My 5th grader came home from his first day at school and was super bummed out he couldnt play with the girls at recess. He said half the equipment is for girls and half for the boys and they switch every week.

He plays well with boys but he is a bit more sensitive and creative and says he connects better with the girls so he is disappointed hes having to only play with the boys.

The reason I'm asking here is because I live in a super conservative town and nothing seems to gets handled in a child centered way... it always revolves around the adults feelings and how things "should" be, so i try not to bring attention to us by making issues unless there's an actual issue.

I am against girls being used as a way to socialize and get boys to behave so I would never advocate for that but im most concerned about our children not having access to diversity. I love for my son to play pretend and be sweet with his friends who are girls. Im wondering if it's too much to be concerned about the radicalization of boys.

I guess im wondering if anyone sees this as an issue from a child development perspective or if this is something to address. Or if youre aware of an underlying issue that it could be. Thank you for any input.

First year in the room and I’m realizing how much of teaching is just… routines. Not the fun lesson stuff — the boring 30-second stuff. How you line up. How you pass papers. How you pick who answers.

I keep hearing “your routines ARE your management,” and I’m starting to believe it. The days I have a system, everything runs. The days I wing it, it’s chaos by 10am.

So — if you could go back to your first year and force yourself to nail ONE routine before school starts, what would it be? And how did you actually teach it to the kids without it feeling like military drills?

I’m really hoping this reaches the right people and comes across how I want it to, so here it goes :) I’m a sophomore who’s been considered gifted my whole life, specially in terms of reading. i was reading Nancy drew in kindergarten, Harry Potter in first grade, and this trend only continued throughout the rest of my life. (right now, I’ve been enjoying The Brothers Karamazov and similar books, if anyone’s wondering. Not trying to brag at all here /gen, just explaining what I mean when I say gifted) my point here is that there’s a wide gap between your average student and the gifted ones, and it hurts the gifted ones

as I’ve gotten older and older, I’ve noticed that a lot of what we’re learning is very repetitive. In my geometry and data reasoning class, we were learning about topics I could find in my 8th grade math notebook. However, when I looked around in my class, everyone acted like this was the first time we were learning this information. Now, I’m not a little kid, I can handle being bored. I’ve long since learned how to keep myself entertained, and usually play sudoku in a little notebook I have. but this wasn’t just one repeated topic - about 2/3 of the year was content we had already learned, and it wasn’t building off of old skills - it was just reteaching them.

I knew a girl in my math class that was an absolute pro - I don’t think she learned a new thing the entire year. But she wasn’t allowed to take a harder class, and was bored all year (we’d play blackjack together in class)

i wish I could ask teachers for extra work, but when I look around at my teachers, they’re swamped with extra work and always helping the kids who are struggling. It doesn’t seem fair to say “hey I’m bored and this class feels useless” when they’re trying their best. succeeding doesn’t take any effort from me, and I’ve lost so much motivation. I skipped 40% of my college and career class because it was a waste of time, and I could easily complete the assignments in the first five minutes. I finished with an A. This was what a majority of my year was like - everything felt too easy, I was bored out of my mind. I lost so much motivation, and wanted to constantly leave school. (For anyone wondering why I didn’t take classes that would challenge me - I took the only ap class they allowed freshman to take, and they refused to let me do a more challenging ap class for sophomore year, so I’m stuck with only two aps for this coming school year)

I also don’t like how gifted kids are sometimes used as alternate teachers - I’m not sure if this is just my experience, but I’ve finished early before and teachers sometimes tell me to help other kids. Yeah, I understand that’s part of the reason why we have kids at all different levels, so they can help each other. but sometimes it gets to the point where I genuinely have to teach these kids from scratch. shouldn’t that be the teachers job?

ultimately, I’m just wondering how teachers feel about the gifted kids in their class, and what you think about a few of the points I mentioned. I’m sure there’s more I want to say but I can’t remember and im kinda tired, lol. (I’m sure I also hop around with topics, sorry) So…yeah, what have you done to help the gifted kids in your class, and what do you wish you could do? Hope y’all have a great day :)

Thank you so so much to everyone who gave me advice last week about giving a career talk on my job as a funeral director to a group of middle school students. I received a ton of good advice and so many people sharing their stories. A few people asked for an update after the talk so here it is!

I ended up making a PowerPoint to go along with my talk, which was really helpful as I could use memes and photos to keep the kids engaged. I started off with a slide that had a cute picture of my cat and gave a disclaimer to the whole group that while I was going to keep the conversation relatively light, I was aware my job could be a little heavy to think about, and let them know that if anyone wanted to leave I encouraged them to. It turned out one boy in the class had a dog who had recently passed away, and he did step out. One of his friends also left to go comfort him, which absolutely melted my heart. The teacher checked on him as well and let me know at the end that he was doing fine.

I started the actual presentation by giving a little backstory on why I decided to go into funeral service, then walked through the process of becoming licensed as a funeral director. (different state education requirements, mortuary school, the national board exams, apprenticeships, ect.) After that, I made a slide with a meme of what people think being a funeral director is vs. what it actually is. I talked about how my job is nothing like horror movies or crime shows, and it's really a lot of scheduling, event planning, and talking to very sad people. I focused heavily on how funeral directors take the burden of planning off the mourning family, and all the different things that go into that process.

My last slide was about the question I get asked the most, which is if it sucks to be surrounded by death all the time. Without going too deeply into it, I said that yes, it can be very sad sometimes. I then talked about how I take care of my mental health and how I focus on the positive impact I'm making. I finished off by mentioning the things that are really fun about my job, like learning all about people who lived really interesting lives, and seeing the ways families come together to take care of each other during hard times.

I ended off by asking if anyone had any questions, and let me just say, I was blown away by how mature this group of middle schoolers was. The idea to have the kids write down their questions ahead of time was really good, but due to how things were structured I didn't get the chance to, so I was a little nervous to open the floor up for questions, but I shouldn't have worried at all. Most of the questions the kids had were about the reality of death, which I was expecting since I touched the least on the whole dead body thing in my talk, but they were all phrased very respectfully and came from a place of genuine curiosity rather than trying to get a reaction. One girl very shyly asked if I had ever dealt with dead kids, and I let her know that I have, that they're the hardest days I ever have at work, that I've never forgotten a child I've buried, but that like always, I try to focus on taking care of them and their family, and then on taking care of myself once I get home. Another girl had some questions about what the process is for working with the law when someone dies in an unexpected way, and I was able to lightly touch on what a Medical Examiner is and does without going into any gory details of autopsy.

Overall, it was a really fun experience, and I was incredibly impressed by the kids. I am so thankful to everyone here who gave me advice. It made me a lot more confident! Thank you so much for everything you do as teachers.

The kids who just insist on lagging as far as possible behind the group, no matter how slow the group is moving or how often I remind them we need to stay together.

I work at a summer day camp and we have pretty big groups (often 30+ kids, ages 5-7 or 8-10). We have to take them across the uni campus a few times a day, and it’s been really stressing me out because we always have a few kids who just walk really slowly, and refuse to keep up with the rest of the group. It would be fine except that we are expected to keep things on schedule and need a certain number of leaders with the group at all times. It’s fine if they want to walk a few meters behind, but some of the kids move so slowly that the rest of the group ends up out of sight, but if the rest of the group stops to wait for us we end up being late, plus the kids start getting distracted, messing with things in the halls and being really noisy, which, kinda fair, standing in a hallway is boring.

I’ve looked at their files and they don’t say anything about physical disabilities or walking challenges (the one time a child’s file DID say that, I just had to carry her bag and she kept up with us no problem, we really don’t go that fast). And I see them run around quite a bit when we play tag and stuff, so I don’t think it’s a physical difficulty. I’ve asked if the group is going too fast or if they’re having pain and they always say no. If the rest of the group slows down, so do the slow walkers. I’m honestly impressed by how slowly they can manage to walk. Leaving earlier and the whole group walking slower doesn’t help, there is no limit to the slowness. I’ve tried carrying their stuff so they can focus on walking and it doesn’t make a difference. When I remind them that we have to stay with the group so we need to pick up the pace, most just ignore me, and some have straight up told me they don’t care about staying with the group, they just wanna walk at their own speed. And honestly I kinda get it, it’s gotta be frustrating for them to be walking around all the time at someone else’s pace for someone else’s reasons.

But it’s also tough for us to maintain our supervision numbers and get to our activities on time. I try getting them excited about going to the activities but most of the time they just don’t care. A lot of the kids are at the camps all summer, some of them are sick of the activities, they know nothing is for grades and we can’t really punish them so I get why they see no reason to listen to us or care about the rules. But I also don’t wanna be leaving my co workers short staffed with 25+ distractible kids in a public hallway.

Does anyone have strategies for getting kids to pick up the pace when reminders aren’t working and there are no real consequences?

I saw a post the other day where someone stated their plan was to be a lazy teacher, going through the motions with pre-prepared powerpoints, easy-to-grade work, low rule enforcement, etc. The sentiment in the comments was generally negative towards OP. But then I saw another post where someone said they teach and stay stress-free with the exact same methods, and the sentiment was positive. I’m an outsider, but I had a bunch of these teachers growing up (especially in HS), and was curious as to what your guys’ general feelings on these types of teachers are and why you feel that way.

Considering an education degree. I loved school. I love education. I loved tight-knit classes where we had a good relationship with the teacher. I loved extracurriculars like clubs and science fairs. I know being a teacher is NOT like being a student; you’re an adult now, you have expenses, you have to be a role model, you have to manage kids, you have to deal with parents, you have to comply with admin, the list goes on. I’m worried that aiming to become a teacher mainly to avoid leaving the environment is a bit childish, what do you guys think? It’s definitely not my only reason, but I’d say it’s the primary one. Am I overthinking this or going in too misguided?

I’m a first-year teacher and I’ve noticed I keep calling on the same raised hands. The quiet kids never volunteer, and the confident ones answer everything. I want everyone to participate without making shy kids miserable.

Do you use popsicle sticks, apps, random name pickers, or something else? What actually works without feeling like a gimmick?

I'm 31 and considering becoming a teacher because I'm not sure what I want to do long term. I've always been told I'm good with kids, and I like the idea of helping someone finally understand something they've been struggling with. I recently had to relearn algebra myself, and it made me think about how rewarding teaching could be.

The biggest thing holding me back is how I think I'd be perceived. I'm an ugly, soft-spoken guy, and I feel like most elementary school teachers are outgoing attractive women. I worry that I'd have a hard time getting hired because of this and even if I did, parents might judge me because I'm a guy who's teaching younger kids.

I know this sounds ridiculous and it's my own insecurity talking, but I can't shake it.

For male teachers or people in education, is this a realistic concern, or am I overthinking it?

We found out the teacher is leaving the school and moving far away. She was not prepared for this and has been crying at school and now at home. What words of hope can i give to my 6 year old? Thanks

Hi, I am a rising freshman at an art college. While my dream job would be to be a freelance Illustrator full-time and/or work in the animation field as a background artist, I am also planning on pursuing some form of educational qualifications as a safety net. However, I do have concerns regarding whether my plan to pursue Illustration for four years, and then later on do an additional year for an MAT degree, is most financially wise. If I were applying to college for the first time now, I likely would have majored in education and minored in Art. However, my plan now is to at least complete either a semester/ full year at my current college, then potentially transfer to a cheaper college and pursue education/art. So I was wondering if anyone had advice on specific routes to take, or state/college recommendations that allow me to pursue both of these as a transfer student at a relatively lower cost? For reference, if I stay with my current school, I will graduate with $113,000 in debt (this is just for Illustration/ not including the education grad degree and/or interest rates), which I do not think is financially responsible/smart. So if any art teachers had any advice or what they did/ recommendations for my situation, I would be really appreciative. Thank you :)

Teachers go through a lot, as you all are expected to do so much at once, but how much has that affected you and what are your results?

Do you have a helpful trick, mnemonic device, or whatever to help your students remember important information for your particular subject or lesson?

Hey everyone! I received two job offers in the same county for middle school, both for an ELA position. I tried to ask all the right questions to figured out what would be best suited for me as a beginning teacher. They both offer mentors and people to guide me and help me as a first year teacher. I love school A and connected a lot more with them. I do appreciate that it is a smaller class size and think it can make a great difference. I also love that this school may be more challenging but to me it sounds rewarding. I love school B because they are doing well academically and seem to have higher standards in terms of classroom behavior and academic progress. This is the information I’ve collected:

School A is lower income and lower scoring school academically. He has warned me about the students needing structure, consistency, and lot of guidance. Average class size is 23-28 students. Their teacher support for defiance or disruption is to send them to the RJC room for the day and anything more than that is warrant of a suspension. Admin tries to alleviate constant issues for teachers.

School B is stronger academic reputation and higher student achievement. Class size is 30-35, has an IE block, follows a strong behavioral flow chart for when behavior should escalate to administration, clearly defining what violations warrant immediate assistance. They support the teachers with expectation that we follow this behavior flow chart and research-based interventions.

Hello all! I am not a teacher, but a software developer. Some quick background: I created a small "banking" app a while back for my daughters to help them learn the importance of compound interest, saving, and investing. I also used this tool to manage their allowance and automate it. It has no ties to any real financial institutions and allows me to control every aspect of their "account."

That being said I would like to expand this further, but would like to gauge if this is something that teachers can use. I have no interest in monetizing this except through donations if it gets to the point that the infrastructure costs are not something I can cover myself.

In order to do this though I would like to know if this is even something teachers would be interested in using in the first place or if there are already tools out there being used that would make my work redundant. If this is something you or someone you know would be interested in using this what kinds of tools would make it helpful? Fake credit cards, fake loans, etc. I'm sure there are plenty of scenarios and exercises I haven't even considered that would be worth putting in here.

Any feedback or input would be very welcome even if it's simply to say that these tools already exist and there's no need for more. Thanks in advance to any insight!

Hi everyone! Sorry if discussion is the wrong tag.

I am a secretary/admin assistant (call it what you want) at an elementary school. I posted previously looking for advice about the toxic culture at my school, wanting input on how I could make a positive input. There have been lots of changes on our campus since then, and this year we have a new principal with a totally different personality! We just reopened our office, and I can already tell our staff will be so much happier when they come back. I truly cannot wait. We’ve simplified communication systems, I’m very logistics-minded and have created simple resources for our teachers, have ordered their supplies and delivered them to classrooms, and I just can’t wait for everyone to come back!

The last thing I want to do while our teachers enjoy the end of their summer is talk to them about work, so I am looking for input on what you would value the most in a staff lounge. It’s currently very minimal in terms of supplies, and boring to look at. We are thinking about revamping it, maybe with some snacks in stock to start the year, new utensils, some fun decor. The thing our teachers always want more of is time, which I can’t really give them, but I can give them a happy place to take their breaks and participate in the essential camaraderie that happens in there. The lounge really becomes an important retreat for them during the year and I want them to love it.

TLDR tell me what’s in your dream staff lounge!

My son is starting kindergarten this year and I’m told he will be using iReady. We don’t have any internet at home and use very little screen time in his routine-maybe a family movie night once a week. He loves being read to and listening to audiobooks on Libby. I have tried to get him interested in reading himself with Bob books but he doesn’t have any desire yet. I was wondering what iReady will be like? I tried looking for studies showing how this technology is helpful for students in his age range and found nothing. I also tried to look up exactly how this would be used in a kindergarten classroom and was similarly disappointed. I see VERY mixed reviews here on Reddit from both teachers and parents on its effectiveness to teach students anything at all. Should I be supplementing at home? What should I start with. We are working on rhyming words right now as he knows letter sounds, but I am at a loss as to what to do next. Math I’m told will also be part of iReady. I know I seem alarmist but I‘ve never really used screens all that much for anything and I want to make sure I can help him if need be at home.

I have 7 years teaching experience. My top choice district just scheduled an interview for next week and I won't be in town, but they accommodated me by allowing a virtual interview while I'm out of town.
I'm feeling excited and hopeful!

I've been out of the interview world for a few years.
This is for a middle school language arts position in California. Any tips or advice as I prepare for the interview? Thanks 🤗

Hi teachers!

My daughter is going to her very first school this year. She will be in 1st grade! While it is exciting/ sad for myself and my wife. Over the past week I have been doing as much as possible to have her excel in the classroom.

I want to be sure she is as prepared as possible for this new environment. It’s still concerns me though because she has never been in a classroom setting. I’m worried of how she will react and don’t want teacher to think my kid doesn’t know anything.

Over the past two weeks we have been working on the following with her and will continue doing so until the first day of school.

We have her doing the below activities daily M-F:

- 1 hour of writing skills, she can freely write her name and we are working to make her words clearer

- 1 hour of math, she knows addition and subtraction now. We have worked on adding and subtracting numbers between zero and 10. Next week I am likely moving onto 10s

- we make sure she sits completely still while doing this, even though this becomes a sort of challenge

She is a very active kid and hates just sitting around so that’s one of the things that worries me that the teacher might pick up on or may cause issues in class

- we have her count to 100 and then count backwards as well

- she knows her shapes and colors

- we are slowly teaching her Spanish as well

Is there any other things that teachers on here believe we should be doing to prepare her for first grade?

Open to any and all suggestions!

Thank you

Currently I am in school taking summer classes. My last semester will be this fall and I will graduate with a general studies degree and immediately enroll in an ACP through the same university.

I have been working remotely doing marketing for a video game company while I’ve been in school. Well, the company just shut down “due to AI,” and now I’m in search of employment until I can become a full-time teacher. (in the spring if there’s an opening from quitting or maternity, but most likely the following year in the Fall I would guess)

I’m struggling between 3 options.
1. Subbing every day (Already in the pool for 2 local districts. 1 district is a 4 day week, so I could pick up Fridays at another district I’m in the pool for)
2. Full-time Behavioral paraprofessional at the elementary school in the 4 day week district.
3. Currently waiting on an offer from a remote company in the same industry I was previously in. Interview went well this Monday, but I haven’t heard back yet.

Considerations:
- my wife is pregnant and due at the end of October. I really have enjoyed the flexibility my remote job allows me. I have not missed an appointment and am not excited about missing most of the rest of the appointments if I decide to do full-time para.
- teaching full-time is the final ultimate end boss goal. Do paras or subs get hired into full-time teaching roles more often or is it about equal?
- the remote job would pay twice as much as subbing or para. Would be hard to pass up, but again, not sure if I’m getting it or not yet.
- school year starts 8/3 for the 4 day week district. I believe the para spot has a start date listed for next week, a week before 8/3. I might not be able to wait too much longer on the remote position and still have the para position waiting for me.
- I’m not sure what the para pay is just yet. Interview should be this week as an admin contacted me to apply. Subs make $135 a day in this district. Which position usually makes more?
- I don’t need insurance or daycare as I have excellent and cheap options already. If I don’t need the full-time benefits, wouldn’t the flexibility of subbing just be better for my situation?

I appreciate any and all input!

I teach elementary and I’m basically living on this sub for advice. Classroom management is getting better, but I still have 3-4 kids finish every assignment way before everyone else. They’re not disruptive, but they’re bored, and bored kids become disruptive kids real fast.

I’ve tried “read a book” and “help a friend” but those only work sometimes. What do you actually do with early finishers that doesn’t require you to invent a new activity on the spot?

Also — does anyone else feel like they’re just barely keeping their head above water? Any tiny win from this week you want to share? I could use the motivation.

I’m tryna wear a beanie at school on the first day but I’m not trying to ruin my hair if I take one off. (High school)

My parents shouldn't have been parents. When I was little, they'd get into the worst screaming matches over what I should and shouldn't be doing. My dad was a push over, so if little me didn't want to go to school, I didn't have to, and my mom never cared enough to make me actually go. All she ever did was go in her room and smoke weed. Now they are better.
I'm very close with them. They really are amazing parents, but I know they shouldn't have been parents.
I went to a home schooling program from kindergarten to 4th grade, then half a year at a public school. Then COVID happened, and I got pulled out to never return to any school. I'm basically desperate at this point for ideas on what to do. I'm 16, and I want a chance at going to a good college. I'm terrified of my future, and my parents don't seem worried. My mom's only real concern is weed, or laying in bed, or hanging out with her friends, and my dad is always working. He's only home late at night when he gets off. I've been using Khan Academy. It definitely helps, but I know it's not enough to get to where I want. I'm scared if I get a tutor, my parents could get in trouble.
My dad is willing and wanting to pay for one, but he never makes an effort to look into it, so l'll have to do it. I live in Louisiana, if that helps at all with advice, I guess. I don't know. I cry constantly over this because all my friends can talk about is college or what profession they want. Or it's my parents talking about how amazing college was and i'll love it (how am i supposed to get there if yall don't help me?) and they were on the presidents list, top of their class blah blah.

I posted this on a different forum but it got taken down (rip) my parents have submitted paperwork every year since they took me out of school saying that i have been being homeschooled. i’m not sure really what i can do to start getting my education and get it rolling, i’ve seen people say to do online school or contact my local high school. i’m nervous to talk to the high school in case my parents could get into legal trouble for not teaching me anything. I still have more questions about what i really can do in louisiana about this.

Graduated 3 years ago, BA in Elementary/Special Education. I’ve only done a 6 month Long Term Teacher for 2nd grade after I student taught. I have a few job offers. My ultimate goal is to eventually, one day, have my own general education K-5 classroom. Which job should I take to get there?

- Long Term full year Sub grades 5-8 FACS Teacher job offer

- Special Education Resource Teacher K-5 job offer (only pause is if I’ll be identified indefinitely as a sped teacher)

- Continue to sub every day (all local elementary schools)