Seriously though, is there even one single politician in this country who doesn't have some kind of disgusting dirt waiting to be dug up? Like, is there anyone out there who hasn't embezzled a few bucks or swindled someone over the years? Or is politics actually just a magnet for the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel scum?
Honestly, I thought it was pretty genius how they pulled that stunt last year, hiding the national standardized test scores. Like, why on earth shouldn't we, as the actual customers paying the bills, be allowed to see which high schools—and specifically which teachers—are absolute garbage versus which ones actually deliver? I don't recall ever seeing a single coherent explanation for why they’d keep us in the dark like that.
wanderingbadger44 said:As a parent, you're operating with the full picture because that's what your child shares with you. You even mentioned yourself how difficult it is for a kid to tell the difference between a teacher who is pushing them to be better and one who is actually causing harm.
Give me a break and just allow for the possibility that not every single parent out there is an absolute moron who can't tell if something is actually wrong based on what their kid says or a quick chat with the teacher.😉
For example, if my kid—let's say they're a toddler in preschool—comes home crying that "Teacher X is mean," and I find out it's only because she won't let them sprint around the classroom like a maniac, am I really supposed to go full scorched-earth on the teacher the next morning? Or do I just explain to my kid that we don't run inside?
wanderingbadger44 said:The reason you might not see it clearly now is simply because when you're a kid, there’s a certain freedom in having zero expectations placed upon you. That’s not what an inspection is meant to be. If you actually hold people accountable, they just end up running straight to their parents, and the complaints always seem to land on the people trying to fix things, regardless of how much they're actually contributing. Neither the kids nor the parents mind the lack of productivity, so I’m glad we’re all on the same page here. 😉
I think we’re talking past each other here. 🙂 Look, speaking as a parent now, I would absolutely lose my mind if my kid had a teacher like that. Back then, when I was just some hormone-driven teenager, I thought it was totally fine. The thing is, my parents didn't have a clue about just how messed up this teacher actually was. Her colleagues definitely saw it, too, even if they pretended they didn't. We aren't just talking about "slacking off" here; we're talking about a woman who clearly had some serious, deep-seated issues going on.
wanderingbadger44 said:Look at that... eventually, we’re going to uncover why nobody ever thought to report someone like that. It sounds like everyone just looked the other way because things were easy, right? I bet everyone walked away with glowing report cards. That’s basically the secret formula for keeping students, parents, and teachers all perfectly happy. 👍
Look, obviously it worked in our favor. We were just kids back then, I don't get why everyone's acting so shocked. The woman was clearly struggling, and whether it was a fellow teacher or the principal, someone should have stepped up and done something—primarily for her sake.
wanderingbadger44 said:And honestly, I’m dying to know which kids are supposedly sitting there quietly during those 45 minutes while the teacher just stays silent, without tearing the classroom apart, causing total mayhem, or screaming loud enough to be heard from space. 😁
Seriously, if such a school actually exists, point me toward it because I’d love to go work there myself. 🙂
Most people were basically just 😁 killing whatever little bit of time was left on the clock, doing homework or prepping for the next period and some people were just scribbling away... We even had crowds from the neighboring classrooms drifting in to hang out while they skipped their own classes or got kicked out of them...
urbantinker8 said:Back in the day, teachers were pretty much out of control—they’d mess with kids, hit each other's fingers, make us stand in the corner, or have us kneel on corn kernels; they’d even rip up our notebooks if they weren't "neat" enough, among other things, but I suppose that doesn't mean those kinds of methods are still being used or even tolerated today.
Go ahead and DM me her name, because I'm genuinely curious which school would actually allow stuff like that to happen nowadays.
urbantinker8, if you really want, I can shoot you an email with the full name of the professor who used to drag herself into our classroom for three years straight just to sit there and stare blankly at the wall for forty-five minutes at a time so go ahead and check with your old faculty buddies to see if I'm telling the truth 🙂
@frupy I honestly can't say that any of my parents' generation actually breathed down our necks about getting into a specific high school. Plus, they ended up scrapping those entrance exams just a few years later anyway.
@svasta nesto Wait, are you seriously questioning whether our teachers and administrators actually have any professional integrity left? 🙂
urbantinker8 said:I think they're very, very mistaken.☕ The reason entrance exams were phased out is that so many students couldn't pass them, mostly because they had spent eight years being pushed toward straight A's without much real support or substance behind those grades.
I honestly wonder why. I mean, who wouldn't want a career working within our current educational system?🙂
God willing. PLEASE, GOD WILLING:🙂
So true. And it's all just to avoid any friction, or rather, to go easy on the students—or the parents, really—since everyone basically needs to get into a good high school and eventually make it to college. 👏
Wait, what do you mean they couldn't pass them? 😕 I’m from the generation that actually had to deal with those entrance tests—back then, everyone from middle school moved straight into high school. Nobody was left hanging just because they bombed an exam (and obviously, not everyone ended up at a fancy prep school; we had everything from academic academies to vocational trade schools).
...we seriously need to start keeping a much closer eye on those schools and teachers who are showing the biggest red flags🙂
I’m honestly just terrified that if we actually tried to implement something like that, our local teacher unions would stage a full-blown revolution on us😁
And don't even get me started on getting rid of entrance exams for high school and college—that was hands down the single dumbest move they could have made
wanderingbadger44 said:No, it isn't normal to me. And honestly, because it feels so far from reality, I can't help but feel like you might be making this up. I'm sorry, but since we don't know each other, I have no desire or reason to be unkind to you. It's just that what you described sounds so impossible to me that it doesn't seem plausible.
Oh, please, I'm totally lying. I wasn't even expecting a different reaction anyway. 🙂
War? Because, excuse me, but I don't think it’s "normal" for some notorious alcoholic to be handing stuff over to my kid, right? If that happened, I’d be reporting them to the principal immediately and then taking it even further... Or how about a woman who’s clearly having a mental breakdown, showing up to class just to sit there in dead silence for 45 minutes straight—and doing that for four years straight? Is that supposed to be okay in your book?
If you honestly think those kinds of scenarios constitute a "war" between parents and teachers, then I’m speechless... It’s honestly no wonder our school system is such a disaster—zero standards, zero oversight, just total chaos... ☕
Some guy (who even is this person in the job description, anyway?) actually had the audacity to try and micromanage a teacher's work 😲 It absolutely crushed her ego, and she’s been a total wreck from the stress for the last few days 😲 A pure T-R-A-G-E-D-Y I honestly don't have any other words for it 😢 🙄
Good grief, what kind of parallel universe are you people living in? Nobody else ever has their performance, quality, or actual results scrutinized... it's always just the poor teachers And get this—other people can make massive mistakes or deliver terrible results and they just get a slap on the wrist or maybe even a warning, but they rarely get fired!
If you want to know everything you need to know about how they "monitor" school staff (and their supposed quality), just look at the fact that some notorious alcoholic, predator, and mentally unstable woman who worked at my elementary school over 30 years ago is *still* working there today... Just sweep it under the rug, don't make waves, don't mess with your colleagues... screw the kids. Even if you happen to run into an aggressive parent who threatens to call the school board, they'll just let it slide, and you'll be stuck dealing with his kid for another four years 🙄
Chloe Roberts2 said:The blame lies squarely with our outdated legislation and those overly protective labor laws.
OT It’s such a shame we aren't including someone like Maya Angelou in the mandatory reading list this year.
Look, permanent contracts aren't even the real issue—that's strictly a problem within government agencies and public sector bureaucracy. In the private sector, if you aren't pulling your weight, you're out the door regardless of what kind of contract you signed. The actual nightmare is that mediocre teachers basically have total immunity. They don't face any real consequences for breach of contract or poor performance, and they don't answer to anyone when they're failing at their jobs. That’s exactly why every single teacher's ultimate goal is to snag one of those lifetime tenure deals; they know once they have it, they can coast right until retirement without a care in the world.
Judging by how many educators are posting on this forum, you'd think every single one of them was living under a constant threat of being fired.☕
The brutal reality of being a teacher😢 Honestly, I was almost moved to tears reading this.
Since you’re already going off about toxic parents and basically modern-day witch hunts, could you dive into what actually happens to teachers when they get caught being awful? Like, what kind of professional "death penalties" are we talking about here? Because, if I'm being real, I can't think of a single instance where a truly terrible teacher actually lost their job and stayed gone.
I’m right there with you. People come up with all sorts of valid reasons to leave early or push things back, and I honestly don't get why everyone feels the need to force every situation into the same narrow little box.
And don't even get me started on those "expert opinions" we're supposedly meant to follow blindly—I can't even remember which self-proclaimed genius wrote that bit—but sorry, I’m the one who actually knows my kid. After me, it’s the teachers at the preschool and their specialist team, who have been keeping a super close eye on the pre-K crowd this past year, who actually know what's up. When it comes to understanding my kid, the school's professional staff ranks dead last. I mean, they're just going to sit down for one quick little chat that lasts maybe thirty minutes tops, and then they think they've got the whole picture.
I honestly hadn't even looked at it from that angle before 😁 But man, when I sit down and actually crunch the numbers on what we’re paying for daycare and all those little extracurricular activities for my kid $340, once you multiply that by twelve months, it’s definitely not pocket change . Also, quick question about books—what's the deal with the local scene here in Chicago? Are they still free? Are we talking brand new copies or just used stuff? Personally, I can't stand used books or anything checked out from a public library 🙂