@@BookOfMorman I hink it is better in other parts of the world. Here in europe teachers arent treated like horsesh*t, neither by students nor by school-pricipals
When I was a young teacher, I had an 8th grade class of kids the other teachers called The Unteachables. Lowest reading and writing scores in the whole school, so let's give them to the rookie teacher because everyone had given up on them. I ditched the God-awful textbook and instead taught the kids from newspapers. Newspaper writing is a model of efficiency (stories are written in a pyramid) and also have catchy first paragraphs and headlines. So the kids and I wrote an in-class newspaper. Some of them were interested in sports, so they wrote up sports events. Newspapers are written for a lower reading level, so my students could work their way through the daily papers. Standardized testing time and The Unteachable scores went up by 50%-100%. They could actually write a coherent paragraph. Big success, right? I got a bad evaluation because I didn't use the standardized textbook and got a stern lecture from the vice principal evaluating me about "the taxpayers paid for these books and we need to use them, not stack them on a shelf". Two of The Unteachables became journalists in their adult lives, by the way.
"Two of The Unteachables became journalists in their adult lives," So that says it all. Everything you went through was for something you did correctly. My son was a bit of a he'll raiser in his early school years. The first grade teacher did help him and he sucked up everything she taught. Second grade teacher, a good woman, but she really brought the worst in my son. What a nightmare that was! But his third grade teacher, a young man probably
even tho admins didnt agree, you deff did something right. I was a student in one of these classes, almost the exact same situation, a class full of 25 of the schools worst behaved kids, a few of them with learning disabilities and almost all with behavioral issues. it was this teacher's first ever year teaching and he didnt handle it like you did. he tried to follow the books and the curriculum lessons. I dont think we ever actually finished a lesson or assignment in that class. He left at the end of that year and idk what he did after that but he never came back to the school i was going to. that class was a nightmare, kids were throwing stuff and talking and fighting with eachother all the time, i remember even points where i just wanted to get through the period and finish the assignments, where i had to yell at the other students because they wouldnt listen to him, you couldnt go 5 minutes without a serious disruption in that class. i was so sick of seeing this man on the brink of losing his shit, he was such a nice person too, he went into that job thinking he was going to make a difference in kids lives, and left a hollow husk of his former self only 9 months later. I started out a trouble maker but quickly felt like he had way too many issues already, i felt really bad for him. Honestly is hilarous/sad that these schools who are running on less and less staff every year would even consider doing that to someone who is a new hire and willing to do the job. No wonder no one wants to work there, they dont even ease you into it, they just throw you in with the lions and see what happens. what a mess lol, i cant believe there are still people who want to do this job. I think the best thing for Americas school would be to refuse to work in any public school until the government actually takes these issues seriously and starts putting more resources and money into it (and i get some people are trapped in the job and need it to make a living, but if no one new took the job, they would all die or retire eventually and the govt would have to take action so that they can uphold our free right to education.) These schools are dangerous settings for children and staff alike, no one is being paid enough, and the schools do not have enough money to actually invest in kids education or their safety. Continuing to participate and do the job is just prolonging the issue imo. Ive never been a teacher so i dont have a totally inside perspective but i remember being a student and dealing with these same issues i keep hearing teachers talk abut in videos. We never had enough supplies or materials for everyone to have a copy of assignments, we often had "Permanent substitute" teachers filling in for people who walked out on the job mid year, dont even get me started on the cafeterias, the lunch "lines" - if you could call them lines - were a total free for all, people would be jumping over eachother, shoving eachother, honestly this makes it sound tame, it was bad, the dean watching this all go down and standing there zoning out like he didnt even have 1 braincell. I remember in middle school having my boobs touched by other kids all the time, when id tell teachers and admins, they would DO NOTHING. i could go on and on about all the horrible stuff ive seen/had to put up with but it would turn into a novel. If i ever have children ill be damnned if i send them to a shithole like that. Sorry for the long rant. I really feel for the teachers like you who were trying to make a difference, and it was so appreciated, but it could never outweigh all the bad that comes with this school system.
One fun part I left out, I told the school lawyer I had the letter and faxed it to him before the court date. He still went through with the court date just hoping I wouldn’t show and they would win by default, even knowing they were wrong.
Years ago, I checked my e-mail in the morning before heading to work and saw a message from my principal instructing me to go directly to his office first thing that morning. When I got in, he shut the door and began to go completely over-the-top ballistic saying I cut a student’s hair the day before in class. I let him finish then reminded him that I was at a seminar off campus the day before, so there was no way I cut anyone’s hair. The fun part of this story came when I realized my sub that day was the kid’s grandmother and she did, in fact, cut his hair! I never did get an apology from that jerk of a principal either.
Once was adjacent to a miliatary chewing out fro ma master sergeant to a staff sergeant, yelling at him for a solid 5 minutes for leaving a soldier behind Master Sergeant: "WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?" Sergeant Burkowitz: "That was Sergeant Blaskowitz" Master Sergeant: "And... where is Blaskowitz?" Sergeant Burkowitz: "Getting chewed out by the colonel." Master Sergeant: "Go away."
This is so accurate. To any newbies- document everything. Go old school and keep hard copies. This kind of bull excrement happens way more than you could possibly imagine.
Yep, hard copies, documentation, and from my experience working in government services all emails, pictures, GPS information, texts and paper you used need to be yours not state notebook paper, computer files etc because that is state property and confiscateable. Thank you for that tidbit in 1981 Capt. Mike Survivor of the initial women in a firestation and 30 years later a job that no women or minority had lasted at that firestation's initiation rites for longer than 6 months. I stayed 3 years, I told them I was having a great time, why would I want to leave such a wonderful place, after I survived the one year of probation at the new job title, much to their chagrin. I started no fights but I outmanuvered and finished any stupidity with maximum documentation, and maximum force I never said don't write me up for that. I said if you want go right ahead, but I will challenge that and I have photos, GPS tracking, etc and will take you to a skelly hearing I'm sure you want to explain this in front of the board. BTW I will be advising ..chief..or EEO or HR as soon as I leave this room. It's going to be interesting how I'm suddenly a fire-able employee over slow careful driving or not working hard enough or dirty wheel wells with a 20 year history of no flags in my file. I leaned in hard and it worked. It sucked, but when I left for a paradise level assignment women and minorities were able to be assigned there without incident. But Documentation complete and though saved my ass many times.
I wasn’t offered a contract for the following year because I had “only negative surveys from students”. I had copies of the surveys and they were all freakin glowing. I’m sometimes a disorganized mess, but the relationships I build with my students are almost always positive and my students and their parents were especially outspoken about that this year. I, knowing I had the surveys in my back pocket, asked the administrator if I could see them and she said, “that’s not what we are here to discuss right now”….I said, “with all due respect, isn’t that specifically what we are here to talk about?”. Anyway, I’m doing all I can to fight it, but I may be leaving teaching for good due to this situation. Thanks for all the rest of you folks do!
Teaching: The only profession where you need degrees and certifications, don't get paid what you're worth, and get treated about as badly as retail workers from both parents and admin.
"...and get treated about as badly as retail workers..."? No way. Much worse. If you're a retail worker & you get physically attacked by a customer, you can defend yourself or at least try to. But if you're a teacher attacked by a student & you defend yourself, you will be charged with assault.
It’s called be a professional teacher! You learn how to be very sarcastic without cussing!! Believe me, some of the funniest guys I know are male teachers who are very sarcastic like myself!! I can be very sarcastic!
I’m from Los Angeles. My first year teaching my vice principal’s evaluation said I was “inflexible” and this was based on the fact I was a brand new bilingual teacher (which meant none of my students spoke English, were supposed to be taught in Spanish with 45 minutes of ESL daily which magically would turn them fully bilingual and biliterate) I was on an emergency credential so I was just starting my teacher training classes. I walked into a room empty but for a broken pencil sharpener and and handful of pencil stubs and bits of crayons and desks too high for small children and a huge amount of dust and rodent droppings (I won’t tell the story of the bran muffin I bought from the cafeteria with a baby cockroach wrapped into it) I had no supplies whatsoever and we didn’t get textbooks (they had tossed every last textbook into giant dumpsters because we were no longer teaching phonics but were supposed to teach from scratch using literature and I begged for any kind of books hence being called “inflexible” I had 36 students and no assistant, there was no air conditioning, no fans, the windows were painted shut and there were three lunches and three recesses and the noise from the yard was like being at an airport so I had to keep the doors closed. We worked year round (my time “off” haha was September/October and April/ May so the classroom for months often got up to 120F.)That would have been abuse if you did that to a bunch of dogs. But I was inflexible and a trouble maker. Talk about trial by fire and after teaching for ten years I was making $10,000 more per year and my rent had doubled. I subbed during my off-track time (ie vacations) I had 8 years of university: BA, teaching credential classes, MA to make far less than my mechanic, my cocktail waitress friend, my garbage man and had to move back into my mommy’s house so I could save something for retirement. When I wasn’t teaching I was writing lessons, doing bulletin boards, grading, buying crap for my classroom (my first year 1989 I spent $3,000 of my own money and the same and more every year thereafter.) and so on. I had to empty my own trash cans, sweep and wash my floors and clean up blood and vomit myself. I would say 3/4 of my class was learning disabled and for 1500 kids there was one resource specialist so I was supposed to teach 36 regular Ed, special Ed and bilingual Ed with no materials, no support and under physical conditions that were truly abuse. That first year a female custodian was shot point blank in the head, a kindergarten teacher was raped in her classroom and one of my friends had a drug addict jump in the back of her truck as she pulled out of the parking lot. I bought my clothes from thrift shops, never had a vacation for 22 years, never ate out, never went to Starbucks or movies or out with friends. I can’t believe when people say how easy teaching is and how great the vacations are. The turnover of teachers is 50% the first five years. This means classrooms are staffed by teachers who don’t know what they’re doing. As soon as they start to have some abilities they quit. Teaching is the absolute worst job. When students are successful it’s because of the parents and administration. When they fail it’s because of the teachers. I’m so glad I’m out of that toxic environment. I’m self employed now and every day I thank God for it.
My jaw is on the floor reading this. I’m amazed how people in positions in leadership can allow this to happen under their position. It’s literally their job so have a functioning school. Sounds like they’re the ones who don’t know how to do their jobs but try to tell others how to do theirs. Insanity. No idea how someone could be so lazy or I don’t even know what to let that happen. I’m actually upset hearing all these stories. Our society is in for a rude awakening with all this incompetence and narcissistic attitudes. Yikes
I have been a teacher in Alabama for over 25 years. For the most part my experience has been positive. We have air conditioning and good kids and good administrators and good parents. My pay is adequate. My room is filled with the latest technology. The room is clean with good custodians. I just cannot relate to stories like yours.
If that shocks you I have a million more stories. How about a friend and coworker who taught the aphasia class being called a racist by two teachers because he gave a 6 year old whose crackhead mother (we were two houses down from a crack horse) didn’t bother to reapply for the free lunches. See, he should have let the kid starve because the child should have been responsible for getting the paperwork filled out and signed. Most of us kept peanut butter and crackers, tea (for stomachaches), hot chocolate and various snacks for kids who didn’t eat lunch and breakfast. I had a makeshift sick space with a cot and pillow for sick kids because their parents always gave fake telephone numbers so the school couldn’t reach them.@@MsYoshiGreen
I have a similar story involving my Ex Wife. She was a brand new High School teacher down in Los Angeles (This was a good 15 or so years ago). She got pink slipped at the end of the year, went back onto the sub pool and started collecting unemployment. This was during the Obama years, where the feds were constantly extending unemployment benefits, so this went on for almost 4 years. Once 4 years hit, she got a summons from the unemployment office. Apparently the school district accused her of not taking 20 or so sub jobs they offered her over a two month period and wanted to sue her for back unemployment. By this time, it was something like 40k. We were floored. Luckily, I kept my head and got onto our phone carrier to print out our call logs for that two month period. After that, it was 2 months of turmoil of constantly having this "What happens if we loose and they expect us to fork over 40k like it was nothing?". It definitely put a strain on everything. The day comes and we show up. Not only does the school district send NO ONE, but they FAXED their "evidence" to the judge half an hour late, which annoyed him greatly. So, he took a look over at everything, then handed the "evidence" to my ex-wife saying "Ma'am, you would be completely in your right to object to this evidence as they didn't send it over in time. But, since they annoyed me, I'm going to give you some free advice and tell you that you should accept it and continue." We looked it over, and my ex-wife immediately stated she would allow the evidence. Five minutes later, the judge ruled into our favor and we were on our way. What had happened was that the supposed dates they put down that they called and she denied, the phone records showed no such call having came in. There were even 3 "jobs" on dates that ended up being on a Sunday. So, we won our case because an obvious fabrication of what happened and that the school district was probably annoyed that they were paying my ex-wife all this money from unemployment and tried to steal it all back. It always rubbed me after that how you're not able to counter-sue, or get some form of damages. This wasn't a case where both parties had arguments and the judge had to pick and choose, this was blatant fraud. But, I guess it meant we didn't need to somehow shell out 40k.
My first year teaching, I won Teacher of the Year for being awesome (I really was pretty badass). The same afternoon (the awards thing was in a morning assembly) I was told my contract was not being renewed because I was “too intimidating” to the other teachers.
It happened to me, but the VPs and all the Counselors but one, stood up for me against the Principal and the whole English Department, so the Principal back down, and switched me to Social Studies.
Yes, sounds about right. I was teaching 5th grade. I spent the summer studying the new math that was being introduced. Paid for the books myself. Anyway, the next Spring, my kids went up 40% in math. Unheard of, but I did my homework, duh! Two weeks later, I got called into principal's office and they told me that teachers who give the kids the answers, get fired. Yes, they were too stupid to understand what I did. I quit then and there. But, all in all, what about the kids. Sad
When I was a custodian(I'm retired) one of my teachers had the highest math classroom math scores in the district. Then one year the district passed down mandatory teaching protocols, which resulted in that teacher's classroom math scores plummeting. He was sooooooo angry.
Hearing your stories...man, I don't know why I fought to stay in the classroom for as long as I did. Because these stories aren't outliers. This is the baseline normal. The whole time, I'm nodding my head, yep, sounds about right. The hardest part, though, is even though I'm not a "Full-Time Classroom Teacher" right now as my employment, I am still a "Teacher" at the core of who I am, so I am constantly in this internal struggle of wanting to go back while needing to stay out to protect what is left of my mental health. Thanks for the stories, thanks for the laughs.
This is insane, and sadly not surprising. I literally had a disciplinary meeting called for me last year, because I didn't sign in. On a day I wasn't in the building. On a day I wasn't in the building, which had been approved, both verbally and in writing, ahead of time, by my principal. She did not apologize.
“I had a disciplinary meeting called…” There is nothing unclear about saying that making your addition of the word literally unnecessary. It’s just meaningless filler. Hopefully you weren’t an English teacher.
@@remlya For several non-native English speakers, her additional clause may help them comprehend the situation. Please get out of here if you're going to have an elitist attitude. Sincerely, An English Teacher
The fact that you talk so calmly about all this and reacted so well to gaslighting and psychotic behavior is literally amazing. I would have gone on a rampage if that Principal emailed me like that after everything.
The problem is that if you’re trying to get another teaching job, you need that ex-principal to say nice things about you. Yes, I know employers aren’t supposed to trash their former employees, but principals will do it. And then deny it. Which is how you end up applying for 200 open positions, getting 3 interviews, and no job. When I finally stopped teaching, I went and got a copy of my county file. My last evaluation from the b*tch? There were 2 things on the first page marked unsatisfactory. That’s basically a blackball: no one will hire you. They had NOT been there when I’d signed it (on the second page.) They had been “Needs Improvement.” But that had been 10 years ago, so I no longer had the one I’d signed. I was lucky in that I was able to go into a new field and leaving teaching behind. I’m now making more money than I would have after 20 years as a teacher, and the job is much less stressful.
No teacher, working or retired will ever be heard saying, “I’m shocked, shocked I say” by your story. I learned my first year of teaching if something is logical and makes sense, the educational powers that be will do the exact opposite.
This just isn't true. No AMERICAN teacher would be shocked by this. Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, they probably wouldn't be shocked either. But the Fins would!
Yea my daughter was in that class for the struggling students and they would always undermine my opinion when we have a meeting they always do whatever they want afterwards so I told them I'm not participating in the meeting s anymore and don't call me
I quit teaching after 15 years, doubled my income and saved my life. Sadly I see many teacher-friends with major health issues (stress-related cortisol and terrible insurance coverage) die before retirement. Leaving was the best decision of my life. Teaching is truly a DEADLY occupation.
I've been placed on paid administrative leave three times in my 30+ year teaching career. Each time it was dumber and dumber, but the important thing is that I fought back each time and have always prevailed. Don't let corrupt administrators or board members intimidate you! This is why unions are so incredibly important!
I have been a school administrator for 17 years, I principaled for eight years before I gave it up for having to fight the central office over what worked for my kids. Your story is far more common than you think. Schools system get away without paying unemployment because teachers are on a nine month contract. It’s rarely challenged. Life’s tough for good teachers, and that’s why so many leave the profession. Good luck in all you do! And fight them every time, it’s the only way to make them change
I had a teacher when I was in alternative high school in Michigan that was fired because he was attacked and choked by a student. He didn't fight back, we were all witnesses, but the school said he instigated and took part in a fight with her. He always said they were looking for a reason to fire him...I guess they got proactive and just made a reason happen. I'm sorry you all have to deal with this shit when all you set out to do is help others. Hopefully you have some really positive stories too which I'm sure you do, otherwise you wouldn't have made it that long. Teachers saved my life and kept me from ending up dead or in prison like many of my peers. I will always be grateful for them.
Thank you for your kind words, Justin. It is students like you that keep us in the profession as long as possible. On the whole: I think the only, final lifeline for teachers in schools today is for students and their parents to advocate for them to the school administration themselves. For every student and parent who complain to an administration about a teacher, there should be another student and parent who openly compliment a teacher to that same administration. That way, the dedicated, respectful, hardworking students and parents will have an equal voice to their/your opposing peers, and admin. out there may just begin to see the light as to who teachers really are and what they/we do for the better for others every single day. Admin. always listen to what students and parents have to say. They could care less about teachers and our well being. And that's entirely their choice. Nothing and nobody else prompts them to think and act that way. Thank you again for your support, Justin. It means a lot to teachers everywhere. Keep up the terrific work in your studies and all the best to you going forward. :)
@@munimathbypeterfelton6251 I agree. I worked in a school until about a month ago (I studied further into my subject field and gained marketable skills besides teaching, so now I work in that field). Whenever students or others give thanks or compliments, it brings life and I see anew what teaching is all about-those are the moments that make it worth it. At the school, I just left, though, I saw multiple people fired who truly cared about the students and their progress, just because of students straight up lying about them or because they’d stirred the pot with administrators themselves trying to get improvements to happen. I made some professional complaints to HR myself and subsequently felt heavily at risk of termination as a result. I love when people recognize the good that’s going on and the effort that’s being put in. We also need more than just recognition though, because recognition doesn’t increase wages or change broken structure/programs. We don’t need patches/bandaids, but an actually better, cleaned-out system.
Lisafriends is right - DOCUMENT everything - from apology letters from kids, parent emails...everything.. And..... BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PUT IN EMAILS. I called rather than email. Thank God I retired this year.
Being a hospital RN, I also learned to keep everything that might come in handy. Doing so saved me several times!!! Even though I’ve been retired now for over a decade, still have my folder of saved items.
You purposely avoid having a paper trail by calling instead of emails and are bragging about this and then you people wonder why no one trust teachers anymore.
Also, wear body armour and two body cameras at all times (front and rear), and carry pepper spray and an extendable baton. Once you start teaching those over 12 years old, you should add a protective helmet and an AK-47.
I was told my "performance" was un acceptable. When I countered that my students scored higher than all the others, they replied, "That product not process." Apparently, writing lesson outcomes on the board daily was more important than student progress
I’ll add my story cause it’s wild. First year teacher for the 2019-2020 school year. Oh boy I had no idea what was to come that spring. Anyways my degree is a dual major of math and physics. (No teaching certification) so I opted for an alternative education program to get my certificate. With it, I could teach the first year on an intern certificate, and then go through the modules and take the ppr exam at the end of the year. Fast forward through many crazy months and Covid hits. Schools and the whole world shuts down. Guess who can’t take the ppr because the testing centers are closed till further notice. Mhm this guy. So I reschedule for October, as it was the earliest date they were gonna open the centers on. I renew my contract and go on with my merry summer, and then boom… The school says I don’t have a certificate so they can’t keep me on tenure as a teacher. (Fair enough I didn’t have the certificate) So I call my program and ask for an extension to my intern certification until I take my already rescheduled ppr exam. They flat out said no tough luck. So I go back to my school and told them everything. They said there’s nothing they can do, but because they need teachers they will find a way to make it work. What they decided was to keep me as the posted teacher, cancel my teaching contract and re-sign me back on as a long term sub. Same job, less pay… plus beginning the Covid year so way more responsibilities and craziness. They offered me that, and said it would only be until I take the ppr in October and get my certificate. So I’m thinking, okay I can swing 2 months of this. No problem. Week before school starts: department head comes to me and says the school is requiring us to have 4 months of online modules prepped by mid September. I think that’s nuts so I’m chatting with my buddy down the hall about it. He said no one is required to do that. I find out through same guy a few days later (who’s good friends with department head) that they are having me prep the class for online so my replacement doesn’t have to do it. Apparently they already found someone! So I decided I’m not going to be taken advantage of. My contract is already terminated, and when they asked me to sign the contract for long term sub I said no I don’t think I’ll do that. I left high and dry the Friday before school starts next week, spent a month looking for a new job. Said teaching wasn’t worth it, and moved to the mountains to be a ski lift operator/snowboard instructor. Gravy of it all, was the teacher they got to replace me was offered a higher paying contract at a different district so they went there and my old school had to eat that hole they dug.
Its strange to me that this would happen to a math/physics teacher. You guys are as rare as hens teeth. In Alabama they would move heaven and earth to keep you.
Crazy! I had a principal who would yell at me when one of of students misbehaved during PE or during passing periods. He did this repeatedly until a coworker encouraged me to do something about it (after seeing me in tears). I emailed him a letter about him not professional. I let him know that if he wanted to discuss it in person, I would need my representative from my teacher federation. He was completely different from then on. I understood that there were grievances filed on him and he didn't need any more.
Retired HS cafeteria manager here. Pre-Covid, mid-year, program director implements new school meal software program. Four days in person group training *during the school day* while cafeteria running at full steam, hah, and 400+ students being served lunch. The food doesn't order itself. Same developer as our financial end/point of sale software but the programs don't talk to each other, oh, and we go live next Monday. Three years later threatened via email with a "performance plan" write up (i.e. stairway to termination) if I don't get up to snuff with the software that doesn't work and that they spent tens of thousands of dollar's on. Post-Covid, director presents yet another software program to BOD that she wants to spend $$ on because the other software is not compatible with department needs. Like we never brought these issues to their attention. By that time I retired. Covid killed me. The passion gets beaten out of you. Think of the most logical and effective path to goal achievement success....then do the exact opposite....that's public schools today. I've been gone 13 months and am still experiencing PTSD.
Document document DOCUMENT!!!!! And save a hard copy of everything especially if it’s on some sort of letterhead!!! Admin will lie through their teeth!!! I’ve been saved on several occasions by having hard copies of everything. It’s not like the judge is going to look at screenshots from your phone or take a gander at emails on your laptop..
It's only a matter of time before who you get as a judge (who could be a product of a declining education system and its diminishing values) matters more than the evidence presented in court. Yes, document, but even that will eventually be worth nothing in Florida.
Yeah... after being taught in college how to take bullets for my classroom and looking at 4 years of graduate school for a job with virtually no openings in my state with peanuts for pay I decided not to do that. One of my better life decisions. I'm so sorry you got flagrantly abused by the system and unappreciated for doing your job well.
I was a in the process of getting my Masters in Education for history and I needed a teaching job (part of my requirements). I had 6 years of prior experience working as an English teacher. I got hired by a school mid-February as a history teacher because they fired the last teacher. They told me that the classes were "sinking boats and you just need to save as many as you can" I got hired and walked into the classroom: the previous teacher stole everything that wasn't bolted down. I had no textbooks, no markers, bare walls, and no supplies. There were no lesson plans, curriculum notes...nothing. Here I am hired Friday and expected to start Monday. It was a constant battle to do anything for that semester and to get anything done. I was a poor grad student with no supplies and no resources. After that semester, I got laid off. The excuse of the principal stated "a real teacher is always prepared and has resources ready"
Well a REAL principal sees to it that the teachers have the resources they need to do their jobs, too, particularly if they're telling you that the class is full of "sinking boats".
Principle wanted you to do all the stocking. Most likely the previous teacher had been hired in a similar situation and HAD provided all of the materials...and had rightfully taken them with him/her when they left.
I worked in a district that had portable classrooms. I was placed in one that was over 40 years old. At the time I did not know that the reason teachers refused to work in that portable was because everyone who worked in it got sick. After I began working I kept getting sick. I had to be medicated and brought all sorts of medical equipments to get through the day. My doctor had me tested for allergies and it came back positive for mold. After doing my own mold test, hadthe district do a mold test ( came back positive for mold), showed images of black mold under the broken tiles on the floor& termites in wood. I also submitted paperwork from my doctor stating it was making me sick; the district decided to fire me for " poor teaching pedagogy". The previous 2 years being there I got great evaluations and my students showed tremendous growth. Right after I got my letter of termination, my principal gave me my first poor review and then another. The secretary in HR had already told me to make a copy of my file, as they were going to do just that because there was nothing in my file to support the termination. The union was no help at all. The lawyer provided by the union and the union president told me they were preparing a case to fight the termination. When I tried to follow up, they stopped responding to me via email or phone calls. As a new teacher, that was my first eye opener. It was difficult to get a job after that because every interview I went on they asked why I left. My response had them questioned my teaching skills. I eventually got another job in a different district, but I have seen and experienced so many bad things there as well, I can write a book.
Unemployment continues until you turn down an offer of full employment. I bet the principal was either pressured to try and get you to reject the offer which would then cancel your unemployment OR was pressured to rehire you to get you off the unemployment list and then make life so hard for you that you quit
@@DevinSiebold Imagine that. And. gosh, I can't understand why, since they were such pleasant and professional employers surely no one ever wanted to leave their loving embrace.
@@DevinSiebold Wow, this and your other stories are making me think that when I have my kids I'll either homeschool them (I work remotely) or just send them to private school! I mean, firing teachers for getting students to learn and pass their exams...then suing them?!?! why would ANY sane parent send their kids to schools like this?
I can't relate to everything, but my first year teaching i was 24 and one of my duties was to teach math to students who had previously failed the state mandatory test. It was an intensive 3 week class. The more experienced teachers were telling me that i was teaching incorrectly and how i needed to do things differently. About 70 percent of the students, who were in my class passed. The "experts" had a much lower pass rate. They never apologized or asked what i did different. They said nothing. I stopped teaching 5 years later.
Although the school district tell you oh these kids are not passing their mandatory state exam, we are hiring you to help them pas. When in reality they do not want students to excel.
Well, my story is pretty sad and crazy. I taught and was an administrator for a private school, owned by my best friend of 40 years. She laid me off a week before school started. My team teacher and I had the whole planned out. Then she had the nerve to say I could collect unemployment if it would help. Of course I knew I could collect unemployment and went right over to the unemployment office when I left the school. There is more to this story, let’s just say we haven’t spoken to each other in 4 years. And we both stood in each other’s weddings. You never know where life will take you.
Another reason why I quit my teaching position 5 years ago in the US and moved to Asia. Here the students have excellent behavior and thank me at the end of every class for teaching them!
I have a couple of crazy stories from my mom, who taught high school English and Literature, that show how teachers are NOT given a safe environment. In the first instance, this one kid developed a crush on my mom and started stalking her. The administration said that they could do nothing to stop it. It got so bad that other STUDENTS would stay after class so that she wouldn't be left alone with this kid. Then there were the angry parents that she had to deal with in parent/teacher meetings. Those got so bad that my DAD went to those meetings with her because we were worried she would be physically attacked. I went to the same high school where she taught, and people would ask me all the time if I planned to be a teacher one day too. Are you kidding me? Once you see what it's like on the inside, you have no desire to be there unless you have a "calling" for it. The only reason my mom stayed in it so long is because of her students. She had students that loved her so much that they were still coming to visit her 10 years later. Unfortunately, the school system is not set up to reward dedicated teachers. In fact, the more dedicated you are, the more BS gets dumped on you because they know that you'll put up with it. It does not surprise me that a school system laid off a teacher because he was TOO successful. I just nodded along at that part, "that sounds about right..."
I love this story. It’s the same in Police/Sheriff’s Departments. Always watching your back. Keep your mouth shut! Always get it in writing (i.e. evaluations, labor contracts, especially notices of counseling, training bulletins, and most importantly Standard Operating Procedures/General Orders). You never know who’s out to get you or trying to set you up.
OK, here goes. I had been teaching for 8-9 years and was most recently teaching HS Biology. It's the first day of the new school year and I show up for the typical meetings, training and other stuff that happens before classes start. I get my class schedule at eight o'clock when I show up and meetings start with all of the "Welcome Back" hoopla. We were on a Block Schedule at the time and I had four biology classes. I thought great, I've been doing this a while and I've got a handle on this so I'm ready to go. Fast forward to ten o'clock that same day and we have a break in all of the meetings. I check my mailbox and learn that my class schedule has changed. I now have two biology classes, an environmental science class, and an aquatic science class. Now the environmental science & aquatic science classes were being taught for the very first time on my campus & I truly wasn't even aware that those classes were even being offered to the students much less that I was going to be teaching them. I went to the principal to ask about the new classes and learned the following: The admin was excited to offer the two new classes to "broaden" the science elective selection for the students. They knew I could handle it & simply had forgotten to tell me about it. I asked the principal about books, supplies & such that went along with this type of class. I was told that they had no books or supplies for the classes & by the way NO budget to purchase books or supplies. They would "try" to find something someplace and get them to me. And by the way, I was reminded that students will be in my classroom in four days so, get ready. I was floored. I immediately began scrambling to find ANYTHING that I could turn into some sort of curriculum and meet guidelines that were required for the class. I had a degree in Wildlife Biology and a passion for this sort of science, but I was not prepared to teach the class to a student filled classroom with no materials to reinforce my teaching. I did my best to supply my class with stuff from my personal collection of related materials from my home and anywhere else I could find it. I did all I could do and made it through the year. I just did what I could & didn't worry about the rest. BTW, about ten to twelve weeks into the school year, Aquatic Science books arrived in my classroom. I received a class set of books that had been published TWENTY FIVE YEARS previously and actually had the words "DISCONTINUED" stamped across the ends of the books. These books were completely laughable.
I see schools don’t just hang onto books for decades, but buy them already that old. Reminds me of a what my school did when i attended. On paper, they had AP spanish and AP physics. But if you actually attended, you would see that both of these classes were not on their own. AP spanish had like 6 students and was stuffed into a corner of the class. Why? Because there was a 2nd class inside as well. A full class of regular Spanish. Two separate courses, materials and teacher was expected to teach both. It worked out, but only because AP spanish had native speakers in it. So teacher could simply focus on the regular spanish course. AP physics on the other hand initially was a full class. But teacher didn’t teacher, only put videos of guy with thickest accent he could find, AND COLLECTED ANY NOTES WE TOOK During CLASS. So as expected, students dropped the class and soon this class too was tiny. Maybe 10 students. To pad the numbers perhaps, they (admin) decided to split a regular physics class and dropped them off at our class and just added “honnor” to their title. All the students were pissed. People in AP physics did want to learn, so they had to do it themselves. People in the Honors class pissed that they had great teacher but then tossed into shitty teacher class. I’m surprised they didn’t do the same with the Calc BC class since it was the smallest class at 5 people. An alright teacher who is definitely trying to teach the class but does overcomplicates some of the material. Probably only reason they didn’t do it to this course is that teacher would definitely not allow it.
@@popenieafantome9527 I was asked to teach an honors course inside a regular course once. It’s awful, for both the teacher and the students. I can’t adequately teach honors students at a higher level and also help the students at the regular level who are struggling. End result is the honors students are usually left to learn it on their own because admin wants me to focus on the regular students and the “honors kids can handle it” or something. I can’t imagine doing honors and AP together- those are completely different in terms of requirements!
Similar thing happened to me- I had taught hs biology for one year- been a teacher for one year- and I was given the brand new marine science course to teach. We did have books, that I barely used because they weren’t very helpful, but no lab books even though it was a lab course with a scheduled lab. Spent most of that year digging around for marine science labs to do with the kids.
@@popenieafantome9527 At our school, several AP and IB classes are combined, sometimes they are even an IB, AP, and concurrent enrolment class all in one.
@@fluffyunicorn57 not too familiar with IB. If that’s an AP equivalent, then it doesn’t seem like too much of a problem. Maybe use the same book too. Problem is when an “advance course” is mixed into a regular class. Which ends up being two very different books and forces teacher to choose between focusing on one class, or try teaching the more complex stuff and make two separate tests, homework, and grading system for the class. Maybe it could work if done from very start. But in my AP physics class, the honors class literally did not exist until admin randomly pulled students 2 months into school out of their regular physics class and told to move into our AP physics class. Then admin slapped a “honors” label on them as if it makes it magially makes them catch up with material we were “covering.”
Teaching is one of those professions where there is a penalty (or a long series of colossal penalties) for success. Really? Thrown under the bus twice for doing your job well. Florida does not deserve teachers, just something that consumes oxygen to supervise a crowded holding pen of kids while the rest of us work.
@@jonathancarter5120 Yeah, but then you have the abusive relationship when the abused partner feels like they have to resign themselves to accepting the status quo because they have to stay for the sake of the kids.
@@snowangelnc This still doesn't explain why we should punish the kids, rather than the the equivalent of your analogies abusive partner, the administration.
Governments do not deserve teachers, only those who can pay for the valuable time of educators deserve education. However, education is not distributed to who is most deserving but to every child through a bureaucratic socialized system that was intended to generate productive members of society by redistributing tax dollars. This failed as badly as the housing projects did because the perception of something given "freely" and then mandated is not appreciated, it is endured.
@@jonathancarter5120 No, I never said anyone should punish the kids. At the same time we shouldn't be so comfortable with the idea that it's completely acceptable for teachers have to put up with an unlimited amount of mistreatment because no matter what they can't leave because of the kids.
I was a 22 year old teacher teaching a class of 40 eighth grade boys. This particular school separated classes based on gender. I reached out for classroom management help after dealing with a slew of inappropriate behaviors and was told: “Why are your classes so large?” Ummm…You tell me. 😂
I got laid off as an ESL teacher after I cut the kids enrolled in the program by 2/3s. Turns out no other previous teacher asked what the requirements were for them to be in the program nor how they could ‘graduate’ from the program. The school just put kids in that had no business being in the class and got the funding for numbers in ESL. The kids had to take an English proficiency test every year but were never told why or what scores they needed to stop being tested! Once I explained it to them and they worked for it, they graduated out of the program. Also turns out there went the need for my job. Oops. The only other thing I taught was Spanish and only had one class of it and they could not justify a full time salary for one class.
What about Spanish II and Spanish III (etc.)? ONE Spanish class??? Why bother? In an area apparently repleat with bilingual students, they couldn't see their way clear to provide a robust Spanish offering? But let me guess--I'll bet they had a full time athletics dierctor, now, didn't they?
Oh it was a pre-K-12 school and district all in one building. There was little support from the parents to have a strong Spanish program. The things schools do are astounding.
I am so grateful I teach a technical subject at a tiny, non profit, private college. Every day I get to live by my promise to my students. "I will always, and only, teach you those things that will put a paycheck in your pocket." I teach, they learn, we win.
It’s easier to understand why the administrators do the crazy things they do when you realize that most of them are failed teachers who got into administration as a way to get out of the classroom.
Can’t wait for this Guy to have 6 million subscribers. I’m not even a teacher but this man has me rolling laughing and amazing story teller. Keep it up. From Kansas City, Mo
This kind of stuff ticks off parents too. We hate how good teachers get let go and the garbage teachers stay. We feel helpless. My daughter just lost her basketball coach because a parent complained about him grabbing one of the girls sleeves during time out to pull her in to the huddle she was wondering off. 25 years and he is gone. Unbelievable.
My first year of teaching in NYC I was at what they call a "turnaround" school. I saw: - a teacher missing part of the top of a finger because a student slammed a metal door on it - a dean that had permanent vocal cord damage from having to yell at students so much - 2 paras get swung on by kids and fired when they fought back - rampant theft from staff members, YEARS before "devious licks" became a trend Teachers go through hell. Sometimes I ask myself why I've stayed in this profession so long...
Yes they teach so they can technically be called teachers, but if they work in a public school system they are first and foremost government employees. Behavior akin to kulaks working in a soviet bloc office job is to be expected.
I was a music education major from 1998-2000. Smack dab in the middle of sweeping reforms in our state for education majors. As music education majors, our requirements changed DAILY. They didn't know what to do with us. We were taking classes that they then said we didn't need. One day I was like, NOPE- I'm done. It's been so crazy for teachers over the last several decades, I'm glad I made the decision to leave before I had a degree I wasn't going to use. Teachers are the real MVPs
After 32 years teaching in a basket case of a school system I am not the least bit surprised. In fact, the least surprising thing about this is the date change sent to school e-mail. I’ve heard lots of stories like this. This is one of the better ones. But I’m not even close to surprised.
Why I am still a teacher amazes me. I have only been teaching 5 years. This was my dream job. I have loved tutoring, since I was in second grade. As a single mom, I worked my butt off to get that degree and do my dream job. And then I begin to realize that the system is soooooo broken. It is disgusting. Governments, Administrations, and parents are completely off their rockers! There is no back-up from the administration for the things that are continuously going on in my classroom. The parents of the "bad kids" complain how I manage my class. The parents of the "good kids" love me. The administration doesn't know what to do with me, yet they continuously are sending "bad kids" to my classroom because others can't handle them. Here is my secret: I don't give a rats a** if the district fires me at this point, because I am not about to put up with a little brat of a third grader who threatens me or tries to hurt any of my other students. I do not tolerate it. I shame that kid publicly. And I let the other kids let the "bad kid" know how it makes them feel when they are acting a fool. Believe me third graders are not nice in expressing their feelings! Honestly, this is a "magic pill" to the problem around the country! Every teacher should handle their classrooms like I am. But most are too afraid to get fired. I hate it, and I just won't quit. They are going to have to fire me, if they want me gone, because I actually do love my students very much. That is the ONLY reason I am staying. Everything I do is because I want them to be successful in and out of my classroom. So when I tell them, that if they continue that behavior that they will end up in prison some day, I am actually loving them!
Public schools especially in certain places are set up to fail. This makes me think of no good deed goes unpunished. They punished you for helping those kids. They wanted those kids to fail. Its apart of the game.
Finding out the behind the scenes of a teacher's life as parent has been eye opening & so heartbreaking. Our children are our future, teacher's should be amoung the highest paid. My kids are grown & many teachers have been life changing to my kids and I'll forever be grateful to them.
Devin: I am sorry this happened to you. You are so valuable as a teacher. I gave notice this semester after twenty years of adjunct university teaching. I got tired of administrators advising me of appropriate language when discussing my research, and tenure track faculty ripping me off word for word on my research (literally the same language) with no credit but open condescension. The double exploitation with zoom over lockdown broke me.
Wonderful, and good on you for 1) asking for the documentation (that you had every right to) and 2) holding onto it. Always get receipts. And keep them for years longer than you could ever imagine they might be needed. I wasn't a teacher, but I was fired from a tech job (at age 64...try getting a new job at that age, in the middle of the Great Recession). I spent the next six months studying everything I could about the laws regarding my employment & firing, and became convinced that I had been eligible for overtime payments, worth $$$ hundreds of thousands of dollars, during the many years of my employment, but had been improperly classified as ineligible for OT and thus was never paid a penny of the money that I was legally owed. Long story short, I spent six years suing my now ex-employer *"pro se,"* meaning all by myself without a lawyer, in US Federal Court. And after a million ups and downs, hundreds of court briefs, a dozen all-day depositions I conducted myself, rulings, and six years of studying law all on my own without any law school training I lost in US District Court (while I was in the hospital with heart failure) but ultimately won my battle in the US Court of Appeals. And because I'd done it all on my own there wasn't any lawyer with his hand out looking for one-third of my settlement money, either. But honestly, the satisfaction of beating those #$^#!s was actually worth more than the money. My ex-employer is a $10 Billion international conglomerate and they hired $500/hr lawyers, with their offices in skyscrapers high up in the clouds, to beat me... and I still won. And maybe the most interesting part is that while I was still working for my ex-employer, but suspicious that they weren't paying me properly, I kept a *daily diary* at work. Every single day I documented my long, long hours worked, and what I worked on, and how demanding my supervisors were. And in the end, I believe that it was the evidence of that unimpeachable daily diary, just like your precious layoff letter, that actually won me money. Always ask for receipts. On paper. Keep those receipts practically forever. For at least a decade. You never know.......
Gotta love how the state doesn't want students to succeed. It makes me sick. They not only fail the students but go on the offensive and attack the only one trying to actually help the kids and its all because of money.
I resigned midyear after being hauled into the office and simultaneously berated for not asking for help AND asking for too much help from co-workers. 🙄The vibe made it very clear it was just meant to be a severe dressing down for not struggling enough as a new teacher. I'd seen enough at that point.💯😒
I wanted to get into teaching. But then I found out about how the system is designed to screw our teachers. After all the research I did a story like this doesn't surprise me. It just makes me tired.
Not all teachers are getting screwed. It really depends on how strong your union is and how much of a corporate mentality the superintendent has. Privatizing public education is one of the holy grails for libertarians and corporations. Look how well that worked for health care and the military.
If you answer the siren song of teaching, you may well end up dead on the rocks. If I could wind back the clock, I'd have gotten an MSW and gone about giving back and making a difference in another way. A way, no doubt fraught with obstacles, but sans much of what Devin and many of us, have experienced.
@@aniquinstark4347 I doubt that. If adjunct faculty at universities are treated worse than retail workers and k-12 teachers are treated worse than retail workers -- why would any sane hiring manager in the field of education *not* treat their teachers as desperate disposable carriers of a pulse?
I got an offer from a school that raised my salary 20K and gave me professional status (Pretty much unheard of). They wanted a veteran Physics Teacher to rescue their program (currently 20 students taking Physics with a senior class of 100. This school was INTENSE, but by my 2nd year had 70 students with three levels of Physics and I created a new more applied course for the average students. My 4th year (two superintendents later) the principal put me on an action plan so that I could become a "successful" teacher (It was pretty clear that the Superintendent thought I was overpayed and the Principle wanted the recommendation to get a cush Superintendent job). I had to write out lessons, study sheets, and all exams had to be explicitly related to quesitons on the study sheet as I had been accused of not testing what I taught. I went through the added work (mind you that I have taught 20 years at this point) and they said that they would rehire me. I signed and the principal decided to fail me on the two overall components of my evaluation. Because I had students that I was working with, I decided to stay another year, but I gave them plenty of notice so they could find my replacement. Unfortunately, I went to two more schools without professional status and had to go through mentoring and new teacher meetings and it did not go well. I took a year off and a principal contacted me and begged me to take a load of average and below average students in their required Physics class. I was abruptly dismissed after 90 days. I went from a teacher with accolades to someone who gets fired. I'm taking early retirement and trying to retool, but the last five years have been hell.
Should NOT have happened to a dog, let alone a successful, seasoned professional such as yourself. I hope you find something worthy of your talent. I taught for 40 years and retired in 2019. I worked for a wonderful district in a homeschool charter school for the last 16 years. When I retired and tried to get a part-time job in a new district ( husband and I moved out of our home state), I found education VERY different. That's putting it mildly. I reinvented myself and have my own business. All the best!
I was a second year teacher…ELA and Reading. These were the days of AYP. This was a state funded school on a reservation. My Reading class was the ONLY class to make AYP in the school district (elem. mid. HS) that year. The following year, the district would be laying off teachers. They didn’t renew me, but chose to retain a reading teacher who did not have tenure either…but she was “part” native. This teacher had previously cost the district a lot of money due to always calling off sick, missed flights from trainings in other states, damage to school property because of dwi …in her car through locked gates etc. her behavior continued, of course, and the next year they had to fire her. Their decision making was what cost them money. They always let the good teachers go.
Oh man, I'd love to tell you the story of my time teaching at a school in Beijing where the school asked me to impersonate a teacher who taught at a school in North Carolina IN FRONT OF MY STUDENTS' PARENTS so they could convince more students to join their program. It was "give the presentation, or we're firing you and canceling your work visa." I gave the presentation, which I wrote myself, but the beauty of language is that, when you're speaking with non-native speakers, a lot of expressions go over their heads. I made sure every sentence in my presentation was a very blatant double entendre so that if a native speaker watched it, they'd immediately know something wasn't right. But the school was totally happy when I told the parents how I deliver my package to their smiling students every day.
It's sad but truly believable. I quit after I was called into a room, told they were going to replace my mom who was their math teacher. She was replaced with a teacher they were not looking for. I was also asked to cut my room in half . When they discovered the room was not big enough for the new classes of 15 or more students, I was told I need to teach from the closest and take everything off the walls so my room would appear larger. I lost it when I found out that the other teachers on my floor's classroom sizes where increased. I was the only teacher required to downsize into the closet. Also I was ask to give up my teaching materials to a less experienced teacher and show them how to teach the course while I took over the course they taught the years before. Happy Teaching!
My response to the principal would’ve been - oh HEY! SO glad to hear from you. Thanks SO MUCH for getting back to me in such a timely manner. REALLY appreciate it. I would LOVE to get abused and sued and deceived for doing a better job than everyone else, can’t WAIT to work for you again.
Wow. Insane. You should turn your teaching career into a TV show! My craziest story came in grad school when I was teaching several undergraduate courses. A student who was going to fail the class showed up at my apartment at 10:00pm a few days before the final! I couldn’t figure out how she even got my address! This was pre-Internet and my address wasn’t listen in either the phone book or any university publications. I lived about 10 miles from campus, too. After the initial "how did you know where I live?" I told her she couldn’t be there and she’d have to come see me in my office during my office hours. She begged me to help her study for the final, but I refused and told her she really had to leave. She was really mad but she did leave. The next morning, my supervising professor called me into her office. She told me that a student alleged that I had tried to extort her for sex, telling her I would give her a higher grade if she’d sleep with me. She claimed I’d invited her over on the pretense of having a study session but that she arrived to discover she was the only one there. She thought she’d still get help studying but that I refused to help until she slept with me. Then the professor and I laughed. She knew the story wasn’t true. I’m gay. The professor was well aware of that. The students were not. I also had a boyfriend who was at my place when the student knocked on the door. Since I never let the student in,she hadn’t seen him. The professor decided she’d catch the student in the lie, so she held a meeting with the student, the head of the department,and me all present. She asked the student to tell her story to the head of the department, so the student did. I said nothing. The professor then said she needed details like what the inside of my apartment looked like, just so they could corroborate the story. (The professor HAD been inside my apartment and knew I had a huge collection of movie posters all over my walls.) The student, of course, had no idea what my apartment looked like, so she said it looked like any other cheap apartment. The professor asked if there was any identifiable piece of furniture or artwork that she could describe, or if she could even describe the layout of the living room. The student said it was just plain with a sofa and a dining room table. The professor asked about the walls and the student said they were just plain white walls. Now, I had a very unusual apartment. The living room was divided from a study by a floor-to-ceiling wall of see-through bookshelves. It was massive and it was filled to overflowing with books. Nothing plain or white about it. Two other walls were filled with movie posters. I had no dining room furniture, either; my dining room was set up as an art studio where I could do projects related to my studies. Anyway, the professor explained all this to the head of the department. She didn’t even have to bring my gayness into the discussion. The head of the department asked the student if she wished to change her story. The student just got up and left. None of us ever saw her again.
Here lies the problem. NO CONSEQUENCES FOR LIARS. The student should have been dismissed from college and charged for false testimony. A few months in jail might have made her a better person.
Not a teacher story but an employer trying to fight unemployment. Several years ago I took a job with a company that turned into quite the fiasco. During the interview process the owner lied to me about the company and the job. After my first week I realized I had made a huge mistake but I had to just grin and bear it, and do the job until I could find other work. The company owner, who was my boss, was a real hot-head. One day he sent me out to correct one of his mistakes but the customer wouldn't accept the work. The next day my boss screamed and yelled at me to which I just nodded without reaction. The day after that, he fired me. Since it was a no-cause firing I claimed unemployment. The company owner tried to deny my unemployment, claiming that I was at fault, but there wasn't any evidence of any wrong-doing so I got to keep my unemployment. That guy was such a jerk.
I've heard this story about a small business that had to fire everyone because the gov demanded he had a 1M dollar slush-fund for unemployment. So he said "Sorry, can't do it. Closing shop."
I've seen this happen before. Mrs Quinn was our biology teacher....we came from a poorer area of Glasgow. A lot of us lived in poverty in the 80s as Glasgow lost its industrial base. So we were tough kids. EVERY kid in her class learned biology from the start of the hour to the end.....she wrote everything on the blackboard and even the "scarier" kids worked their butts off. She never had to discipline us but just kept her relationship as one were she taught us and would also work to show us. At the end of that hour we were all tired - but NOT one of us hadn't just learned. Guess what? She left (i'm not sure why); as standards dropped across the school as the other teachers didn't expect us to learn. They just saw us as kids from areas of poverty. I will always be grateful to Mrs Quinn. She showed me that every child/teenager has the capability to learn - when the teacher doesn't compromise and cares enough to follow through with her commitment to us. Respect to you Mrs Quinn. There were no others teachers who worked the same way she did and they just let us drift in our classes.
I had 2 warnings for a disciplinary meeting called for talking with other teachers in our free time 😯😯😂😂😂😂😂😂 .... they couldnt lay me off because it would have cost them money.... so I was harassed to quit. why? Because I was a foreigner working very professionally, acknowledging about my rights (31 years in the field) which meant I was a "bad model" for the "local" teachers. ..... stories about teachers will blow our minds!!!!!! ..... here is one of them.
OMG, this, right here. I taught a self-contained behavior program for high schools. All I could ever get was a non-continuing contract because, althought I had a SpEd endorsement, I didn't have endorsements in: physics, biology, chemistry, ELA, elementary math, algebra, US History, and World Hitory. I took a group of 8 students who had an average attendance of about 15%, to 85% attendance by Christmas. One Junior had 2.5 credits to her name. I got her up to speed and able to graduate with her peers. Yet... I'm laid off. Meanwhile the teacher who asks the female students to fight because their clothes may get torn, stays employed. To this day. He's on tape saying it. Public Education is the very definition of idiocy. When I left 5 years ago, I never imagined it could have gotten worse. Then 2020 said "Hold my beer."
Hello from San Antonio,Texas....I collected unemployment after my contract wasn't renewed after my first year of teaching (1986-1987 school year)..I guess I was lucky they never fought me.I moved on & retired after walking through school doors for 29 years.Retirement is great & hope I will never have to walk through school doors!
By offering the job afterwards they were trying to get you off the unemployment because in the state of Florida when you are offered employment at rate and you turn it down they could drop your unemployment….crafty and mean.
I have two sons, now aged 20 and 25. Both have graduated from the local public school system. 8 years ago their mother died while my eldest son was a senior in high school and the youngest was in grade eight. My late wife did not like for me to attend parent teacher conferences because I would ask questions and she would get embarrassed (and so would the teachers and principal). My experiences with their schools over the next few years have convinced me that our school systems are a refuge for grifters who care little about educating students, but care more about feathering their own nests and fortifying their lairs from attack. I tell everyone I know to avoid sending their children to public schools and to be very cautious when selecting either a private school or a home schooling solution. Education is important, it is being given "Benign" neglect by our government, and our schools are failing us.
I’ve 22 years in the UK; slightly different type of crazy, but I still recognise the types of insanity American teachers are subjected too. I haven’t been sued by my employer though. That’s a new low.
I read "21 years" and immediately think, "My god, how did you last that long???" Then I remember I'm on year 18...and think, "How did ***I***last this long????" I can remember when 2009 seemed like a distant future I could never make it to.
@@greyeyed123 42 years as a teacher here. I retire in one more. It's a struggle some days to continue. Figure my "senioritis" is kicking in, as in I'm feeling like my seniors who are getting ready to graduate!😳🤣
Years back I was purchasing a bottle of wine and this charming old woman informed me she taught school for 40 years and I had mischief in my eyes. Biggest compliment ever from A teacher and she had me figured out in seconds. Everything you need to know I learned in kindergarten and NEVER go to school on your birthday 🐒
You take the cake. My craziest moment was needing to get and submit my permanent teaching certificate. In the middle of the Red for Ed walk out. Dressing all retro 1950s teacher to walk into the department of education past the protestors, saying hi to the teachers I know. Walking out. Walking down the block to the district office past more protestors and saying hi to more teachers I know. Get it all taken care of, so I can walk back to my car, get my sign, and join the protestors. Good times.
Arizona has been experiencing a chronic teacher shortage for years now. Teachers come into the system and leave running a year or less later. I was lucky because my district was pretty good about how it treated its faculty so the weird stuff you just described was definitely there but to a smaller degree. I loved my job and the people I worked with so consider myself fortunate. Your advice to document everything and keep a hard copy is spot on. As they say: CYA....Cover Your Ass.
Yea I have a letter on file with me because someone at the district office work at told me to order a piece of equipment for my room. I asked do I need to get a Purchase order or a bid. I was told we got it covered we got it covered do not worry. So I get the item and then two weeks later I get a phone call that I did not follow proper procedures and I was going to have a letter of reprimand put on file for this. I was basically thrown under the bus. I am so happy I only have 3 more years left....
I worked at a high school as a physics teacher. I had years of experience, but a teacher who just finished his first year (and used a lot of my materials that year) had a math certification and that made him better. I was told the district would have a place for me, and later in the summer I found out that I'd been moved to a 6th-grade classroom at one of the most difficult middle schools in the district. Not sure why the physics teacher with a grade 7-12 certification got a 6th-grade job. I had some great coworkers and made some good connections with a few students, but I only lasted half the year. I could not handle the stress mentally or physically and was concerned that I might end up in the hospital before the end of the year. I'm happy to be in another district now.
School administrators have always had too much power with too little knowledge. There should be checks and balances in place to prevent abuse like this.
I’ve always wished there would be a requirement for each admin to teach a minimum of one class per semester. I don’t care how easy it is- they just need the reminder about how life in the trenches works… and I’m betting they’d realize a bunch of those meetings could really be emails after all.
I was working for a private agency serving students with disabilities. I was supposed to be full time with benefits. I had 8 hours per week. I filed for unemployment, listing the hours I worked and pay received to reduce the unemployment. Admin calls screaming at me for fraudulently collecting unemployment and would not listen when I explained how UI worked. They ended up violating federal civil rights laws and were caught hiring unqualified people (with only high school diplomas). Not long after I quit, most supervisors were let go (at the state's demand due to massive inappropriate issues) and the ones with high school diplomas were re assigned to Aide positions instead of pro positions.
I had a job in a call center like setting, my job was to process the returned mail and then contact the customer to update their billing address. One week I won a contest for most number of successful calls. The next week I was laid off because "my performance wasn't up to the level the company expects of it's team members"
I feel ya.. unfortunately I can relate. Substituting as a piano teacher, getting great results, being out of a job ☺️👌🏻 No wonder your humour resonates so well with me 😂 keep it coming 💪🏻
I just resigned in Novembout. 2021 right before the semester finals! I was on FMLA in my district and approved leave for 5 days and the admin my principal actually called me while I was on FMLA leave and had the nerve to leave me a voice-mail saying I had to go online and post work on Google Classroom. My wife was home at the time and called my principal back and let him know how upset and angry she was calling her husband (me) whileI was sick. It's so sad! Your video is right on! We have so many skills as educators that can be used in SO MANY OTHER CARRERS, TAKE CARE OF YOU! We all know what it's like right now, take a leap of faith and try something else! Enjoy your life and stay in good health!
I can relate in corporate world. In 2008 the construction supply dropped like a rock. My location was closed down and I was sent packing. They tried to argue against my unemployment, had a phone hearing with the judge and my old boss. I told her how I was let go without notice. I never heard the old boss, so I don't know what they said. However, when the judge came back to me they were not happy and said "this is ridiculous, unemployment granted" or something along those lines.
District personnel: WOW! What exemplary results! Your school did something right! Beginning of the Year Orientation I imagine this is how theirs went: Principal to staff: Our Senior reading program had a success rate of 70% last year. This is up from 20% from the previous year! We did it guys. With determination and fidelity, we CAN achieve those results each year. Enthusiastic teacher: Can you share the strategies that were used to achieve those results? If we find something that works, perhaps we can develop a PD around it? Principal: :sweating under collar because they take credit but never pay attention to the process: Great idea. Someone write that down for future PD. We will work as a team to ensure the success of our students. No man is an island. Also principal to secretary: Get that Siebold guy back here pronto. Seems like we really do need him.
I relate to this more than you can possibly imagine. The last three years of my life were having conversations with myself that went something like, "This isn't a real thing. How can this be a real thing?"
This is crazy! But important to document everything. I left a school district in Illinois because of the commute. I made the mistake of telling the school district the truth, oops. In Illinois, if you do not give 30 days notice and/or accept another teaching position the school district can hold your teaching certificate or fine you $2,000. I called a friend from college, who is a lawyer. She said, "This can't be right. This can't be legal". She then looks this up and it is a law in Illinois. I had to pay the $2,000 and do not know where this money went. I am no longer teaching or living in Illinois. I loved growing up there but as an adult and seeing that Illinois is 2nd highest in corruption outside of Louisiana I think I made the right decision. Glad you got out!!
BEST DECISION EVER! I left teaching after 25 years. It was the BEST decision ever. I believe a lure is that elusive retirement. Sadly, many of your healthy years. are lost as you drag towards the finish line. When you retire in your early 60's, most of your healthy years are gone. I can't tell you how many of retirees died of cancer within 5 years. I am 52 loving my life. Doing a simple job, that makes the same amount of time.
Devin, that you cared passionately about teaching and making a difference in the lives of young people and were then punished for it, sounds about right. I'm sorry that happened to you, and am impressed with your ability to help the students/raise test scores, and your upbeat demeanor despite the needless slings and arrows that are now commonplace in the profession. I only lasted twelve years, and am far darker in my recounting of teaching experiences.
Great story -- totally get it. Here's a story of my own. Back in 2012 I got hired as chair of a Math department at a State University. I quickly realize a large amount of dept activity was focused on remedial math for students who could not pass the required College Algebra class. There was a university wide requirement to pass College Algebra to get a degree in any subject. In prior years, the Math dept had created variations on College Algebra, such as "Math for Humanities Majors" etc -- offering alternatives to College Algebra that were a little less demanding but declared to be equivalent. Most universities do this, so no be deal there, but you can see the game. But that's not my story. My story is about the students who, based on high school performance, were placed in "remedial math" -- this was the course you should take if you were not ready for even the equivalent/watered down College Algebra. So, as chair I soon realized that about half of the students admitted to the university were put in remedial math. That's a lot of students. So, the math dept had a type of mini-dept within it to manage the remedial math program (we had an army of remedial math instructors). That gives you some background to understand (student) Philip's problem. In my first week on the job, Philip comes to me saying he needs to take a course different from the remedial math course. He tells me he has failed it 4 times already and rather than take it again he hoped for a different but equivalent class etc. I checked the records and realize Philip is not alone. Remedial math was required of all students whose HS record showed no Algebra or equivalent. Then, I talked to one of the remedial math instructors. First off, she knew Philip. She explained that Philip did not come to class after the first week. Then I checked the grade sheets of several remedial classes -- most of them were 90% F's. I had never before seen a grade sheet with a list of 18 F's and two A's. It leaves an imprint. So, long story short, the remedial math program was a self-sustaining system with no end in sight. When I listened to Philip's story I said to myself, "Well, yeah, it is not uncommon for students to fail courses, especially as immature freshmen, but the the feedback usually stops the flow because the person paying the tuition cries foul at some point." So, who was paying Philip's tuition? Turns out this University had endowment monies (lots of it) but it was designated for tuition payments only (not for new buildings, climbing walls, etc.) -- and -- the University had given scholarships to almost every student who applied. So, if you are keeping up, you can imagine the Provost's face when, as a new department chair, I announced at a meeting, "It looks a lot like a money laundering scheme." I'll leave it there -- there's a lot more to the story, but it's gotten way too long for this format. Thanks for your stories!
@@autarko To the Provost's credit, she seemed genuinely surprised -- she verified my claim, and the following year the university stopped charging tuition for the remedial math class. Of course, I didn't get any "award" -- but she treated me fair and square -- so, my hat is off to her. So, the administration was totally legit -- they had no idea this was going on in the Math (and English, by the way) dept. The situation would have been cleaned up sooner if the Math instructors (front line) expressed more shock over having multiple classes that start with 25 students and end with 5 passing and 20 F's. That should not have been "normal". etc. But even there, you would expect the students to complain, but since they were on scholarships, it wasn't their money etc. There a little more to the story for those who followed this saga, but I'll stop there -- thanks for your interest.
@@mathman2170 those F students wouldn't have attended many classes nor the exam so the course coordinator would have been well aware, but too savvy to raise the issue. The instructors were happy since they had barely any marking or preparation to do. The students didn't care since it was no skin of their noses.
![UCF Professor Richard Quinn accuses class of cheating [Original]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rbzJTTDO9f4/mqdefault.jpg)
So they fired you, a teacher, for educating kids...
This is America
This is the world. It's not better in most other countries.
This is government run schools
@@BookOfMorman I hink it is better in other parts of the world. Here in europe teachers arent treated like horsesh*t, neither by students nor by school-pricipals
@@BuildingMakingDoing Has nothing to do with "the government" running the school. Public schools are way better and less corrupt than private schools.
@@BookOfMorman Much better in most of Europe. Especially the U.K. with good teacher protections.
When I was a young teacher, I had an 8th grade class of kids the other teachers called The Unteachables. Lowest reading and writing scores in the whole school, so let's give them to the rookie teacher because everyone had given up on them.
I ditched the God-awful textbook and instead taught the kids from newspapers. Newspaper writing is a model of efficiency (stories are written in a pyramid) and also have catchy first paragraphs and headlines. So the kids and I wrote an in-class newspaper. Some of them were interested in sports, so they wrote up sports events. Newspapers are written for a lower reading level, so my students could work their way through the daily papers.
Standardized testing time and The Unteachable scores went up by 50%-100%. They could actually write a coherent paragraph.
Big success, right?
I got a bad evaluation because I didn't use the standardized textbook and got a stern lecture from the vice principal evaluating me about "the taxpayers paid for these books and we need to use them, not stack them on a shelf".
Two of The Unteachables became journalists in their adult lives, by the way.
Wow
"Two of The Unteachables became journalists in their adult lives," So that says it all. Everything you went through was for something you did correctly. My son was a bit of a he'll raiser in his early school years. The first grade teacher did help him and he sucked up everything she taught. Second grade teacher, a good woman, but she really brought the worst in my son. What a nightmare that was! But his third grade teacher, a young man probably
even tho admins didnt agree, you deff did something right. I was a student in one of these classes, almost the exact same situation, a class full of 25 of the schools worst behaved kids, a few of them with learning disabilities and almost all with behavioral issues. it was this teacher's first ever year teaching and he didnt handle it like you did. he tried to follow the books and the curriculum lessons. I dont think we ever actually finished a lesson or assignment in that class. He left at the end of that year and idk what he did after that but he never came back to the school i was going to. that class was a nightmare, kids were throwing stuff and talking and fighting with eachother all the time, i remember even points where i just wanted to get through the period and finish the assignments, where i had to yell at the other students because they wouldnt listen to him, you couldnt go 5 minutes without a serious disruption in that class. i was so sick of seeing this man on the brink of losing his shit, he was such a nice person too, he went into that job thinking he was going to make a difference in kids lives, and left a hollow husk of his former self only 9 months later. I started out a trouble maker but quickly felt like he had way too many issues already, i felt really bad for him.
Honestly is hilarous/sad that these schools who are running on less and less staff every year would even consider doing that to someone who is a new hire and willing to do the job. No wonder no one wants to work there, they dont even ease you into it, they just throw you in with the lions and see what happens. what a mess lol, i cant believe there are still people who want to do this job. I think the best thing for Americas school would be to refuse to work in any public school until the government actually takes these issues seriously and starts putting more resources and money into it (and i get some people are trapped in the job and need it to make a living, but if no one new took the job, they would all die or retire eventually and the govt would have to take action so that they can uphold our free right to education.) These schools are dangerous settings for children and staff alike, no one is being paid enough, and the schools do not have enough money to actually invest in kids education or their safety. Continuing to participate and do the job is just prolonging the issue imo.
Ive never been a teacher so i dont have a totally inside perspective but i remember being a student and dealing with these same issues i keep hearing teachers talk abut in videos. We never had enough supplies or materials for everyone to have a copy of assignments, we often had "Permanent substitute" teachers filling in for people who walked out on the job mid year, dont even get me started on the cafeterias, the lunch "lines" - if you could call them lines - were a total free for all, people would be jumping over eachother, shoving eachother, honestly this makes it sound tame, it was bad, the dean watching this all go down and standing there zoning out like he didnt even have 1 braincell. I remember in middle school having my boobs touched by other kids all the time, when id tell teachers and admins, they would DO NOTHING. i could go on and on about all the horrible stuff ive seen/had to put up with but it would turn into a novel. If i ever have children ill be damnned if i send them to a shithole like that.
Sorry for the long rant. I really feel for the teachers like you who were trying to make a difference, and it was so appreciated, but it could never outweigh all the bad that comes with this school system.
You can always pick out the poineers in any field. They are the ones with all the arrows in their back. Congrats on making a real difference.
Amazing. Lived that story, but in science. Great job to you and your students!
One fun part I left out, I told the school lawyer I had the letter and faxed it to him before the court date. He still went through with the court date just hoping I wouldn’t show and they would win by default, even knowing they were wrong.
Wow...
He wanted the extra money from going to court
I am sorry that is so terrible!
Of course he did.
@@donnabullock8364 School district lawyers are the worst.
Years ago, I checked my e-mail in the morning before heading to work and saw a message from my principal instructing me to go directly to his office first thing that morning. When I got in, he shut the door and began to go completely over-the-top ballistic saying I cut a student’s hair the day before in class. I let him finish then reminded him that I was at a seminar off campus the day before, so there was no way I cut anyone’s hair. The fun part of this story came when I realized my sub that day was the kid’s grandmother and she did, in fact, cut his hair! I never did get an apology from that jerk of a principal either.
Once was adjacent to a miliatary chewing out fro ma master sergeant to a staff sergeant, yelling at him for a solid 5 minutes for leaving a soldier behind
Master Sergeant: "WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?"
Sergeant Burkowitz: "That was Sergeant Blaskowitz"
Master Sergeant: "And... where is Blaskowitz?"
Sergeant Burkowitz: "Getting chewed out by the colonel."
Master Sergeant: "Go away."
😮😮😮😮
This is so accurate. To any newbies- document everything. Go old school and keep hard copies. This kind of bull excrement happens way more than you could possibly imagine.
YES, newbies. LISTEN TO SARAH!!! Cannot stress this enough. Make a folder.
Hard copies RULE! The only thing that smacks down as hard is video. And folks get twitchy when they see a camera.
Yep, hard copies, documentation, and from my experience working in government services all emails, pictures, GPS information, texts and paper you used need to be yours not state notebook paper, computer files etc because that is state property and confiscateable. Thank you for that tidbit in 1981 Capt. Mike
Survivor of the initial women in a firestation and 30 years later a job that no women or minority had lasted at that firestation's initiation rites for longer than 6 months.
I stayed 3 years, I told them I was having a great time, why would I want to leave such a wonderful place, after I survived the one year of probation at the new job title, much to their chagrin.
I started no fights but I outmanuvered and finished any stupidity with maximum documentation, and maximum force
I never said don't write me up for that. I said if you want go right ahead, but I will challenge that and I have photos, GPS tracking, etc and will take you to a skelly hearing I'm sure you want to explain this in front of the board. BTW I will be advising ..chief..or EEO or HR as soon as I leave this room. It's going to be interesting how I'm suddenly a fire-able employee over slow careful driving or not working hard enough or dirty wheel wells with a 20 year history of no flags in my file. I leaned in hard and it worked.
It sucked, but when I left for a paradise level assignment women and minorities were able to be assigned there without incident.
But Documentation complete and though saved my ass many times.
@arr sea how is "black girl got ebola" racist
Even as a seasoned I still document everything. It has saved my butt more times than I wish to remember.
I wasn’t offered a contract for the following year because I had “only negative surveys from students”. I had copies of the surveys and they were all freakin glowing. I’m sometimes a disorganized mess, but the relationships I build with my students are almost always positive and my students and their parents were especially outspoken about that this year. I, knowing I had the surveys in my back pocket, asked the administrator if I could see them and she said, “that’s not what we are here to discuss right now”….I said, “with all due respect, isn’t that specifically what we are here to talk about?”. Anyway, I’m doing all I can to fight it, but I may be leaving teaching for good due to this situation. Thanks for all the rest of you folks do!
I didn't realize we were there to be student's friends. It's not my job to be liked. It's that they learn
Teaching: The only profession where you need degrees and certifications, don't get paid what you're worth, and get treated about as badly as retail workers from both parents and admin.
"...and get treated about as badly as retail workers..."? No way. Much worse. If you're a retail worker & you get physically attacked by a customer, you can defend yourself or at least try to. But if you're a teacher attacked by a student & you defend yourself, you will be charged with assault.
True
@@normanasher5006 lol true my sister lost her baby because of student hitting her on the stomach guess what nothing happened
@@normanasher5006 agreed! I was never bit, slapped, scratched, snotted on or had my hair pulled while working retail.
@@johneilmattis13 incredible. I hope she is in a Union state.
I don't even have kids and I'm deeply worried about how corrupt our education system seems to be
It has been corrupt for decades. My parents realized this and homeschooled me. I am now homeschooling my own kids. No way am I putting them in school!
corrupt city and state governments. I am so glad I don't live in the US anymore. It's just becoming a giant hellhole.
Teachers become alcoholics bc of it. Theres your answer.
I really admire your ability to not use swearwords without even resorting to beeps or asteriskes. *ing impressive.
It’s called be a professional teacher! You learn how to be very sarcastic without cussing!! Believe me, some of the funniest guys I know are male teachers who are very sarcastic like myself!! I can be very sarcastic!
Yea. I swear people are cuckoo!
haha it's that teacher skill you learn when you are constantly around children and not allowed to swear.
It’s a teacher skill. Probably in case any students see his videos.
I always find it refreshing when people can talk without cursing every five seconds
I’m from Los Angeles. My first year teaching my vice principal’s evaluation said I was “inflexible” and this was based on the fact I was a brand new bilingual teacher (which meant none of my students spoke English, were supposed to be taught in Spanish with 45 minutes of ESL daily which magically would turn them fully bilingual and biliterate) I was on an emergency credential so I was just starting my teacher training classes. I walked into a room empty but for a broken pencil sharpener and and handful of pencil stubs and bits of crayons and desks too high for small children and a huge amount of dust and rodent droppings (I won’t tell the story of the bran muffin I bought from the cafeteria with a baby cockroach wrapped into it)
I had no supplies whatsoever and we didn’t get textbooks (they had tossed every last textbook into giant dumpsters because we were no longer teaching phonics but were supposed to teach from scratch using literature and I begged for any kind of books hence being called “inflexible”
I had 36 students and no assistant, there was no air conditioning, no fans, the windows were painted shut and there were three lunches and three recesses and the noise from the yard was like being at an airport so I had to keep the doors closed. We worked year round (my time “off” haha was September/October and April/ May so the classroom for months often got up to 120F.)That would have been abuse if you did that to a bunch of dogs. But I was inflexible and a trouble maker. Talk about trial by fire and after teaching for ten years I was making $10,000 more per year and my rent had doubled. I subbed during my off-track time (ie vacations) I had 8 years of university: BA, teaching credential classes, MA to make far less than my mechanic, my cocktail waitress friend, my garbage man and had to move back into my mommy’s house so I could save something for retirement. When I wasn’t teaching I was writing lessons, doing bulletin boards, grading, buying crap for my classroom (my first year 1989 I spent $3,000 of my own money and the same and more every year thereafter.) and so on. I had to empty my own trash cans, sweep and wash my floors and clean up blood and vomit myself.
I would say 3/4 of my class was learning disabled and for 1500 kids there was one resource specialist so I was supposed to teach 36 regular Ed, special Ed and bilingual Ed with no materials, no support and under physical conditions that were truly abuse.
That first year a female custodian was shot point blank in the head, a kindergarten teacher was raped in her classroom and one of my friends had a drug addict jump in the back of her truck as she pulled out of the parking lot.
I bought my clothes from thrift shops, never had a vacation for 22 years, never ate out, never went to Starbucks or movies or out with friends. I can’t believe when people say how easy teaching is and how great the vacations are. The turnover of teachers is 50% the first five years. This means classrooms are staffed by teachers who don’t know what they’re doing. As soon as they start to have some abilities they quit. Teaching is the absolute worst job. When students are successful it’s because of the parents and administration. When they fail it’s because of the teachers. I’m so glad I’m out of that toxic environment.
I’m self employed now and every day I thank God for it.
My jaw is on the floor reading this. I’m amazed how people in positions in leadership can allow this to happen under their position. It’s literally their job so have a functioning school. Sounds like they’re the ones who don’t know how to do their jobs but try to tell others how to do theirs. Insanity. No idea how someone could be so lazy or I don’t even know what to let that happen. I’m actually upset hearing all these stories. Our society is in for a rude awakening with all this incompetence and narcissistic attitudes. Yikes
I have been a teacher in Alabama for over 25 years. For the most part my experience has been positive. We have air conditioning and good kids and good administrators and good parents. My pay is adequate. My room is filled with the latest technology. The room is clean with good custodians. I just cannot relate to stories like yours.
If that shocks you I have a million more stories. How about a friend and coworker who taught the aphasia class being called a racist by two teachers because he gave a 6 year old whose crackhead mother (we were two houses down from a crack horse) didn’t bother to reapply for the free lunches. See, he should have let the kid starve because the child should have been responsible for getting the paperwork filled out and signed.
Most of us kept peanut butter and crackers, tea (for stomachaches), hot chocolate and various snacks for kids who didn’t eat lunch and breakfast. I had a makeshift sick space with a cot and pillow for sick kids because their parents always gave fake telephone numbers so the school couldn’t reach them.@@MsYoshiGreen
I’m sorry you didn’t leave a long time ago
I have a similar story involving my Ex Wife. She was a brand new High School teacher down in Los Angeles (This was a good 15 or so years ago). She got pink slipped at the end of the year, went back onto the sub pool and started collecting unemployment. This was during the Obama years, where the feds were constantly extending unemployment benefits, so this went on for almost 4 years.
Once 4 years hit, she got a summons from the unemployment office. Apparently the school district accused her of not taking 20 or so sub jobs they offered her over a two month period and wanted to sue her for back unemployment. By this time, it was something like 40k. We were floored. Luckily, I kept my head and got onto our phone carrier to print out our call logs for that two month period. After that, it was 2 months of turmoil of constantly having this "What happens if we loose and they expect us to fork over 40k like it was nothing?". It definitely put a strain on everything.
The day comes and we show up. Not only does the school district send NO ONE, but they FAXED their "evidence" to the judge half an hour late, which annoyed him greatly. So, he took a look over at everything, then handed the "evidence" to my ex-wife saying "Ma'am, you would be completely in your right to object to this evidence as they didn't send it over in time. But, since they annoyed me, I'm going to give you some free advice and tell you that you should accept it and continue."
We looked it over, and my ex-wife immediately stated she would allow the evidence. Five minutes later, the judge ruled into our favor and we were on our way. What had happened was that the supposed dates they put down that they called and she denied, the phone records showed no such call having came in. There were even 3 "jobs" on dates that ended up being on a Sunday. So, we won our case because an obvious fabrication of what happened and that the school district was probably annoyed that they were paying my ex-wife all this money from unemployment and tried to steal it all back.
It always rubbed me after that how you're not able to counter-sue, or get some form of damages. This wasn't a case where both parties had arguments and the judge had to pick and choose, this was blatant fraud. But, I guess it meant we didn't need to somehow shell out 40k.
Doesn’t this fall under defamation?
My first year teaching, I won Teacher of the Year for being awesome (I really was pretty badass). The same afternoon (the awards thing was in a morning assembly) I was told my contract was not being renewed because I was “too intimidating” to the other teachers.
I beileive it
It happened to me, but the VPs and all the Counselors but one, stood up for me against the Principal and the whole English Department, so the Principal back down, and switched me to Social Studies.
Not surprising. When you excel at your job, it is threatening to others since you are exposing their ineptitude.
Yes, sounds about right. I was teaching 5th grade. I spent the summer studying the new math that was being introduced. Paid for the books myself. Anyway, the next Spring, my kids went up 40% in math. Unheard of, but I did my homework, duh! Two weeks later, I got called into principal's office and they told me that teachers who give the kids the answers, get fired. Yes, they were too stupid to understand what I did. I quit then and there. But, all in all, what about the kids. Sad
Teach so well you lose your job. As an ESL teacher, I’ve made this joke, but you actually did it, ya legend.
When I was a custodian(I'm retired) one of my teachers had the highest math classroom math scores in the district. Then one year the district passed down mandatory teaching protocols, which resulted in that teacher's classroom math scores plummeting. He was sooooooo angry.
I know this is off topic a bit, but you can tell that he is a really good teacher just by the way he talks and communicates his ideas.
Hearing your stories...man, I don't know why I fought to stay in the classroom for as long as I did. Because these stories aren't outliers. This is the baseline normal. The whole time, I'm nodding my head, yep, sounds about right. The hardest part, though, is even though I'm not a "Full-Time Classroom Teacher" right now as my employment, I am still a "Teacher" at the core of who I am, so I am constantly in this internal struggle of wanting to go back while needing to stay out to protect what is left of my mental health.
Thanks for the stories, thanks for the laughs.
This is insane, and sadly not surprising.
I literally had a disciplinary meeting called for me last year, because I didn't sign in. On a day I wasn't in the building. On a day I wasn't in the building, which had been approved, both verbally and in writing, ahead of time, by my principal. She did not apologize.
“I had a disciplinary meeting called…”
There is nothing unclear about saying that making your addition of the word literally unnecessary. It’s just meaningless filler. Hopefully you weren’t an English teacher.
@@remlya huh??
@@remlya Found the administrator!
@@remlya nit pick much?
@@remlya For several non-native English speakers, her additional clause may help them comprehend the situation. Please get out of here if you're going to have an elitist attitude.
Sincerely,
An English Teacher
The fact that you talk so calmly about all this and reacted so well to gaslighting and psychotic behavior is literally amazing. I would have gone on a rampage if that Principal emailed me like that after everything.
The problem is that if you’re trying to get another teaching job, you need that ex-principal to say nice things about you. Yes, I know employers aren’t supposed to trash their former employees, but principals will do it. And then deny it. Which is how you end up applying for 200 open positions, getting 3 interviews, and no job.
When I finally stopped teaching, I went and got a copy of my county file. My last evaluation from the b*tch? There were 2 things on the first page marked unsatisfactory. That’s basically a blackball: no one will hire you. They had NOT been there when I’d signed it (on the second page.) They had been “Needs Improvement.” But that had been 10 years ago, so I no longer had the one I’d signed. I was lucky in that I was able to go into a new field and leaving teaching behind. I’m now making more money than I would have after 20 years as a teacher, and the job is much less stressful.
No teacher, working or retired will ever be heard saying, “I’m shocked, shocked I say” by your story. I learned my first year of teaching if something is logical and makes sense, the educational powers that be will do the exact opposite.
Absolutely right
Indeed!
This just isn't true. No AMERICAN teacher would be shocked by this. Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, they probably wouldn't be shocked either. But the Fins would!
Yea my daughter was in that class for the struggling students and they would always undermine my opinion when we have a meeting they always do whatever they want afterwards so I told them I'm not participating in the meeting s anymore and don't call me
You idiots keep voting for Democrats and wonder why nothing changes for the better.
I quit teaching after 15 years, doubled my income and saved my life. Sadly I see many teacher-friends with major health issues (stress-related cortisol and terrible insurance coverage) die before retirement. Leaving was the best decision of my life. Teaching is truly a DEADLY occupation.
Hello. Do you mind sharing what type of work you moved into?
What are you doing now? I fully agree with your stress related comment.
@@MsDeDeJa Instructional Design.
@@misssparks3596 Instructional Design. Working from home.
I've been placed on paid administrative leave three times in my 30+ year teaching career. Each time it was dumber and dumber, but the important thing is that I fought back each time and have always prevailed. Don't let corrupt administrators or board members intimidate you! This is why unions are so incredibly important!
They aren't corrupt, just poorly educated.
I have been a school administrator for 17 years, I principaled for eight years before I gave it up for having to fight the central office over what worked for my kids.
Your story is far more common than you think. Schools system get away without paying unemployment because teachers are on a nine month contract. It’s rarely challenged. Life’s tough for good teachers, and that’s why so many leave the profession.
Good luck in all you do! And fight them every time, it’s the only way to make them change
I had a teacher when I was in alternative high school in Michigan that was fired because he was attacked and choked by a student. He didn't fight back, we were all witnesses, but the school said he instigated and took part in a fight with her. He always said they were looking for a reason to fire him...I guess they got proactive and just made a reason happen. I'm sorry you all have to deal with this shit when all you set out to do is help others. Hopefully you have some really positive stories too which I'm sure you do, otherwise you wouldn't have made it that long. Teachers saved my life and kept me from ending up dead or in prison like many of my peers. I will always be grateful for them.
Thank you for your kind words, Justin. It is students like you that keep us in the profession as long as possible.
On the whole: I think the only, final lifeline for teachers in schools today is for students and their parents to advocate for them to the school administration themselves. For every student and parent who complain to an administration about a teacher, there should be another student and parent who openly compliment a teacher to that same administration. That way, the dedicated, respectful, hardworking students and parents will have an equal voice to their/your opposing peers, and admin. out there may just begin to see the light as to who teachers really are and what they/we do for the better for others every single day. Admin. always listen to what students and parents have to say. They could care less about teachers and our well being. And that's entirely their choice. Nothing and nobody else prompts them to think and act that way.
Thank you again for your support, Justin. It means a lot to teachers everywhere. Keep up the terrific work in your studies and all the best to you going forward. :)
@@munimathbypeterfelton6251 I agree. I worked in a school until about a month ago (I studied further into my subject field and gained marketable skills besides teaching, so now I work in that field). Whenever students or others give thanks or compliments, it brings life and I see anew what teaching is all about-those are the moments that make it worth it. At the school, I just left, though, I saw multiple people fired who truly cared about the students and their progress, just because of students straight up lying about them or because they’d stirred the pot with administrators themselves trying to get improvements to happen. I made some professional complaints to HR myself and subsequently felt heavily at risk of termination as a result. I love when people recognize the good that’s going on and the effort that’s being put in. We also need more than just recognition though, because recognition doesn’t increase wages or change broken structure/programs. We don’t need patches/bandaids, but an actually better, cleaned-out system.
@@sunnylilacs Oh, the district HR people. Empty, soulless suits.
I dispise administrators who like office politics more than performance.
@@munimathbypeterfelton6251 👍👍👏👏‼️ What a well written comment.
The lesson i gather from this is to keep a copy and document everything in writing!!
Lisafriends is right - DOCUMENT everything - from apology letters from kids, parent emails...everything.. And..... BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PUT IN EMAILS. I called rather than email. Thank God I retired this year.
Absolutely. I emailed that I intended to call. PERFECT ADVICE...…
Circia 2006.... now what????!?????
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️😂❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Being a hospital RN, I also learned to keep everything that might come in handy. Doing so saved me several times!!! Even though I’ve been retired now for over a decade, still have my folder of saved items.
You purposely avoid having a paper trail by calling instead of emails and are bragging about this and then you people wonder why no one trust teachers anymore.
Also, wear body armour and two body cameras at all times (front and rear), and carry pepper spray and an extendable baton. Once you start teaching those over 12 years old, you should add a protective helmet and an AK-47.
I was told my "performance" was un acceptable. When I countered that my students scored higher than all the others, they replied, "That product not process." Apparently, writing lesson outcomes on the board daily was more important than student progress
I’ll add my story cause it’s wild.
First year teacher for the 2019-2020 school year. Oh boy I had no idea what was to come that spring. Anyways my degree is a dual major of math and physics. (No teaching certification) so I opted for an alternative education program to get my certificate. With it, I could teach the first year on an intern certificate, and then go through the modules and take the ppr exam at the end of the year.
Fast forward through many crazy months and Covid hits. Schools and the whole world shuts down. Guess who can’t take the ppr because the testing centers are closed till further notice. Mhm this guy. So I reschedule for October, as it was the earliest date they were gonna open the centers on.
I renew my contract and go on with my merry summer, and then boom… The school says I don’t have a certificate so they can’t keep me on tenure as a teacher. (Fair enough I didn’t have the certificate) So I call my program and ask for an extension to my intern certification until I take my already rescheduled ppr exam. They flat out said no tough luck.
So I go back to my school and told them everything. They said there’s nothing they can do, but because they need teachers they will find a way to make it work. What they decided was to keep me as the posted teacher, cancel my teaching contract and re-sign me back on as a long term sub. Same job, less pay… plus beginning the Covid year so way more responsibilities and craziness.
They offered me that, and said it would only be until I take the ppr in October and get my certificate. So I’m thinking, okay I can swing 2 months of this. No problem.
Week before school starts: department head comes to me and says the school is requiring us to have 4 months of online modules prepped by mid September. I think that’s nuts so I’m chatting with my buddy down the hall about it. He said no one is required to do that. I find out through same guy a few days later (who’s good friends with department head) that they are having me prep the class for online so my replacement doesn’t have to do it.
Apparently they already found someone! So I decided I’m not going to be taken advantage of. My contract is already terminated, and when they asked me to sign the contract for long term sub I said no I don’t think I’ll do that. I left high and dry the Friday before school starts next week, spent a month looking for a new job. Said teaching wasn’t worth it, and moved to the mountains to be a ski lift operator/snowboard instructor.
Gravy of it all, was the teacher they got to replace me was offered a higher paying contract at a different district so they went there and my old school had to eat that hole they dug.
Its strange to me that this would happen to a math/physics teacher. You guys are as rare as hens teeth. In Alabama they would move heaven and earth to keep you.
As a teacher, this doesn’t surprise me in the least because the system is broken all across the nation. What a nightmare to go through!
Crazy! I had a principal who would yell at me when one of of students misbehaved during PE or during passing periods. He did this repeatedly until a coworker encouraged me to do something about it (after seeing me in tears). I emailed him a letter about him not professional. I let him know that if he wanted to discuss it in person, I would need my representative from my teacher federation. He was completely different from then on. I understood that there were grievances filed on him and he didn't need any more.
Retired HS cafeteria manager here. Pre-Covid, mid-year, program director implements new school meal software program. Four days in person group training *during the school day* while cafeteria running at full steam, hah, and 400+ students being served lunch. The food doesn't order itself. Same developer as our financial end/point of sale software but the programs don't talk to each other, oh, and we go live next Monday. Three years later threatened via email with a "performance plan" write up (i.e. stairway to termination) if I don't get up to snuff with the software that doesn't work and that they spent tens of thousands of dollar's on. Post-Covid, director presents yet another software program to BOD that she wants to spend $$ on because the other software is not compatible with department needs. Like we never brought these issues to their attention. By that time I retired. Covid killed me. The passion gets beaten out of you. Think of the most logical and effective path to goal achievement success....then do the exact opposite....that's public schools today. I've been gone 13 months and am still experiencing PTSD.
Document document DOCUMENT!!!!! And save a hard copy of everything especially if it’s on some sort of letterhead!!! Admin will lie through their teeth!!! I’ve been saved on several occasions by having hard copies of everything. It’s not like the judge is going to look at screenshots from your phone or take a gander at emails on your laptop..
It's only a matter of time before who you get as a judge (who could be a product of a declining education system and its diminishing values) matters more than the evidence presented in court. Yes, document, but even that will eventually be worth nothing in Florida.
Yeah... after being taught in college how to take bullets for my classroom and looking at 4 years of graduate school for a job with virtually no openings in my state with peanuts for pay I decided not to do that. One of my better life decisions.
I'm so sorry you got flagrantly abused by the system and unappreciated for doing your job well.
I was a in the process of getting my Masters in Education for history and I needed a teaching job (part of my requirements). I had 6 years of prior experience working as an English teacher. I got hired by a school mid-February as a history teacher because they fired the last teacher. They told me that the classes were "sinking boats and you just need to save as many as you can" I got hired and walked into the classroom: the previous teacher stole everything that wasn't bolted down. I had no textbooks, no markers, bare walls, and no supplies. There were no lesson plans, curriculum notes...nothing. Here I am hired Friday and expected to start Monday. It was a constant battle to do anything for that semester and to get anything done. I was a poor grad student with no supplies and no resources. After that semester, I got laid off. The excuse of the principal stated "a real teacher is always prepared and has resources ready"
Well a REAL principal sees to it that the teachers have the resources they need to do their jobs, too, particularly if they're telling you that the class is full of "sinking boats".
Yikes 😳
This is a classic “promoted to scapegoat” story. Don’t let it stop you from doing great things.
I’m a caregiver..ditto.
Principle wanted you to do all the stocking. Most likely the previous teacher had been hired in a similar situation and HAD provided all of the materials...and had rightfully taken them with him/her when they left.
I worked in a district that had portable classrooms. I was placed in one that was over 40 years old. At the time I did not know that the reason teachers refused to work in that portable was because everyone who worked in it got sick. After I began working I kept getting sick. I had to be medicated and brought all sorts of medical equipments to get through the day. My doctor had me tested for allergies and it came back positive for mold. After doing my own mold test, hadthe district do a mold test ( came back positive for mold), showed images of black mold under the broken tiles on the floor& termites in wood. I also submitted paperwork from my doctor stating it was making me sick; the district decided to fire me for " poor teaching pedagogy". The previous 2 years being there I got great evaluations and my students showed tremendous growth. Right after I got my letter of termination, my principal gave me my first poor review and then another. The secretary in HR had already told me to make a copy of my file, as they were going to do just that because there was nothing in my file to support the termination. The union was no help at all. The lawyer provided by the union and the union president told me they were preparing a case to fight the termination. When I tried to follow up, they stopped responding to me via email or phone calls. As a new teacher, that was my first eye opener. It was difficult to get a job after that because every interview I went on they asked why I left. My response had them questioned my teaching skills. I eventually got another job in a different district, but I have seen and experienced so many bad things there as well, I can write a book.
Unemployment continues until you turn down an offer of full employment. I bet the principal was either pressured to try and get you to reject the offer which would then cancel your unemployment OR was pressured to rehire you to get you off the unemployment list and then make life so hard for you that you quit
I wouldn’t doubt it. So shady.
@@DevinSiebold Did you find another district after that?
@@refocusedadhd no, same one unfortunately. It was the only one with positions open at the time. Surprising, I know.
@@DevinSiebold Imagine that. And. gosh, I can't understand why, since they were such pleasant and professional employers surely no one ever wanted to leave their loving embrace.
@@DevinSiebold Wow, this and your other stories are making me think that when I have my kids I'll either homeschool them (I work remotely) or just send them to private school! I mean, firing teachers for getting students to learn and pass their exams...then suing them?!?! why would ANY sane parent send their kids to schools like this?
I can't relate to everything, but my first year teaching i was 24 and one of my duties was to teach math to students who had previously failed the state mandatory test. It was an intensive 3 week class. The more experienced teachers were telling me that i was teaching incorrectly and how i needed to do things differently. About 70 percent of the students, who were in my class passed. The "experts" had a much lower pass rate. They never apologized or asked what i did different. They said nothing. I stopped teaching 5 years later.
Although the school district tell you oh these kids are not passing their mandatory state exam, we are hiring you to help them pas. When in reality they do not want students to excel.
Well, my story is pretty sad and crazy. I taught and was an administrator for a private school, owned by my best friend of 40 years. She laid me off a week before school started. My team teacher and I had the whole planned out. Then she had the nerve to say I could collect unemployment if it would help. Of course I knew I could collect unemployment and went right over to the unemployment office when I left the school. There is more to this story, let’s just say we haven’t spoken to each other in 4 years. And we both stood in each other’s weddings. You never know where life will take you.
That’s terrible. Definitely not a good way to handle that. You’re probably better off.
That’s harsh
Your boss is never your friend, no matter the history between you two. Unionize.
None of this sounds sus. Sounds like you didn't recognize your friends responsibility as a biz owner and got too comfortable
Another reason why I quit my teaching position 5 years ago in the US and moved to Asia. Here the students have excellent behavior and thank me at the end of every class for teaching them!
I have a couple of crazy stories from my mom, who taught high school English and Literature, that show how teachers are NOT given a safe environment. In the first instance, this one kid developed a crush on my mom and started stalking her. The administration said that they could do nothing to stop it. It got so bad that other STUDENTS would stay after class so that she wouldn't be left alone with this kid. Then there were the angry parents that she had to deal with in parent/teacher meetings. Those got so bad that my DAD went to those meetings with her because we were worried she would be physically attacked. I went to the same high school where she taught, and people would ask me all the time if I planned to be a teacher one day too. Are you kidding me? Once you see what it's like on the inside, you have no desire to be there unless you have a "calling" for it. The only reason my mom stayed in it so long is because of her students. She had students that loved her so much that they were still coming to visit her 10 years later. Unfortunately, the school system is not set up to reward dedicated teachers. In fact, the more dedicated you are, the more BS gets dumped on you because they know that you'll put up with it. It does not surprise me that a school system laid off a teacher because he was TOO successful. I just nodded along at that part, "that sounds about right..."
I love this story. It’s the same in Police/Sheriff’s Departments. Always watching your back. Keep your mouth shut! Always get it in writing (i.e. evaluations, labor contracts, especially notices of counseling, training bulletins, and most importantly Standard Operating Procedures/General Orders). You never know who’s out to get you or trying to set you up.
OK, here goes. I had been teaching for 8-9 years and was most recently teaching HS Biology. It's the first day of the new school year and I show up for the typical meetings, training and other stuff that happens before classes start. I get my class schedule at eight o'clock when I show up and meetings start with all of the "Welcome Back" hoopla. We were on a Block Schedule at the time and I had four biology classes. I thought great, I've been doing this a while and I've got a handle on this so I'm ready to go.
Fast forward to ten o'clock that same day and we have a break in all of the meetings. I check my mailbox and learn that my class schedule has changed. I now have two biology classes, an environmental science class, and an aquatic science class. Now the environmental science & aquatic science classes were being taught for the very first time on my campus & I truly wasn't even aware that those classes were even being offered to the students much less that I was going to be teaching them. I went to the principal to ask about the new classes and learned the following:
The admin was excited to offer the two new classes to "broaden" the science elective selection for the students. They knew I could handle it & simply had forgotten to tell me about it. I asked the principal about books, supplies & such that went along with this type of class. I was told that they had no books or supplies for the classes & by the way NO budget to purchase books or supplies. They would "try" to find something someplace and get them to me. And by the way, I was reminded that students will be in my classroom in four days so, get ready.
I was floored. I immediately began scrambling to find ANYTHING that I could turn into some sort of curriculum and meet guidelines that were required for the class. I had a degree in Wildlife Biology and a passion for this sort of science, but I was not prepared to teach the class to a student filled classroom with no materials to reinforce my teaching.
I did my best to supply my class with stuff from my personal collection of related materials from my home and anywhere else I could find it. I did all I could do and made it through the year. I just did what I could & didn't worry about the rest.
BTW, about ten to twelve weeks into the school year, Aquatic Science books arrived in my classroom. I received a class set of books that had been published TWENTY FIVE YEARS previously and actually had the words "DISCONTINUED" stamped across the ends of the books. These books were completely laughable.
I see schools don’t just hang onto books for decades, but buy them already that old.
Reminds me of a what my school did when i attended. On paper, they had AP spanish and AP physics. But if you actually attended, you would see that both of these classes were not on their own.
AP spanish had like 6 students and was stuffed into a corner of the class. Why? Because there was a 2nd class inside as well. A full class of regular Spanish. Two separate courses, materials and teacher was expected to teach both. It worked out, but only because AP spanish had native speakers in it. So teacher could simply focus on the regular spanish course.
AP physics on the other hand initially was a full class. But teacher didn’t teacher, only put videos of guy with thickest accent he could find, AND COLLECTED ANY NOTES WE TOOK During CLASS. So as expected, students dropped the class and soon this class too was tiny. Maybe 10 students. To pad the numbers perhaps, they (admin) decided to split a regular physics class and dropped them off at our class and just added “honnor” to their title. All the students were pissed. People in AP physics did want to learn, so they had to do it themselves. People in the Honors class pissed that they had great teacher but then tossed into shitty teacher class.
I’m surprised they didn’t do the same with the Calc BC class since it was the smallest class at 5 people. An alright teacher who is definitely trying to teach the class but does overcomplicates some of the material. Probably only reason they didn’t do it to this course is that teacher would definitely not allow it.
@@popenieafantome9527 I was asked to teach an honors course inside a regular course once. It’s awful, for both the teacher and the students. I can’t adequately teach honors students at a higher level and also help the students at the regular level who are struggling. End result is the honors students are usually left to learn it on their own because admin wants me to focus on the regular students and the “honors kids can handle it” or something. I can’t imagine doing honors and AP together- those are completely different in terms of requirements!
Similar thing happened to me- I had taught hs biology for one year- been a teacher for one year- and I was given the brand new marine science course to teach. We did have books, that I barely used because they weren’t very helpful, but no lab books even though it was a lab course with a scheduled lab. Spent most of that year digging around for marine science labs to do with the kids.
@@popenieafantome9527 At our school, several AP and IB classes are combined, sometimes they are even an IB, AP, and concurrent enrolment class all in one.
@@fluffyunicorn57 not too familiar with IB. If that’s an AP equivalent, then it doesn’t seem like too much of a problem. Maybe use the same book too. Problem is when an “advance course” is mixed into a regular class. Which ends up being two very different books and forces teacher to choose between focusing on one class, or try teaching the more complex stuff and make two separate tests, homework, and grading system for the class. Maybe it could work if done from very start. But in my AP physics class, the honors class literally did not exist until admin randomly pulled students 2 months into school out of their regular physics class and told to move into our AP physics class. Then admin slapped a “honors” label on them as if it makes it magially makes them catch up with material we were “covering.”
Clear issues with our value system. Man, I wish you the best. You are a Real teacher.
Teaching is one of those professions where there is a penalty (or a long series of colossal penalties) for success. Really? Thrown under the bus twice for doing your job well. Florida does not deserve teachers, just something that consumes oxygen to supervise a crowded holding pen of kids while the rest of us work.
While I know what you said is an exaggeration, punishing the kids for the actions of the administration is not any sort of solution.
@@jonathancarter5120 Yeah, but then you have the abusive relationship when the abused partner feels like they have to resign themselves to accepting the status quo because they have to stay for the sake of the kids.
@@snowangelnc This still doesn't explain why we should punish the kids, rather than the the equivalent of your analogies abusive partner, the administration.
Governments do not deserve teachers, only those who can pay for the valuable time of educators deserve education.
However, education is not distributed to who is most deserving but to every child through a bureaucratic socialized system that was intended to generate productive members of society by redistributing tax dollars.
This failed as badly as the housing projects did because the perception of something given "freely" and then mandated is not appreciated, it is endured.
@@jonathancarter5120 No, I never said anyone should punish the kids. At the same time we shouldn't be so comfortable with the idea that it's completely acceptable for teachers have to put up with an unlimited amount of mistreatment because no matter what they can't leave because of the kids.
I was a 22 year old teacher teaching a class of 40 eighth grade boys. This particular school separated classes based on gender. I reached out for classroom management help after dealing with a slew of inappropriate behaviors and was told: “Why are your classes so large?” Ummm…You tell me. 😂
I got laid off as an ESL teacher after I cut the kids enrolled in the program by 2/3s. Turns out no other previous teacher asked what the requirements were for them to be in the program nor how they could ‘graduate’ from the program. The school just put kids in that had no business being in the class and got the funding for numbers in ESL. The kids had to take an English proficiency test every year but were never told why or what scores they needed to stop being tested! Once I explained it to them and they worked for it, they graduated out of the program. Also turns out there went the need for my job. Oops. The only other thing I taught was Spanish and only had one class of it and they could not justify a full time salary for one class.
Makes you sick.
What about Spanish II and Spanish III (etc.)? ONE Spanish class??? Why bother? In an area apparently repleat with bilingual students, they couldn't see their way clear to provide a robust Spanish offering? But let me guess--I'll bet they had a full time athletics dierctor, now, didn't they?
Oh it was a pre-K-12 school and district all in one building. There was little support from the parents to have a strong Spanish program. The things schools do are astounding.
@@TroyLFullerton sounds like Texas or Oklahoma or similar, “learn English” attitudes abound
@@BlueRoseFaery Strong southern communities have a monoculture, learn it or leave it.
I am so grateful I teach a technical subject at a tiny, non profit, private college. Every day I get to live by my promise to my students. "I will always, and only, teach you those things that will put a paycheck in your pocket." I teach, they learn, we win.
😂😂 I left teaching MANY years ago - thank you for reminding me of why - what a bureaucratic nightmare 🙄🤦♀️
It’s easier to understand why the administrators do the crazy things they do when you realize that most of them are failed teachers who got into administration as a way to get out of the classroom.
Can’t wait for this Guy to have 6 million subscribers. I’m not even a teacher but this man has me rolling laughing and amazing story teller. Keep it up. From Kansas City, Mo
I can't wait either! 5 years and counting lol.
This kind of stuff ticks off parents too. We hate how good teachers get let go and the garbage teachers stay. We feel helpless. My daughter just lost her basketball coach because a parent complained about him grabbing one of the girls sleeves during time out to pull her in to the huddle she was wondering off. 25 years and he is gone. Unbelievable.
My first year of teaching in NYC I was at what they call a "turnaround" school. I saw:
- a teacher missing part of the top of a finger because a student slammed a metal door on it
- a dean that had permanent vocal cord damage from having to yell at students so much
- 2 paras get swung on by kids and fired when they fought back
- rampant theft from staff members, YEARS before "devious licks" became a trend
Teachers go through hell. Sometimes I ask myself why I've stayed in this profession so long...
Yes they teach so they can technically be called teachers, but if they work in a public school system they are first and foremost government employees.
Behavior akin to kulaks working in a soviet bloc office job is to be expected.
@@actually5004 kulaks weren't government employees
@@actually5004 kulaks weren't government employees
@@Quetzalcoats The ones that tried did so to steal everything not bolted down and leave.
I was a music education major from 1998-2000. Smack dab in the middle of sweeping reforms in our state for education majors. As music education majors, our requirements changed DAILY. They didn't know what to do with us. We were taking classes that they then said we didn't need. One day I was like, NOPE- I'm done. It's been so crazy for teachers over the last several decades, I'm glad I made the decision to leave before I had a degree I wasn't going to use. Teachers are the real MVPs
After 32 years teaching in a basket case of a school system I am not the least bit surprised. In fact, the least surprising thing about this is the date change sent to school e-mail. I’ve heard lots of stories like this. This is one of the better ones. But I’m not even close to surprised.
Why I am still a teacher amazes me. I have only been teaching 5 years. This was my dream job. I have loved tutoring, since I was in second grade. As a single mom, I worked my butt off to get that degree and do my dream job. And then I begin to realize that the system is soooooo broken. It is disgusting. Governments, Administrations, and parents are completely off their rockers! There is no back-up from the administration for the things that are continuously going on in my classroom. The parents of the "bad kids" complain how I manage my class. The parents of the "good kids" love me. The administration doesn't know what to do with me, yet they continuously are sending "bad kids" to my classroom because others can't handle them. Here is my secret: I don't give a rats a** if the district fires me at this point, because I am not about to put up with a little brat of a third grader who threatens me or tries to hurt any of my other students. I do not tolerate it. I shame that kid publicly. And I let the other kids let the "bad kid" know how it makes them feel when they are acting a fool. Believe me third graders are not nice in expressing their feelings! Honestly, this is a "magic pill" to the problem around the country! Every teacher should handle their classrooms like I am. But most are too afraid to get fired. I hate it, and I just won't quit. They are going to have to fire me, if they want me gone, because I actually do love my students very much. That is the ONLY reason I am staying. Everything I do is because I want them to be successful in and out of my classroom. So when I tell them, that if they continue that behavior that they will end up in prison some day, I am actually loving them!
Public schools especially in certain places are set up to fail. This makes me think of no good deed goes unpunished. They punished you for helping those kids. They wanted those kids to fail. Its apart of the game.
Finding out the behind the scenes of a teacher's life as parent has been eye opening & so heartbreaking. Our children are our future, teacher's should be amoung the highest paid. My kids are grown & many teachers have been life changing to my kids and I'll forever be grateful to them.
Devin: I am sorry this happened to you. You are so valuable as a teacher. I gave notice this semester after twenty years of adjunct university teaching. I got tired of administrators advising me of appropriate language when discussing my research, and tenure track faculty ripping me off word for word on my research (literally the same language) with no credit but open condescension. The double exploitation with zoom over lockdown broke me.
Adjunct teaching: treating qualified academics as junk
Wonderful, and good on you for 1) asking for the documentation (that you had every right to) and 2) holding onto it. Always get receipts. And keep them for years longer than you could ever imagine they might be needed.
I wasn't a teacher, but I was fired from a tech job (at age 64...try getting a new job at that age, in the middle of the Great Recession). I spent the next six months studying everything I could about the laws regarding my employment & firing, and became convinced that I had been eligible for overtime payments, worth $$$ hundreds of thousands of dollars, during the many years of my employment, but had been improperly classified as ineligible for OT and thus was never paid a penny of the money that I was legally owed.
Long story short, I spent six years suing my now ex-employer *"pro se,"* meaning all by myself without a lawyer, in US Federal Court. And after a million ups and downs, hundreds of court briefs, a dozen all-day depositions I conducted myself, rulings, and six years of studying law all on my own without any law school training I lost in US District Court (while I was in the hospital with heart failure) but ultimately won my battle in the US Court of Appeals. And because I'd done it all on my own there wasn't any lawyer with his hand out looking for one-third of my settlement money, either. But honestly, the satisfaction of beating those #$^#!s was actually worth more than the money.
My ex-employer is a $10 Billion international conglomerate and they hired $500/hr lawyers, with their offices in skyscrapers high up in the clouds, to beat me... and I still won. And maybe the most interesting part is that while I was still working for my ex-employer, but suspicious that they weren't paying me properly, I kept a *daily diary* at work. Every single day I documented my long, long hours worked, and what I worked on, and how demanding my supervisors were. And in the end, I believe that it was the evidence of that unimpeachable daily diary, just like your precious layoff letter, that actually won me money.
Always ask for receipts. On paper. Keep those receipts practically forever. For at least a decade. You never know.......
Gotta love how the state doesn't want students to succeed. It makes me sick. They not only fail the students but go on the offensive and attack the only one trying to actually help the kids and its all because of money.
I resigned midyear after being hauled into the office and simultaneously berated for not asking for help AND asking for too much help from co-workers. 🙄The vibe made it very clear it was just meant to be a severe dressing down for not struggling enough as a new teacher. I'd seen enough at that point.💯😒
I wanted to get into teaching. But then I found out about how the system is designed to screw our teachers. After all the research I did a story like this doesn't surprise me. It just makes me tired.
Not all teachers are getting screwed. It really depends on how strong your union is and how much of a corporate mentality the superintendent has. Privatizing public education is one of the holy grails for libertarians and corporations. Look how well that worked for health care and the military.
If you answer the siren song of teaching, you may well end up dead on the rocks. If I could wind back the clock, I'd have gotten an MSW and gone about giving back and making a difference in another way. A way, no doubt fraught with obstacles, but sans much of what Devin and many of us, have experienced.
Private school teachers don't have these problems btw
@@aniquinstark4347 I doubt that. If adjunct faculty at universities are treated worse than retail workers and k-12 teachers are treated worse than retail workers -- why would any sane hiring manager in the field of education *not* treat their teachers as desperate disposable carriers of a pulse?
@@aniquinstark4347 Oh, yes they do.
I got an offer from a school that raised my salary 20K and gave me professional status (Pretty much unheard of). They wanted a veteran Physics Teacher to rescue their program (currently 20 students taking Physics with a senior class of 100. This school was INTENSE, but by my 2nd year had 70 students with three levels of Physics and I created a new more applied course for the average students. My 4th year (two superintendents later) the principal put me on an action plan so that I could become a "successful" teacher (It was pretty clear that the Superintendent thought I was overpayed and the Principle wanted the recommendation to get a cush Superintendent job). I had to write out lessons, study sheets, and all exams had to be explicitly related to quesitons on the study sheet as I had been accused of not testing what I taught. I went through the added work (mind you that I have taught 20 years at this point) and they said that they would rehire me. I signed and the principal decided to fail me on the two overall components of my evaluation. Because I had students that I was working with, I decided to stay another year, but I gave them plenty of notice so they could find my replacement. Unfortunately, I went to two more schools without professional status and had to go through mentoring and new teacher meetings and it did not go well. I took a year off and a principal contacted me and begged me to take a load of average and below average students in their required Physics class. I was abruptly dismissed after 90 days. I went from a teacher with accolades to someone who gets fired. I'm taking early retirement and trying to retool, but the last five years have been hell.
Should NOT have happened to a dog, let alone a successful, seasoned professional such as yourself. I hope you find something worthy of your talent. I taught for 40 years and retired in 2019. I worked for a wonderful district in a homeschool charter school for the last 16 years. When I retired and tried to get a part-time job in a new district ( husband and I moved out of our home state), I found education VERY different. That's putting it mildly. I reinvented myself and have my own business. All the best!
I was a second year teacher…ELA and Reading. These were the days of AYP. This was a state funded school on a reservation. My Reading class was the ONLY class to make AYP in the school district (elem. mid. HS) that year. The following year, the district would be laying off teachers. They didn’t renew me, but chose to retain a reading teacher who did not have tenure either…but she was “part” native. This teacher had previously cost the district a lot of money due to always calling off sick, missed flights from trainings in other states, damage to school property because of dwi …in her car through locked gates etc. her behavior continued, of course, and the next year they had to fire her. Their decision making was what cost them money. They always let the good teachers go.
Oh man, I'd love to tell you the story of my time teaching at a school in Beijing where the school asked me to impersonate a teacher who taught at a school in North Carolina IN FRONT OF MY STUDENTS' PARENTS so they could convince more students to join their program.
It was "give the presentation, or we're firing you and canceling your work visa."
I gave the presentation, which I wrote myself, but the beauty of language is that, when you're speaking with non-native speakers, a lot of expressions go over their heads.
I made sure every sentence in my presentation was a very blatant double entendre so that if a native speaker watched it, they'd immediately know something wasn't right.
But the school was totally happy when I told the parents how I deliver my package to their smiling students every day.
It's sad but truly believable. I quit after I was called into a room, told they were going to replace my mom who was their math teacher. She was replaced with a teacher they were not looking for. I was also asked to cut my room in half . When they discovered the room was not big enough for the new classes of 15 or more students, I was told I need to teach from the closest and take everything off the walls so my room would appear larger. I lost it when I found out that the other teachers on my floor's classroom sizes where increased. I was the only teacher required to downsize into the closet. Also I was ask to give up my teaching materials to a less experienced teacher and show them how to teach the course while I took over the course they taught the years before. Happy Teaching!
Jesus, lady that was one poorly worded post! did you read it over before you posted it.
My response to the principal would’ve been - oh HEY! SO glad to hear from you. Thanks SO MUCH for getting back to me in such a timely manner. REALLY appreciate it. I would LOVE to get abused and sued and deceived for doing a better job than everyone else, can’t WAIT to work for you again.
Wow. Insane. You should turn your teaching career into a TV show!
My craziest story came in grad school when I was teaching several undergraduate courses. A student who was going to fail the class showed up at my apartment at 10:00pm a few days before the final! I couldn’t figure out how she even got my address! This was pre-Internet and my address wasn’t listen in either the phone book or any university publications. I lived about 10 miles from campus, too.
After the initial "how did you know where I live?" I told her she couldn’t be there and she’d have to come see me in my office during my office hours. She begged me to help her study for the final, but I refused and told her she really had to leave. She was really mad but she did leave.
The next morning, my supervising professor called me into her office. She told me that a student alleged that I had tried to extort her for sex, telling her I would give her a higher grade if she’d sleep with me. She claimed I’d invited her over on the pretense of having a study session but that she arrived to discover she was the only one there. She thought she’d still get help studying but that I refused to help until she slept with me.
Then the professor and I laughed. She knew the story wasn’t true. I’m gay. The professor was well aware of that. The students were not. I also had a boyfriend who was at my place when the student knocked on the door. Since I never let the student in,she hadn’t seen him.
The professor decided she’d catch the student in the lie, so she held a meeting with the student, the head of the department,and me all present. She asked the student to tell her story to the head of the department, so the student did. I said nothing. The professor then said she needed details like what the inside of my apartment looked like, just so they could corroborate the story. (The professor HAD been inside my apartment and knew I had a huge collection of movie posters all over my walls.)
The student, of course, had no idea what my apartment looked like, so she said it looked like any other cheap apartment. The professor asked if there was any identifiable piece of furniture or artwork that she could describe, or if she could even describe the layout of the living room. The student said it was just plain with a sofa and a dining room table. The professor asked about the walls and the student said they were just plain white walls.
Now, I had a very unusual apartment. The living room was divided from a study by a floor-to-ceiling wall of see-through bookshelves. It was massive and it was filled to overflowing with books. Nothing plain or white about it. Two other walls were filled with movie posters. I had no dining room furniture, either; my dining room was set up as an art studio where I could do projects related to my studies.
Anyway, the professor explained all this to the head of the department. She didn’t even have to bring my gayness into the discussion. The head of the department asked the student if she wished to change her story. The student just got up and left. None of us ever saw her again.
Believe all women! She was a victim!!!!! How dare you question her truth!!!!
Obviously I am joking but I have literally seen comments like this.
Here lies the problem. NO CONSEQUENCES FOR LIARS. The student should have been dismissed from college and charged for false testimony. A few months in jail might have made her a better person.
I've been in education for a few decades now and I have a good eye.... what's most sad to me is that I can tell what a phenomenal teacher you are.
Not a teacher story but an employer trying to fight unemployment. Several years ago I took a job with a company that turned into quite the fiasco. During the interview process the owner lied to me about the company and the job. After my first week I realized I had made a huge mistake but I had to just grin and bear it, and do the job until I could find other work. The company owner, who was my boss, was a real hot-head. One day he sent me out to correct one of his mistakes but the customer wouldn't accept the work. The next day my boss screamed and yelled at me to which I just nodded without reaction. The day after that, he fired me. Since it was a no-cause firing I claimed unemployment. The company owner tried to deny my unemployment, claiming that I was at fault, but there wasn't any evidence of any wrong-doing so I got to keep my unemployment. That guy was such a jerk.
I've heard this story about a small business that had to fire everyone because the gov demanded he had a 1M dollar slush-fund for unemployment. So he said "Sorry, can't do it. Closing shop."
I've seen this happen before. Mrs Quinn was our biology teacher....we came from a poorer area of Glasgow. A lot of us lived in poverty in the 80s as Glasgow lost its industrial base. So we were tough kids. EVERY kid in her class learned biology from the start of the hour to the end.....she wrote everything on the blackboard and even the "scarier" kids worked their butts off. She never had to discipline us but just kept her relationship as one were she taught us and would also work to show us. At the end of that hour we were all tired - but NOT one of us hadn't just learned. Guess what? She left (i'm not sure why); as standards dropped across the school as the other teachers didn't expect us to learn. They just saw us as kids from areas of poverty. I will always be grateful to Mrs Quinn. She showed me that every child/teenager has the capability to learn - when the teacher doesn't compromise and cares enough to follow through with her commitment to us. Respect to you Mrs Quinn. There were no others teachers who worked the same way she did and they just let us drift in our classes.
I had 2 warnings for a disciplinary meeting called for talking with other teachers in our free time 😯😯😂😂😂😂😂😂 .... they couldnt lay me off because it would have cost them money.... so I was harassed to quit. why? Because I was a foreigner working very professionally, acknowledging about my rights (31 years in the field) which meant I was a "bad model" for the "local" teachers. ..... stories about teachers will blow our minds!!!!!! ..... here is one of them.
I look back at my time as a teacher and smile with satisfaction, knowing I don't have to deal with any of that terrible bull shit every again.
I looooved teaching, until I actually did it and found out what it really entails. Broke my heart when I had to give it up 💔
OMG, this, right here. I taught a self-contained behavior program for high schools. All I could ever get was a non-continuing contract because, althought I had a SpEd endorsement, I didn't have endorsements in: physics, biology, chemistry, ELA, elementary math, algebra, US History, and World Hitory. I took a group of 8 students who had an average attendance of about 15%, to 85% attendance by Christmas. One Junior had 2.5 credits to her name. I got her up to speed and able to graduate with her peers. Yet... I'm laid off. Meanwhile the teacher who asks the female students to fight because their clothes may get torn, stays employed. To this day. He's on tape saying it. Public Education is the very definition of idiocy. When I left 5 years ago, I never imagined it could have gotten worse. Then 2020 said "Hold my beer."
As we say in the HR field, "If it wasn't documented, it never took place." I'm so glad you kept the paperwork!
Hello from San Antonio,Texas....I collected unemployment after my contract wasn't renewed after my first year of teaching (1986-1987 school year)..I guess I was lucky they never fought me.I moved on & retired after walking through school doors for 29 years.Retirement is great & hope I will never have to walk through school doors!
By offering the job afterwards they were trying to get you off the unemployment because in the state of Florida when you are offered employment at rate and you turn it down they could drop your unemployment….crafty and mean.
Jesus christ, that's evil
I have two sons, now aged 20 and 25. Both have graduated from the local public school system. 8 years ago their mother died while my eldest son was a senior in high school and the youngest was in grade eight. My late wife did not like for me to attend parent teacher conferences because I would ask questions and she would get embarrassed (and so would the teachers and principal). My experiences with their schools over the next few years have convinced me that our school systems are a refuge for grifters who care little about educating students, but care more about feathering their own nests and fortifying their lairs from attack. I tell everyone I know to avoid sending their children to public schools and to be very cautious when selecting either a private school or a home schooling solution. Education is important, it is being given "Benign" neglect by our government, and our schools are failing us.
I think you are the only person who has more insane stories that I do! It makes me feel a bit better about my 21 years in the field!
I’ve 22 years in the UK; slightly different type of crazy, but I still recognise the types of insanity American teachers are subjected too. I haven’t been sued by my employer though. That’s a new low.
AGREED, this is worse than my district. I wonder where he taught. Toxic work environment.
I read "21 years" and immediately think, "My god, how did you last that long???" Then I remember I'm on year 18...and think, "How did ***I***last this long????" I can remember when 2009 seemed like a distant future I could never make it to.
I have crazy stories too. The American education system is a mess.
@@greyeyed123 42 years as a teacher here. I retire in one more. It's a struggle some days to continue. Figure my "senioritis" is kicking in, as in I'm feeling like my seniors who are getting ready to graduate!😳🤣
Years back I was purchasing a bottle of wine and this charming old woman informed me she taught school for 40 years and I had mischief in my eyes. Biggest compliment ever from A teacher and she had me figured out in seconds. Everything you need to know I learned in kindergarten and NEVER go to school on your birthday 🐒
You take the cake. My craziest moment was needing to get and submit my permanent teaching certificate. In the middle of the Red for Ed walk out. Dressing all retro 1950s teacher to walk into the department of education past the protestors, saying hi to the teachers I know. Walking out. Walking down the block to the district office past more protestors and saying hi to more teachers I know. Get it all taken care of, so I can walk back to my car, get my sign, and join the protestors. Good times.
Arizona has been experiencing a chronic teacher shortage for years now. Teachers come into the system and leave running a year or less later. I was lucky because my district was pretty good about how it treated its faculty so the weird stuff you just described was definitely there but to a smaller degree. I loved my job and the people I worked with so consider myself fortunate. Your advice to document everything and keep a hard copy is spot on. As they say: CYA....Cover Your Ass.
Yea I have a letter on file with me because someone at the district office work at told me to order a piece of equipment for my room. I asked do I need to get a Purchase order or a bid. I was told we got it covered we got it covered do not worry. So I get the item and then two weeks later I get a phone call that I did not follow proper procedures and I was going to have a letter of reprimand put on file for this. I was basically thrown under the bus. I am so happy I only have 3 more years left....
Yep. Always, always in writing. Even the most trusted coworkers will never hesitate to put themselves first and burn you.
Another hero fighting another battle. Most Teachers are our true hero’s. Respect.
I worked at a high school as a physics teacher. I had years of experience, but a teacher who just finished his first year (and used a lot of my materials that year) had a math certification and that made him better. I was told the district would have a place for me, and later in the summer I found out that I'd been moved to a 6th-grade classroom at one of the most difficult middle schools in the district. Not sure why the physics teacher with a grade 7-12 certification got a 6th-grade job. I had some great coworkers and made some good connections with a few students, but I only lasted half the year. I could not handle the stress mentally or physically and was concerned that I might end up in the hospital before the end of the year. I'm happy to be in another district now.
I simply can not believe this happened to you. You are a great teacher who inspires all of your students.
School administrators have always had too much power with too little knowledge. There should be checks and balances in place to prevent abuse like this.
I’ve always wished there would be a requirement for each admin to teach a minimum of one class per semester. I don’t care how easy it is- they just need the reminder about how life in the trenches works… and I’m betting they’d realize a bunch of those meetings could really be emails after all.
I was working for a private agency serving students with disabilities. I was supposed to be full time with benefits. I had 8 hours per week. I filed for unemployment, listing the hours I worked and pay received to reduce the unemployment. Admin calls screaming at me for fraudulently collecting unemployment and would not listen when I explained how UI worked. They ended up violating federal civil rights laws and were caught hiring unqualified people (with only high school diplomas). Not long after I quit, most supervisors were let go (at the state's demand due to massive inappropriate issues) and the ones with high school diplomas were re assigned to Aide positions instead of pro positions.
As someone who almost went into teaching but decided against it at the last minute-discovering this channel has been a joy 😅
I had a job in a call center like setting, my job was to process the returned mail and then contact the customer to update their billing address. One week I won a contest for most number of successful calls. The next week I was laid off because "my performance wasn't up to the level the company expects of it's team members"
I feel ya.. unfortunately I can relate. Substituting as a piano teacher, getting great results, being out of a job ☺️👌🏻 No wonder your humour resonates so well with me 😂 keep it coming 💪🏻
I just resigned in Novembout. 2021 right before the semester finals! I was on FMLA in my district and approved leave for 5 days and the admin my principal actually called me while I was on FMLA leave and had the nerve to leave me a voice-mail saying I had to go online and post work on Google Classroom. My wife was home at the time and called my principal back and let him know how upset and angry she was calling her husband (me) whileI was sick. It's so sad! Your video is right on! We have so many skills as educators that can be used in SO MANY OTHER CARRERS, TAKE CARE OF YOU! We all know what it's like right now, take a leap of faith and try something else! Enjoy your life and stay in good health!
As a former principal, I can tell you that principal probably had no idea you were being sued. Too much secrecy in administration office. Too much!
I can relate in corporate world. In 2008 the construction supply dropped like a rock. My location was closed down and I was sent packing. They tried to argue against my unemployment, had a phone hearing with the judge and my old boss. I told her how I was let go without notice. I never heard the old boss, so I don't know what they said. However, when the judge came back to me they were not happy and said "this is ridiculous, unemployment granted" or something along those lines.
District personnel: WOW! What exemplary results! Your school did something right!
Beginning of the Year Orientation
I imagine this is how theirs went:
Principal to staff: Our Senior reading program had a success rate of 70% last year. This is up from 20% from the previous year! We did it guys. With determination and fidelity, we CAN achieve those results each year.
Enthusiastic teacher: Can you share the strategies that were used to achieve those results? If we find something that works, perhaps we can develop a PD around it?
Principal: :sweating under collar because they take credit but never pay attention to the process: Great idea. Someone write that down for future PD. We will work as a team to ensure the success of our students. No man is an island.
Also principal to secretary: Get that Siebold guy back here pronto. Seems like we really do need him.
I relate to this more than you can possibly imagine. The last three years of my life were having conversations with myself that went something like, "This isn't a real thing. How can this be a real thing?"
This is crazy! But important to document everything. I left a school district in Illinois because of the commute. I made the mistake of telling the school district the truth, oops. In Illinois, if you do not give 30 days notice and/or accept another teaching position the school district can hold your teaching certificate or fine you $2,000. I called a friend from college, who is a lawyer. She said, "This can't be right. This can't be legal". She then looks this up and it is a law in Illinois. I had to pay the $2,000 and do not know where this money went. I am no longer teaching or living in Illinois. I loved growing up there but as an adult and seeing that Illinois is 2nd highest in corruption outside of Louisiana I think I made the right decision. Glad you got out!!
BEST DECISION EVER! I left teaching after 25 years. It was the BEST decision ever. I believe a lure is that elusive retirement. Sadly, many of your healthy years. are lost as you drag towards the finish line. When you retire in your early 60's, most of your healthy years are gone. I can't tell you how many of retirees died of cancer within 5 years. I am 52 loving my life. Doing a simple job, that makes the same amount of time.
Devin, that you cared passionately about teaching and making a difference in the lives of young people and were then punished for it, sounds about right.
I'm sorry that happened to you, and am impressed with your ability to help the students/raise test scores, and your upbeat demeanor despite the needless slings and arrows that are now commonplace in the profession. I only lasted twelve years, and am far darker in my recounting of teaching experiences.
Great story -- totally get it. Here's a story of my own. Back in 2012 I got hired as chair of a Math department at a State University. I quickly realize a large amount of dept activity was focused on remedial math for students who could not pass the required College Algebra class. There was a university wide requirement to pass College Algebra to get a degree in any subject. In prior years, the Math dept had created variations on College Algebra, such as "Math for Humanities Majors" etc -- offering alternatives to College Algebra that were a little less demanding but declared to be equivalent. Most universities do this, so no be deal there, but you can see the game. But that's not my story. My story is about the students who, based on high school performance, were placed in "remedial math" -- this was the course you should take if you were not ready for even the equivalent/watered down College Algebra. So, as chair I soon realized that about half of the students admitted to the university were put in remedial math. That's a lot of students. So, the math dept had a type of mini-dept within it to manage the remedial math program (we had an army of remedial math instructors). That gives you some background to understand (student) Philip's problem. In my first week on the job, Philip comes to me saying he needs to take a course different from the remedial math course. He tells me he has failed it 4 times already and rather than take it again he hoped for a different but equivalent class etc. I checked the records and realize Philip is not alone. Remedial math was required of all students whose HS record showed no Algebra or equivalent. Then, I talked to one of the remedial math instructors. First off, she knew Philip. She explained that Philip did not come to class after the first week. Then I checked the grade sheets of several remedial classes -- most of them were 90% F's. I had never before seen a grade sheet with a list of 18 F's and two A's. It leaves an imprint. So, long story short, the remedial math program was a self-sustaining system with no end in sight. When I listened to Philip's story I said to myself, "Well, yeah, it is not uncommon for students to fail courses, especially as immature freshmen, but the the feedback usually stops the flow because the person paying the tuition cries foul at some point." So, who was paying Philip's tuition? Turns out this University had endowment monies (lots of it) but it was designated for tuition payments only (not for new buildings, climbing walls, etc.) -- and -- the University had given scholarships to almost every student who applied. So, if you are keeping up, you can imagine the Provost's face when, as a new department chair, I announced at a meeting, "It looks a lot like a money laundering scheme." I'll leave it there -- there's a lot more to the story, but it's gotten way too long for this format. Thanks for your stories!
Haha I'd love to hear how you got through that situation! They needed to move that money somehow, and didn't appreciate the new guy questioning it.
@@autarko To the Provost's credit, she seemed genuinely surprised -- she verified my claim, and the following year the university stopped charging tuition for the remedial math class. Of course, I didn't get any "award" -- but she treated me fair and square -- so, my hat is off to her. So, the administration was totally legit -- they had no idea this was going on in the Math (and English, by the way) dept. The situation would have been cleaned up sooner if the Math instructors (front line) expressed more shock over having multiple classes that start with 25 students and end with 5 passing and 20 F's. That should not have been "normal". etc. But even there, you would expect the students to complain, but since they were on scholarships, it wasn't their money etc. There a little more to the story for those who followed this saga, but I'll stop there -- thanks for your interest.
@@mathman2170 those F students wouldn't have attended many classes nor the exam so the course coordinator would have been well aware, but too savvy to raise the issue. The instructors were happy since they had barely any marking or preparation to do. The students didn't care since it was no skin of their noses.
@@autarko Yep. You nailed it. Can't blame them for not wanting to reject a free lunch.