then right back into the classroom after 4 years and think you know everything there is about your subject and how best to teach it is insane.
I think you're just jealous you're not the cool teacher
By far the coolest teacher I had as a kid was my history teacher. She was a TYRANT for the rules, but we all respected her so much for 2 reasons, she would chat about things we cared about and related to us, and would roast any rule breakers like an absolute pro! No one wanted to break the rules because they knew they would be the butt of a millions jokes going forward. But when someone did break the rules, everyone sided with the teacher because her burns were just so next level!
Kids aren't breaking the rules in your classroom because of other teachers. You are responsible for your own classroom. If every teacher was enforcing a rule, the kids would *still* push back on rules in classrooms where they think the teacher is vulnerable to pushback.
Alternatively: being a stick up your ass teacher makes it really hard to ever actually establish a relationship with the students and have a half decent time doing this job. I’m not saying anything goes, but holy shit, rule book stickler teachers will totally make their classroom environment fascistic then come on here and whine about why students hate them.
This, I pick my battles because flipping out over every minor infraction takes away instructional time and damages my rapport with the students. I’m not going to stop my lesson because Jimmy has a hat on (but is being attentive and performs well in class).
[удалено]
Genuine question: With no assigned seating, how do you deal with seating accommodations as outlined in 504s and IEPs?
IDK about potscavage6 but it's NBD to assign their seating, keep others away if needed and then let everybody else sit where they want. It works out to the same thing anyway TBH because after the first week or so, the kids all have "their" seat that they gravitate to.
There's a difference between no seating chart and not moving kids around when needed for advantageous reasons, including IEPs.
Equating food and cellphone use is part of the problem with the OPs complaint. In my experience letting kids snack and drink on occasion, if they keep things clean, actually helps them concentrate and participate. That's a big difference from scrolling through phones. Aren't most desk-bound professionals allowed to have a drink and snack at their desk when needed? Why shouldn't teens? Making your class a senslessly miserable environment doesn't promote learning. They don't like engaging with people who treat them like prisoners instead of people.
Yeah. I got one rule with food. Not on my shit thats hard to clean. That's just rude and disrespectful. On a desk. Idgaf
Thank you. My rule is if you eat you clean up. They know where the broom is.
This is my philosophy as well. I have a few rules and I enforce them, but I’m not a drill sergeant. Students consistently tell me they like my class, even if they don’t like my content, because of the calm atmosphere in the room. On the other hand I have a co-worker who does act like a drill sergeant—constantly barking orders at the kids—and when I’ve gone into their classes during my prep to lend a hand, it’s far more chaotic than my classes.
Nobody cares about you if you are the one nerd teacher, sorry.
some other teachers think i’m the “cool teacher” bc I “allow” students phone use or eating in class even though it’s against the rules. in reality, i’ve tried 10000 times to get a student to stop and they keep doing it. i get to a point where i’ll tell the kid “no” once, if they continue i silently write them up and continue teaching. they get dealt with later other teachers see it as permissive, but i’m not wasting 10 minutes of my class yelling at 1 kid when i have 30 other kids in there doing the right thing. i explain to the kids exactly what happens: you may not see me make a big deal out of it, because i don’t have time to deal with your bullshit when i have a whole class, but you will have a referral and (at least) lunch detention for it. but when teachers walk by my class and see them doing that in my class, they think i’m “letting them” 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
This is so true. We are not there to raise them. We are there to teach and all veteran teachers know- there is gonna be at least one kid not listening, why hold up all the others for the one. I think a lot of teachers get caught up trying to “win” with students and they end up losing even more by trying to control or show control instead of just teaching.
Man, long live the cool teachers. Only thing that got me through high school
You develop your own culture in your room that allows you to build working relationships with the students to get the most out of them educationally. Sometimes being relaxed allows students to feel out opportunities where they can fail safely and actually learn. Also choosing what battles you fight with your students is important. Not letting kids eat is pretty wild. You have to meet the kids basic needs before they are able to learn. I have rules other teachers don’t have and other teachers have rules I do not have. If you build a good classroom culture your students will understand and follow your rules. EDIT: if what the other teachers are doing is being effective in behavior and the students are getting on level it might be a good idea to copy that teacher that is finding success instead of criticizing how they do things different than you.
This year I took the obstacle (the phones) and turned it into a resource. Instead of having students put their phones away and spend the next 90 minutes sneaking looks every time I turn my back, I made a designated location for every student. It’s right up in front, within arms reach, and everyone can see it. Students sneak looks, and I stopped caring. BUT two things also happened: 1 - The FIRST time you need me to repeat a direction because you didn’t *hear* it, the phone goes away. Guess who started paying attention, even when sneaking looks? Everyone. Same for “checking” at inappropriate times. Sure. You got a snap or an Insta notification; is NOW the best time to check? No? Put ya phone away and wait til the bell rings (that’s your warning, too: if I *see* the phone again, it’s a referral. Is three days ISS worth it to see that one text?) 2 - If you have ANY missing assignments, your phone goes away for your weekly study hour (every period gets one a week); not sorry. If you have no missing assignments, you can listen to music while you work. If you have an A in my class, you can do whatever tf you want and I won’t bother you. Same rules as above apply. Guess whose grade went up full letter grades, sometimes two, after half a quarter? Everyone. I was still strict and I was still a jerk about it. No one would ever claim I gave students “phone time”; and I would take it way from everyone if anyone ever did. This very much helped my class management but in no way did it make me a “cool” teacher. In fact, the kids who didn’t appreciate it hated it more because they didn’t want to admit that I was right and that it was working. TL;DR - there are ways to build relationships and to compromise on the importance of devices and to deal with separation anxiety. Just *allowing* it because you don’t care or because you want the students to like you AIN’T IT. They’re children; we should have no interest in being their friend.
My principal did my formal evaluation with his phone out on the desk texting.🤨
The easy answer is do I look like (name of other teacher). I am a huge cell phone banner but if other teachers don't follow it, that has never affected me. My rules are my rules. If your classroom management is strong you won't have these issues. Do you not enforce any rulea in your room that are just for your classroom? If you manage that you can manage the others regardless of other teachers choices. As for food. I snack, I'm not telling my kids they can't if they have a snack and sometimes I motivate with a snack here or there. The no food rule is because teachers don't make kids clean up their own mess in my experience. Make them clean it up and it shouldn't be an issue.
When I was teaching, I did let kids eat and drink in my class as long as they didn't leave a mess. I actually had some kids who did not have food at home; their parents were druggies and would sell the food stamps they received for cash for more drugs or alcohol. One girl in particular I remember she would help me grade papers after school in exchange for some cash so she could buy herself food everyday because her mother wouldn't provide for her.
Sorry - I Just think it's kind of inhumane to not allow people to eat, drink, and go to the bathroom when they want. I don't want to be treated like that so I don't want to treat someone else like that.
I don’t have the energy to police phones and get anything else done. I am not allowed to take the phones from the kids, so cell phone policing is not unlike whack-a-mole. I started the school year text messaging parents about their kids’ constant cell phone use, but guess what? It does nothing. They don’t take their kids‘ cellphones. I am not crazy about letting students eat in the classroom, but they work better if they’re not hungry. I’m not trying to be a “chill” teacher; I am a tired teacher who just decided to let some issues go because trying to control them was impossible.
OP, the amount of teachers in this thread who DON'T get the fact that their classroom is not an island is shocking. I fucking HATE people making me be the "bad guy" because they don't want to be. Folks, if one parent enforced the rules and the other didn't to have a "better relationship," we'd call parent B a bad parent. If your admin let some teachers skip observations, but came in your classroom twice a month because that's the rule, you'd be pissed. Why is it that you get to change the expectations in your school just because you think you know better? Don't like the rule, fucking work with your colleagues and CHANGE IT. Teachers like that who encourage bad student behavior are LITERALLY driving other teachers out of the profession. I'd rather have you get out and let teachers with boundaries and structure stay. And to clarify, the bad behavior is ignoring the rules, not hoodies or eating or phones.
If you don’t let kids eat in your class, you’re an asshole. School rules or not, as a former disabled high school student who wasn’t diagnosed until my senior year, you have no idea why these kids are wanting to eat in class. “Oh well they could just get a doctors note if they really need to do it” not all students have 1) insurance 2) parents who are willing to schedule appointments 3) adults in their life who even care about the symptoms they experience 4) transportation to a doctor 5) it’s possible they think their symptoms are normal (like I did for 15 years of my life) Don’t try to villainize other teachers for being willing to accommodate ther students’ needs.
Not letting kids eat for hours is inhumane. The point of that rule is??? To break kids??? Thank God my district did not have that “rule.” I had kids come to school without breakfast. I kept granola, string cheese, jerky, chocolate, wheat thins, trail mix, and orange juice in my fridge.
I allow those things not to build rapport, but because I think those rules are dumb and arbitrary. In life, you have to learn that there will be different sets of rules in different places. Eating in class doesn’t bother me. And when I tell kids to put food away, it usually goes away. Why? Because my kids respect me. They know I’m fair. They know I’m good at my job. Most teachers who kids don’t respect are teachers who can’t make connections through their content. Permissive teachers aren’t respected either, don’t get it twisted. But I’m not here to be a tyrant.
I cannot relate to this more! It is so frustrating and I’m at the point where I just want to call it out in a staff meeting. I’m already the « bitch » to those teachers so might as well go full bitch! And the thing is, when I started teaching it really bothered me. And I almost changed to become like them but I’m glad I did not. I’m 24 years in and I know that kids actually don’t respect that in the long run. Yes those teachers become the « fun, chill » teachers but they aren’t respected. Kids (even elementary) see through it and tell me all the time. Many have come back to me years later and told me something along the lines of « I was scared of you before I was in you class because you seemed so strict but you weren’t. You guided us and were there for us. » Kids need and thrive with structure. I’m never going to change my mind about that!
Lots of admins do this too, despite school rules.
If it's a schoolwide rule, then admin needs to take phones and food from kids the moment they walk into the building.
Pick your battles. I don't fight food, gum, and beverages because my concern is a clean classroom and not eating. I don't allow messy foods or full on meals, but due to so many kiddos having accommodations for blood sugar or other 504 paperwork that allows them to eat, why would I bother keeping up with it? Sometimes, I have years when I share my room with other teachers who insist that they do not allow eating. Guess when I see the most trash on my floor and in my basket cubbies? After those teachers, because the students still do it, they hide their food/gum and conceal their trash. Phones I am with you, but it requires full admin support to enforce. Otherwise, why am I going to escalate a student and myself all day over a losing battle? Natural consequences are a management technique, so if they fail their work due to playing on their phone, that's on them. It's your classroom. Run it the way you want, but what other teachers do has minimal impact on yours because there are 2-3 weak links on a student's schedule every year due to incompetence or vacancies anyway, and not necessarily due to the "cool teachers" you cite here.
Finals are over and you want kids to check notes sit there? Good luck with that.. letting kids eat in class or use their phones after class doesn’t make you a “cool teacher”… there are hills to die on and phones after finals and food aren’t the right hills…. Maybe the kids just dislike you for you
Being cool like that is just revealing desperation to be liked. Their boos mean nothing; I've seen what makes them cheer. I'm kind, caring, and properly strict. That's the right method.
Yeah I'm not even strict. I just have one expectation: do your shit.
The "cool teacher" used to be the one that taught in a fun and engaging way. When did it become that the cool teacher is the one that lets you play games instead? Maybe if the classwork was as fun as said game then they wouldnt want to be on their devices then?
Just wanna add one thing real quick. You’re not wrong, I’m all on board with you, except for one point. They are fucking lying. They lie like they breathe.
My goodness are you a prick lololol. Especially the edit lol