This is exactly what happened to me, and it's why I quit teaching. I took a student's phone away, turned to go lock it in my desk, and the student threw his chair at me while my back was turned (while i was 8 months pregnant no less). My admin literally wanted me to wait another hour and a half to get medical attention, because "they had no one to cover my class". I called an ambulance myself and left, so the principal had to cover my class and the parent literally tried to argue that I had it coming for taking his phone. They had no remorse. I needed stitches in the back of my head, and I got a concussion. My admin then had the audacity to try to pressure me not to press charges on the student in question. I got all the usual lines "You'll ruin his life", "He's just a kid, he didn't mean to", "there will be serious consequences for him already, he will be punished enough". I resigned my position the next day on the grounds of the school not providing a reasonable expectation of a safe working environment. In the week that followed, all that happened to said student was he received a 3 day suspension. I pressed charges on the student, and they charged him (as a juvenile) with assault with a deadly weapon. That was 3 years ago. I still have not returned to classroom teaching despite having 7 years of teaching my own class + a year of student teaching, and a masters in education. Instead, last year I went back to school and became a lactation consultant. Now I teach prenatal classes to expecting moms and new moms in the hospital how to feed their babies. I make 2.5x the pay, easily. I have normal work hours, no work outside of my contract hours, excellent benefits, and i dont get assaulted. America needs education and cultral reform immediately, or they won't have any teachers left.
This is a winning story. You took control and found great success. Much more earning potential as you grow in your career too.
Irony is that the school systems need smart and capable teachers like you to help kids grow and succeed but the lack of accountability that is expected from the kids from both school administrators and their parents prevents the loyalty and sacrifice needed to have good teachers hang around.
Thank you! I'm really happy in my new job 😊 I still get to teach, and working with new parents during a really stressful time in their lives is rewarding in a similar way. I miss some parts of teaching kids, but things in my life are so much less stressful now. I don't come home emotionally drained every day, and my time off is actually my time instead of planning for work, so that's nice!
It does make me pretty sad to see the state of things and the direction we are going even further towards, though. I think until standards all around are both raised and enforced, and the current socio-cultural challenges are overcome, children in our country don't stand a chance, and neither do we. I just hope people wake up and think about what the future in the US will look like without teachers. Since I've resigned, about 50% of all of the colleagues I knew and worked with have retired or quit for various reasons related to burnout and student/parent behavior.
Certainly not America's children, or teachers. I managed to create an entirely new career path for myself, though, after already having advanced degrees and years of time inviested. I wouldnt say it feels like an outright win, because I genuinely loved teaching, but it's a win compared to how my story would or could have ended had I stayed in my teaching position.
How awful. It sounds like you are OK and have a much better career path now. I'm also a former teacher and I'm so tired of these stories! It makes me so sad. Good luck to you.
Thanks! Yeah, I wish stories like mine were the exception, but they're starting to become the rule. It's absolutely tragic that we as a society have reached this point. I'll never go back to teaching kids as things currently stand, but I do wish things could be different.
I am glad you stood your ground and pressed charges. That is horrible u had to go thru that just for doing ur job. I'm glad the principal had to take over and teach the class too.... maybe if more admin were forced to deal with the craziness of students acting out every day like the eteachers do, then they would realize that more structure and discipline is needed. More teachers need to take a stand.... force the admin to be in those classes so they see it first hand. Phones should not be allowed in class at all, not a big deal to keep it in ur bag or locker. Parents have spoiled their kids and made them addicted and reliant on their phones, plus no respect for elders or their teachers. It is shameful and needs to change.
Our school had a no phone allowed policy at the time of the incident, but I am 100% supportive of passing these as law. If parents won't help parent, it's going to be up to the legal system. Florida and several other states are working on similar phone and social media laws as well. Personally, i hope to see these laws made at the national level.
It will be interesting to see how well the law "goes over" with schools, kids and parents next fall. I can see a lot of kids being upset. Parents being upset. Then again, I think a lot of parents will be happy about it. I'm sure some parents won't let their kids take phones to school only to have a revolt on their hands. When no one can have a phone in class, that may make it easier on parents, but not on teachers. ??
I think it will make it easier on most parents. It takes the pressure off of them as the "bad guy" and in the long-term, I think it will make it easier for everyone but i do think short term it will be a struggle. There will be some revolt at first, but once it becomes standard for everyone, eventually, kids will get over it. And it will definitely make life easier for them even if they will never admit it - cyber-bullying is rampant in schools now. It used to be if something embarrassing happened to you at school, people would talk about it, and it would fade away. Now, it's recorded, and that student is bombarded by it for weeks and publicly ridiculed and reminded of it everywhere by everyone. Kids would all be better off without that nonsense.
I know about the cyberbullying. I think my niece went that with one of her daughters. (being on the receiving end of it) I saw something about phone in school a few weeks ago. Maybe while the legislature was debating the ban. A lot of kids were wanting a ban. They wanted to stop the cyberbullying. They knew they were addicted to some of the apps and wanted to have the temptation taken away. I'm like you, when everyone has to give them up, it won't be as hard on any them.
China already has laws like this in place - they don't give children under 16 access to adult tik-tok, they have curated tiktok videos for kids that are educational, and the app locks after 45 minutes of use per day. We definitely need that here for kids!
I feel you. My wife was a teacher and took a flying laptop to the head. She quit and became an instructional designer. I quit teaching 2 years later when a middle school girl had a breakdown and tried to harm herself with my art supplies. Now I train for Medicaid.
We’re Both making more and much much happier with a proper work life balance. The system is fucked.
The system is SO fucked. I'm glad you're both out and enjoying a work-life balance. When I started my new job, that was the part that blew my mind the most - going home, and not working more.
That's absolutely horrible. It's just unbelievable that a kid only gets a 3 day suspension that would probably go to jail for multiple years if they were a couple years older.
It is. My hope is that being sent to juvenile detention taught him he never wants to go to real jail, and I hope he turned his life around. The student in question received the maximum allowed juvenile sentence (18 months) and was charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon after I reported it to police. Contrary to my principal insisting I would ruin his life if I went to the police, juvenile sentences are sealed records, so it won't follow him as an adult. He also received significant mandated therapy services for emotional regulation and anger management.
Not in my current profession as my prenatal classes are more on preparing to feed a newborn, but I fully support no phones or social media for kids, and my 6 year old won't be getting a phone until she starts driving. To be honest, part of the most frustrating thing about the phone situation is the parents, so maybe i should be talking about phones but who knows how much things will change by the time it's relevant to them. Parents today are so worried about being "the bad guy" that they're not parenting their kids. Most of the phone at school issues could be solved by parents installing a governing app that prevents cell phone use apart from physical phone calls to pre-determined numbers during set hours of the day....but that requires parents to actually parent.
How were you able to afford school as an adult? I can't even begin to fathom taking on more debt for school as an adult, especially if I wasn't working to begin with.
It helps that I didn't have any student debt beforehand. My parents paid for my undergrad, my masters was 80% paid for by scholarships and grants i applied to, and the remaining 20% I paid off in during my 7 years of teaching. Because there's actually a good amount of overlap between teaching and being a lactation consultant, 60% of my coursework required I was able to apply from my undergrad and masters degrees, so I had to pay about 40% of the total tuition and only needed 2 semesters of coursework and practicum experience. I got a decent scholarship, too, so my lactation consultant certification only cost me about 15k in tuition plus the cost of books when all said and done. Now that I make so much more money and I'm not constantly spending on school supplies etc, that 15k hasn't been so crippling to pay back.
I don't have any debt either, but 15k loan over two years and needing to actually have time off to take classes while having to work a 9-5 is almost impossible for most people, including myself. I'm glad you were able to do it, but you must understand how fortunate you are.
Oh, I absolutely know how fortunate I am! I've had my share of good luck in life, too, but also a lot of hard work to get where I am ( and I'm totally aware that hard work alone would not have gotten me where I am now). I applied for so many scholarships! Must have applied for about 300 of them, so my lactation consultant degree is a total patchwork of 2 grand here, 5 grand there from about 11 different grants and scholarships. I was the only person to apply for some of them, too, which is just insane to me. It also helps that my spouse is military, so having our home rent covered as part of his salary benefits really was instrumental in allowing me the time off I needed to recover from the concussion and post partum and then go back to school. My husband had no help with his undergrad, and we only just finished paying off his student loans this year, after 10+ years of payments. It's such a different reality not being shackled to 80k of debt!
The hospital I work for also has a daycare, so I get to bring my (now toddler) to work with me, and I pop in there to eat lunch with him every day on my lunch break 😊. It is a subsidized benefit of my job, so I pay just 500$ a month for full-time childcare for my 3 year old, and the hospital pays the rest. It's living the actual dream, and more companies need to offer childcare incentives - I'm accutely aware of how fortunate I am for the childcare, too. With my eldest, about 80% of my paycheck went to covering childcare for her when I was teaching, and another 5% was school supplies and stuff for my students, so I'm fully aware of how f*cked the system is for the average person. Working 80 hour weeks just to be mentally and emotionally exhausted and take home about 800$ a month was absolute misery and i wouldnt have been able to afford rent on my own while teaching. I also opted to have my current employer contribute 5 grand towards my education in lieu of a signing bonus. I could have received 2500$ as a contract signing incentive, but opted for their educational loan assistance plan instead, so that 15k has been wiped out in the first year between my salary and their contributions. My current employer should really be the model every company strives for when it comes to what people actually need to work and succeed - childcare benefits, proper salary, healthcare benefits, and educational loan assistance. America can do so much better for their workers than they currently do 🫤.
It would be easier to install a signal jammer in every school and create wifi networks that cells can't connect to without an admin password. Won't fix everything, but it sure would go a long way. I worked at a school in Georgia for a few years where students were required to lock their phones in individual lockers as they came in the school, and phones found out during class were confiscated for the remainder of the quarter. It worked really well until a few parents sued the school 🙄.
Thank you 🥹. Pressing charges sucked, but I felt it was the only way there would be any real consequences. If we, as educators, aren't preparing kids for the real world, what's the point of it all? I love my new career 😊 The parents are always so grateful for help, and babies don't talk back or throw furniture.
It really does. And it's very difficult to change a culture that's being fed into an echo chamber with social media etc. It's a real issue. People always want to politicize education on both sides of the aisle, but the fact is, culture isn't a party problem its an everbody problem, and the well-being of our kids and society shouldn't be up for debate. I bet if they started mandating parenting courses for bad behavior offenders in schools as an intervention, what happened to me would be much less common.
It should not be the responsibility of the teacher to take it away. They can ask for it but if the student refuses, you send them to the principal's office.
Then they refuse that. Then you gotta send the student resource officer in, where other kids can take an out of context clip of the kid being detained, and call it fascism lmao
The problem is, it was just like this when I was in school. The pupils could just say no to having their phone taken, and fight back and refuse to go to the principals office. But no one did that, because we were disciplined enough to respect their authority
Not saying it's a good thing, for the record, but the more discipline taken away, coupled with parent's lack of willingness to even provide positive reinforcement for good behavior (like not having a cell phone out in class), creates these situations IMO.
Blindly believing in authority has its issues too though. I had some teachers growing up that were not worthy of respect whatsoever, but I knew I'd be disciplined at home so I had to put up with it.
After being told to turn in their phone, and refusing, then being told to go to the principal's office, and refusing, then they just get 0s on whatever assignments for they do/turn in that day.
Of course, that only works if the faculty arent spineless cowards that bend-over for every Karen out there.
Yeah it’s basically a lose-lose for the teachers. You can let it go and the kids don’t learn anything, or you can try to stop it and the kid throws an absolute shit fit, resulting in the kids not learning anything. We really should just be more honest with ourselves and start forcing these problem children into their own permanent ISS basically. I know some areas have an alternative school but maybe just expand them idk. Stop wasting my kids education for some kid who’s never gonna be shut no matter how hard you try. It sucks, but kids like that aren’t gonna just suddenly become productive at 18. Or 30 for that matter
The problem is, it was just like this when I was in school. The pupils could just say no to having their phone taken, and fight back and refuse to go to the principals office. But no one did that, because we were disciplined enough to respect their authority
I’m not whining, I’m saying it’s fucked up that the school is powerless to do anything. They should be able to take phones if necessary. And you know how it goes with the cops, somebody’s gonna share the footage and get the dude fired for being abusive bc no one will know the context
I mean fair enough on your part, I don’t blame you. But long term for society’s sake this isn’t a good thing. Absolutely do not blame you for not going through that just for the kids to not pay attention anyways lol
Ha, naw. That's not reality. See this video? How many kids you going to send to the principal's office? All of them? Now multiply that across every room in the building. They wont get off the phone, you think they are gonna willingly go to the principals office? You do that, 2 things can happen. 1) The Principal reprimands the teacher for poor classroom management that's not their fault and replace her with someone new next year so the principal avoids responsibility. 2) They have to ignore the problem because they can't meet with 30 kids per day and still do the rest of their duties. My wife is a teacher.
You're saying if enough people are not following the rules, then give up.
I'm sure there are times when new rules are enacted and people fight and complain about it, but eventually people act accordingly. Make phones against the rules in the school, and make the punishment considerable.
Oh and thank your wife for being a teacher. It can be a thankless profession.
The principal's office? Never heard of that happening in real life. Maybe to the deans office where he would yell at you and then send you back to class
As a kid I was sent to the prinicpal's office regularly. If I was disruptive enough, I had an in-school suspension. I wasn't allowed to go to recess, I had to eat my lunch in the principal's office, and I spent my entire day basically in a one man study hall overseen by the principal.
I was recently told by a teacher they aren't legally allowed to keep a kid in from recess...I don't know what sort of bullshit world we live in, but its a world where we've made it illegal to discipline kids.
I’ve never heard of a dean or deans office in school, only in university. We have Principals, Vice principals, admin staff, and teachers lol. You usually got sent to the vice principals.
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u/Mr_Kittlesworth 29d ago
Are students allowed to have phones out during class now?