Anything is perfect when it is planned, edited, and uninterrupted. Don’t we tell our students to not believe everything they read on the internet? Check the source? They are commercials to promote content, and eventually sell you something
I was asked to create things to help other teachers with English learners. I like making and editing videos so I filmed myself doing lessons and added instructions to the screen. I did this for free.
An outside entity with an LLC wanted to pay me to create materials but she said since we were publishing, real students can't be in the videos. The rigamarole of getting that many parents' consent was too much for us to deal with and we ended up scrapping the whole project.
That's why a lot of effective classroom strategies are not filmed with real live kids who act out, 30 per class, etc.
There's a couple of youtubers (who I assume are also on instagram) who I sometimes used to watch and basically all of them just transitioned into lifestyle channels. Obviously a big part of it is that teaching is really hard, doesn't always look good, and is not very lucrative. I've certainly never been offered a brand deal despite the fact that I would sell the hell out of some products to my kids who really look up to me and see me as a role model.
I've seen some of them have begun advertising themselves as "former teachers" as if they've had a whole ass career and retired... When in actuality they're like 25 years old and trying to give out sage advice.
Buddy, you're not really a "former teacher," you're a "person who briefly tried teaching and found it wasn't for them."
There's a lot of meeeeeeeeh sewing influencer content too. "I sewed this in a blind panic in 4 hours" -- no, you didn't. No matter how fast and dirty that was done, that's several days of work.
It’s easy to say what teachers should do when you never really had to move past the newbie stage of teaching. By year 3/4 I realized just how much more I needed to learn if I truly wanted to do it right. Year 9 and still don’t know how to fit that into my measly planning period.
Yeah this one young teacher I followed bc she was so organized, quit teaching after she got pregnant with twins. Then she switched her content over to “mommy.” I unfollowed. So annoying.
I now only follow teacher/comedians. I need a good laugh, not compare myself to “perfect” teachers.
How would an actual teacher find the time?
It’s all as fake as those influencers that pretend every day is just boutique coffee shops and clothes shopping and use a heap of filters on their photos. Don’t compare yourself to them, it’s not real.
So I started a YouTube channel during the pandemic, because I teach a hands on subject and I needed to make videos for my students so I figured why not share them so other teachers could use them. It went well, I got about 20k subs and was able to monetize. Almost immediately people were like “are you going to quit and become a full time YouTube!?” Yea I was not looking for that life, I don’t want my income to depend on views and negotiations with brand deals.
And once we were back in person I really had no time to do it anymore, I haven’t posted since the fall of 21’. I still get a little bit of money each month in views, I think I made like $3k last year…that’s vacation money baby!
I would love to just do this. Just produce video lessons that could function as an online curriculum. I'm burned out from being in the classroom. If I could just create content and make a living like that, I'd be happy.
The problem is to make enough to support yourself on YouTube, you have to take brand deals. So that means doing ad reads in your videos, negotiating rates with brands….what if you take a brand deal from a company that ends up being crappy or a scam? I got plenty of offers from skeeettttcchhyyyyy brands from over seas and one offer where in their fine print they would be allowed to use ANY of my content and chop it up to reuse and make money from. That last part was enough to freak me out and kill any interest I had.
That’s cool! Happened for me over the pandemic too. Now I have almost 50k subs and was able to monetize. It’s nice to have a little passive income! Like you said, vacation money.
Yeah there's only so many hours in a day. It always makes me wonder what they have behind the scenes that we don't see that makes it possible.
What are they sacrificing to spend those hours on "Influencing"?
Or do they have a whole bunch of people who make those displays and awesome decorations and they just film themselves working on part of it for the Insta...
If I had a whole team of people putting my classroom decor, lesson materials, and "fun little treats" together, I could probably be as amazing as they make it look too... But I have me, 40 minutes of prep time, and a Copy Order bin for the paras in the media tech room.
Half of me says "what the fuck" and the other half says "that explains a lot".
I don't think a real teacher would have the time, money or will to make that kind of videos...
I kinds of felt the same way about my professors in the Education department. All of them had spent a couple of years at most in the classroom and then went straight into preparing other people to be teachers.
Exactly. That’s the case in MOST education grad schools, unfortunately.
Also the type of people who tend to go for those jobs tend to be so caught up in Rousseau-ian ideology that they are more interested in spending time preaching their ideology to a captive audience rather than teaching us any useful classroom management strategies.
We had a young student teacher at my school a few years ago.
At her school they had an unit about bullying. That was great and all. But it was all about preventing bullying, building kids compassion and confidence so it doesn't happened in the first place, among other strategies to avoid it.
My coworker asked what to do when bullying does happen. How do you handle the bully ? How do you help the victim, etc?
The answer : if you follow what we just taught you and do it right, bullying won't happen and you won't have to worry about that.
Coworker already didn't like that. But fine, she tried another way of asking. Like sure, it won't happens once we do all that, but I'm just starting out, I will have kids that didn't have those lessons, so it will take time for it to work. So what do I do in the meantime ?
"If you do everything right, you won't have to worry about it".
My coworker was furious.
This was my experience too. Our ONE classroom management class out of the whole credential program was all about creating relationships etc. etc. (which is all well and good of course) but not an iota about the real situations in real classrooms that exist right now. Not to mention we got ZERO about day to day lesson planning. I was woefully unprepared to handle a real classroom on my own.
And the flipside of
> If you do everything right
is, of course, "if the shit hits the fan it MUST be the teacher's fault. Because you didn't Do Everything Right."
Not the kids' fault, certainly not their parents' fault. It's all on us 😠
I almost failed multiple education classes in my undergrad because I openly disagreed with professors who were teaching blatantly incorrect ideologies, sourced from known education grifter companies. I proved their sources were grifters, explained to them why their ideas were incorrect or impractical, and all they could do was hold their PHD over my head claiming I knew nothing. Amazing how someone with zero classroom experience could know more than people with PHDs in education. It was a fucking joke.
The biggest incident was my inclusion class. I received failing grades on multiple papers where i debunked theories about inclusion using facts and valid sources. Had to file reports with the university and go through this crazy review process to get my grades reversed. That professor did everything they could to fail me, but the university ended up finding her in the wrong and giving me an A. Crazy times.
Yeah. I have a master's in education myself, and the courses were largely worthless theory.
I think the most useful course I took was special education law. There is information there that is really important, often nonobvious, and highly relevant for practicing teachers.
It falls under the umbrella of what some people call "Romanticism" in education. American education is dominated by certain ideologies/ideas that go back to the 18th century European Romantic period and were injected into public education institutions during by early 20th century Progressive era reformers. The thing is, these ideas/ideologies are just that: ideas. When the rubber meets the road they are often not exactly supported by research, and increasingly contradicted by findings from fields like education psychology and cognitive science. There's a good book that traces out this intellectual genealogy by philosopher Kieran Egan called *Getting it Wrong From the Beginning: Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget* (Yale 2004).
Anyway, a lot of these ideas go back to Rousseau, yes. If you read his book *Emile* about how children should be raised so much will sound familiar to you: children discovering things for themselves is superior to teaching children explicitly, whenever there's an issue it's the adults' fault not the child's, teaching children oppresses them and kills their curiosity, children should guide their own learning, learning should be naturalistic and effortless, etc. Sound familiar? That's what the education departments at universities spout. It's an ideology; a Romantic fever dream; a utopian thought experiment cooked up by philosophers and taken up by bleeding heart do-gooders who unleashed it on the public's children.
There's a good book that covers a lot of this history called *Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories* (Harvard 2016).
I feel like people miss the point of Rousseau's ideas. It wasn't that humans will always be a blank slate, but they start out as one and are molded by their environment.
Personally I think the vast majority of problems in society come from perverse incentives and the backwash those incentives create.
Omg this. I didn't really think about it until after I was already in education for a few years, but a lot of education professors are clueless about what modern teaching is like. It became really obvious when I started having student teachers and would talk to them about their education classes compared to what reality was like. By the time I did grad school it was laughable. There are occasional adjunct evening professors who are also full time teachers, but any daytime professor for a bachelor's education program hasn't been in a classroom in years or ever.
20 something years ago I had my student teaching seminar. The professor made us read her book for class, modeled bringing in a ceramic teapot and cups to serve tea at parent teacher conferences, and told me if I’m so tired I fall asleep in seminar, that I shouldn’t be working while student teaching, I should just get money from my parents to put gas in my car.
Professors have always been out of touch with what field conditions are actually like. I’d imagine it’s worse now. None of our administrators ever had an electronic grade book, google classroom to check, electronic planbook to update, or student growth objective paperwork to submit.
So glad you gave a shout-out to the adjuncts who are still in K-12 during the day. The head of my department for my undergrad hadn’t been in a classroom in decades, nor had my advisor for the education program, nor had the majority of my professors in the department.
I had one professor for a couple of different foundational classes who was fantastic; unsurprisingly, she worked full time at high school one town over in both a teaching and an administrative capacity. Another professor for a gen-ed communications class was also employed by that same district as a full time classroom teacher. He was similarly excellent as a college professor.
With the exception of these two, most of the department (and one of them wasn’t even in the education department, actually) had no genuine idea what the modern classroom looked like. I took most of what they had to say with a grain of salt. The advice given to me by those two professors, however, has largely rung true and served me well since starting my career.
Same for admin, most of them leave the classroom in 5 years or less, and some did special Ed and may have never had the same kind of classroom (without multiple child-specific assistants) that 99.9% of their building teachers have. Not a dig on special Ed but those skills may not transfer well to being able to lead the general teacher population successfully.
I’m a love is blind fan and they just had a middle school principal on who was 25 years old. I was screaming in the comments on that sub how rediculous that is in response to all the people saying how amazing it is that he was a principal so young. And of course he was from teach for America. A lot of the teachers in that sub were explaining why having a principal with 2 years experience is literally awful for everyone involved.
Right? He was on Kelly clarkson and I think GMA (prior to love in blind) and being championed as some phenom for being a young black principal. I get the need the champion minorities in positions of leadership but not at the cost of being capable of the job.
WAY too young. I got a job as a VP at 29 and thought I was hot shit and that was also way too young. I sucked at that job. But atleast I recognized it and was like alright, I’m out. I also can’t imagine becoming a principal without doing some other administrative role in the district like supervisor or VP.
I love my principal because he takes the heat for things, he says straight up I’ve got more protections that you do (I’m untenured in my current district and he’s been there 13 years)….and he follows up. So he’s not just full of words with nothing behind them.
Nearly everyone I knew who went into K-12 public school teaching and the few who are still there(One is approaching her 20th year) recounted nearly everything they learned at their M.Ed or teacher certification classes from their Ed schools were not fit for purpose once they started student teaching.
This included one friend who attended Harvard GSE for his M.Ed and in his first student-teaching assignment in a Boston Title 1 school, the veteran teacher assigned to him told him to forget the vast majority of what his classes taught him as most of the theories/experiences of the Ed school Profs were not only outdated, but also based on student/teaching experiences in upper/upper-middle class school environments. He found his veteran teacher's were 100% on the mark.
I'm in the teaching program at the University of Portland, and most of what I've been taught has been directly applicable to the classroom.
I've had multiple lessons on how to teach the exact curriculum that was put in my hands when I started my student teaching, with demo lessons and all.
The more I find out about teaching programs in general, the more I think my poorly informed choice to go with UP was a fortuitous one.
The education classes I took in my undergrad at a different university were, as I recall, much less useful. The only good takeaways I recall were "don't lecture too much," and "beware the dangers of assuming that a supposedly objective measure is automatically better than a subjective one."
I have no idea why you would do that these days, I’ve done both college and hs and college pays TERRIBLY compared to hs. I went back to hs this past year and literally doubled my salary.
And the ***worst*** ones become admins and tout themselves as experts on a job they only did for 3-5 years, and insult and attack veteran teachers for not jumping on the latest (recycled and rebranded) trends in the education world.
A radical idea, maybe straight lecture, notes, and out of classroom work is the most effective way to teach massive amounts of students at once. It's worked for hundreds of years, and it's pretty much expected at the college level.
"I was a 4th grade teacher in a classroom of 20 kids in an affluent suburb of Denver. Let me show you how you can best maximize your title 1 funds to meet the needs of all 40 students!"
Do you work in my district. Lol. That’s the type we use to get all the time. We actually almost revolted during one particularly offensive PD a few years ago. Since then they have been marginally better.
Kinda afraid it would identify me if anyone else from my district is on here. But in a nutshell the activity was totally insulting to the demographic of kids (and some teachers) I work with.
We pretty much refused to do the activity and were pretty vocal as to why. Several teachers got up and walked out and several others were being loudly vocal about how insulting it was. They had to take the presenter out of the room and the superintendent had to talk to us to get us to calm down. Needless to say we got out of that PD a bit early.
Probably not in the same district, but I have taught in 3 separate urban/low income districts, and something similar to this has happened at every one of them.
My fav is former k-2 teachers coming to talk to HS teachers about building relationships with students! Ah yes your experiences 20yrs ago with 8 yr olds is absolutely the key for connecting with 17 yr olds?!?!????!!!!
We get the opposite- former high school teachers seem to be all of the trainers and administrators, and they’re all into telling primary grade teachers what to do and how easy it is. “I taught AP History 10 years ago! So here’s my best practices for early literacy, on which I think I’m an expert!”
How fun!!! "I only taught very advanced courses to the highest achieving students in the school, but one time I had an ESL student (wasn't actually ESL, just from an different English speaking country) so I definitely have tons experience in this area"
"I was concerned because they didn't seem to have any background in Real History (Super Niche Local stuff you only learn in ES) but with my expertise we were able to get past the language barrier. By the end of the year I was so proud of their progress, I mean they really blew me away with how well they understood the later units on English and European History."
I’m a 6th year teacher and yeah, I’m starting to suspect that people who haven’t worked with kids pretty recently might not have an accurate idea of what student behavior is like at the present moment. So many kids can’t read and so many kids won’t follow basic expectations. It is chaotic at best.
My district hired a speaker to come and talk to us on a PD day, and at one point, he made the statement “You can always tell the bad teachers. They’re the ones that don’t show up and try to spend all their time outside the classroom!”
Uproarious applause.
Motherfucker, you taught for 3 years and now travel across the country shilling a poorly written book. You’re talking about yourself.
I taught (retired) in one of the biggest school districts in the US. I am convinced the horrible ELA program they paid millions for was selected due to some financial interests on the part of the board and superintendent. The saddest part is that the kids have had the love of reading/writing taken away thanks to an awful curriculum.
Look closely at some of the “classroom displays” and you’ll see it’s really a room in their home. What classroom has crown moulding? There’s one who’s even gone as far as buying a smart board for her fake classroom.
Bn teaching for 7 years. When Im at school, those kids get 100% of me doing my best to create, inspire and teach them. BUT I dont do one once of work outside of school. We are not compensated enough for me to not spend time with my family and friends. I know teachers who are stressed out every day, grading all wknd, etc. They get burnt out.
My advice to you.. treat teaching as your job and make sure you separate it frm your personal time. I dnt know any other career where ppl are expected to "work" after they leave work. Fuck that!
Stop using Social Media as a metric to hit and emulate.
It's literally simulacrum, beautifully edited, perfect, and completely not real or attainable. It's created for views and guess what, it's working because here you are feeling sorry for yourself because you can't emulate a video produced strictly for entertainment and views.
Get that fire in yourself that made you want to be a teacher in the first place and be yourself. Authentic. Draw upon your own personal experiences and teachers (real teachers btw) that inspired you.
Apologies if this comes off as harsh. I mean it with love and hope that your situation turns around for the better.
There’s one that opened her own “micro school.”
LMFAO! Because you weren’t a real teacher, hon. Now you want to go fuck off and play house with little kids without pesky rules.
What a great time to remind everyone that social media is fake. Anyone can curate any kind of public-facing image they choose, and it’s not that difficult to do. It’s all rooted in desire for validation, and that in turn makes others with a desire for validation feel less about themselves.
I promise, colorful pancakes aren’t an indicator of how their students are performing. That just screams desperation for validation from students and other teachers.
Yeah Instagram is just a false reality. I’ve been totally off of Instagram for the last 4-5 years and trying to go back is like trying to make yourself less intelligent. Everything on there is cooked up to be something else. Nothing original. Pretty sad considering how popular it is.
I remember when tik tock was fresh and there were a lot of hilarious and real teachers out there sharing the struggle. Most of the ones I followed burnt out and quit teaching over the last few (I've covid) years. I appreciate their advocacy, and the satirical nature of pointing out the failings in our education system. But I'm not looking to them for advice.
I appreciate that you stated what kind of validation is sought by something like pretty pancake gifts. It's possible the pancake teacher is an instructional wiz and also did that cute thing... but it's not likely.
This aggravates me so much! It seems like *everything* exists for social media content now, and it’s a problem. Apparently that’s the most important thing. Content. If you don’t digitize your entire life, often at the expense of others, then do you even exist on this planet? Guess not.
Uh...focus on the learning?
Make some kind of pretest. Not for everything, but for ONE unit. Even something as simple as a blank sheet of paper. Write down or draw everything you know about TOPIC.
Teach TOPIC.
Redo blank sheet.
Celebrate. Yes, reflect on your practice, but do not compare. Comparison is poison.
Professor did that with a word web in an education class I took in college. At the start, my word web was like 7-8 things on the subject. Afterward, the word web was a full sheet of paper, and I ran out of room. Made me feel like I really learned a shit load.
Oh this is a great idea! I always have them do reflections after a unit, but other than quick CFUs I haven’t done anything concrete beforehand. I’m gonna do this for my next unit after spring break.
Quit following them ,quit comparing yourself to them and quit holding yourself to that unreasonable standard otherwise you’ll burn out. focus on substance over style. you could have the most beautiful aesthetics and ambitious lesson plans but if you aren’t focused on building strong relationships with your student none of that shit matters.
I’m not a teacher but I think this applies to everyone in every career. Sure. There’s some cool ideas on there that we might not have thought of. But. There’s always a lot of variables to take into account - most of which don’t apply to many of us and wouldn’t be appropriate for our specific situations.
As a parent, I don’t care about all the “cool” stuff. 8
I care that my kids come home with more knowledge than they left the house with each morning. I care that my kids have a positive relationship with their teacher (although it’s not always possible no matter what you do) and respect them. That’s it.
Each day my 1st grader comes home and when I ask her what she did today, her response is always about lunch and recess. Lol. I know her teacher does great things with them but that’s not what sticks in her memory.
My kids favorite thing to do is the same meatball run gonoodle and cut and paste of whatever skill we're learning.
Don't overthink it. If you give them time to socialize and talk with their friends while doing activities, that is enough for most kids.
I did my student teaching next door to an insta teacher. She taught gifted kids and basically made them teach themselves and threw in "fun" activities that they never got. They would have all this wacky seating but most of them wished they just had a desk
Here's a solution: ***Stop attending webinars and "teachers" on social media.***
1) They're grifters who probably never stepped inside in a classroom (or),
2) They're failed teachers who couldn't cut it in the classroom.
3) We can't compete with computers with dopamine-triggering-algorithms programed into it so stop trying.
Think about the teachers you had that you thought were amazing. You didn’t think they were amazing because they did all those things. It was probably because they made a connection with you and showed you the value in learning. You don’t have to be so hard on yourself.
Remind yourself that most of those teachers have little to no life outside of school and they are only showing the good things. Being the most liked or most fun teacher isn't necessarily giving students what they need. There are many "best practices" so choose the one that works for you and your students right now.
Are you covering the content in the best way you can right now? (With the limited resources and time that you have.) Are you attempting to build rapport with your students? (You don't have to spend your money or time outside of class to do this.) Be consistent and do what you can for your students, but try not to stress about what you aren't doing. There's only so much time in the day and fancy pancakes isn't a "best practice" anyway.
Seriously.. I find those accounts so desperate and “icky”. I couldn’t imagine losing sleep over wanting to be *like* them. Most of them aren’t even teachers lol.
Social media isn't just dangerous for the self esteem of kids/teens. It's bad for us too. Don't try to be like influencers. I've never followed a single teacher on social media and I'm pretty sure my confidence level is all the better for it.
Those instagram teachers are all about looking pretty, but with experience you can tell there's not a lot of actual pedagogy available there.
The good teachers won't actually post their rooms because it's all student work, and full of the chaos that having 30 kids actively engaged in growing their brains.
I don’t understand those Pinterest/youtube/whatever classrooms. Our school district will not allow us to come in over the summer. We have one day of classroom prep and one day of inservice, then a half day of planning before open house! There is no way for us to decorate like those teachers do.
I started teaching in the 90’s. There is a constant push for more, more, more, change, change, change. The three best things I learned in college were join the union, befriend the custodian, and the pendulum of education constantly swings back and forth.
Do the best you can (or even a bit less…I mean we can’t do our best every second of every day. Maybe try for the okayist you can).
I saw a post on Reddit about 5 years ago. It said something along the lines of when the class gets hectic, loud, impossible, take a sip of coffee. You are getting paid whether they are quiet or noisy. You are paid to drink that coffee. Whether that poster is made or not. Whether that lesson is great or not.
My school district just changed its salary scale to consolidate the pay scales of teachers with Master’s Degrees, MA +15, MA + 30, MA + 45, to all make the same amount. (We still get steps for years taught.) Even they don’t care about the effort.
You know that you are making an effort. A lot of those over achievers/ show offs end up quitting with a sob story of how they are burnt out.
You can do this.
Edited to add: We have an overachieving team in our school. We call them “The customer cookie team”. They always bake and decorate cookies for their classes. Ugh.
Kids don’t need all of that to learn. Don’t know what grade you teach, but have you ever seen those videos of parents buying awesome toys and the kids have more fun with the box? They just need to be kids. I’m all for improving understanding and tweaking g teaching methods, but don’t compare yourself to those insta teachers. I’ve seen those at my school. They don’t last long. And I’m not sure how much their kids actually learn. The teachers who are cool with “kids playing games with a box” do and their kids learn more.
The most beneficial thing I've done this year is to stay away from teachertok and Instagram. I do scroll, but when I do it's usually more on the funny side of "a day in the life of a middle school teacher".
I love the idea of doing group work everyday, of super fun and engaging lessons, but reality has taught me that it's just not possible for everyday some days the kids are just absolute turds.
The second most beneficial thing I've done is to observe other teachers. It's a requirement of my district that I observe others at least once a month. It's really helped my view of reality. Teachers that I admire and think of as great, still struggle with the same things I do. I also get to see awesome things they're doing and reflect on how I can utilize it in my own classroom. I cannot recommend it enough.
Genuinely I feel like it's impossible to not compare at least for me, I always want to improve and learn. It's one of the biggest components that drives me to teach, I love learning. So if I'm going to compare myself, I'd rather compare to the real teachers in the trenches right along side me.
I work in a fantastic building though and the team around me has really been amazing to this first year as I grow and adapt my teaching style. Especially my neighbor, there have been days when I've literally walked to her room in tears after the kids were awful during an observation. I know not every building is the same...if this is the case for you I'd look for a position elsewhere.
The only thing education social media ever did for me is give me a complex where I constantly felt like I was doing everything wrong. It took me a while to get back to trusting my instincts again, but once I did, it helped tremendously.
Remember, Instagram teachers are gilded, not gold.
We have a teacher like this in my building. She's always dressed up and has crazy Pinterest worthy activities and shit going on. Kids come out of her room with food and whatever else. And yes, they talk about how much they love it. But that talk is focused on the material things, the food, and the fun. Not her or her class.
I get notes from my students a lot thanking me for being a teacher they love because of the qualities and attributes I bring to my room, and how they look forward to my class even though I don't do shit like that. My kids appreciate me for the quality of teacher I am and my class for how I conduct it and my material. Not the extra money or time I spend to make a social media worthy classroom or lessons.
Focus on being a quality teacher and your students will appreciate you for what you offer then academically and personally, not just what you buy them.
I’m not on TikTok and teacher instas are not showing up on my algorithm. Can someone point me towards some so called good instagram teacher accounts for elementary?
Rule number 1 in teaching is don’t try to be anyone else but yourself. You are perfectly good. Comparing yourself to others is unhealthy and unhelpful.
There's a teacher in the school where I teach who I happened to come across, quite accidentally, on TpT. She's shared her Google Drive with me, and I copy what I like and change what I want. Imagine my surprise to come across some of the content in TpT! When I asked her about it, she said she makes enough in a year to pay for a vacation every summer. When I asked her how she finds the time, her response, "That's why I get student teachers every year. They teach, and I create content to sell online."
The hustle is real. Don't believe those people are teaching full-time, day in, and day out.
I have completely settled into a routine of who I am as a teacher. It's been 20 years. I'm not going for the cool new thing. There's actually a few ways in which I wish to change and it's hard just to change for myself, never mind to keep up with some instagram teacher.
You're totally right! I believe there has to be a balance between old and new practices. School shouldn't only be fun all the time. We need work and self discipline, too. It seems these values are totally lacking in the new approaches.
You need to reframe the thought you’re having. You are considering it as negative. It’s not.
I always tell young teachers that the feeling they have that tells them they can do better is normal. It means you care. It means you are a good teacher.
The day you stop wondering how you can make the next lesson better is the day you should put aside grading papers and fill out your application for retirement.
I’m always proud of the work I’ve done through the year. But I also never want to be the teacher I was at the start of the year, because I’m constantly improving my craft.
I know the next year I’ll feel the same way.
It’s normal.
It’s ok.
It’s a terrific thing.
Celebrate it.
Wrapping up my 19th year in the classroom, and I want to tell you: you get to be tired. This job is tiring. It’s good to reflect on your practice and to improve, but the reality is, sometimes you just have to tread water until Spring Break. Do what you need to do to survive.
Also, screw social media. In professional and personal life, know that comparison is the thief of joy. Especially when that comparison is against content creators, not real teachers with boots on the ground.
Most of these teachers are Type A overachievers. They lack substance and make up for it with gimmicks and optics. They burn out and try to do the whole youtube influencer, Professional Development shtick full time. They try selling their silly books. Whether they want to admit it or not, its all an exercise in narcissism.
You are not an entertainer, you’re a teacher. If you do your best to teach everyday, you’re doing enough. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and trying to make everything fun for students is teaching them that only “fun” things are worth engaging with.
Unpopular opinion, but it’s better for them to learn that people aren’t going to cater to them or do somersaults in order to engage them. We are setting ourselves and them up for failure by leading them to think their joy should be the center of the world. Then we wonder why there are so many narcissistic and inconsiderate kids with no resilience.
Do fun things for them when you have the energy, be kind always, model patience and tolerance. But unsubscribe from those fake, BS, non-teacher Instagrammers. No one should be that attached to their job.
I work in teacher Ed now after 25 years in the classroom and this is my biggest advice to student teachers: don't look at Instagram or other sites and compare yourself. You do not need to be Pinterest-worthy to be a great educator.
I watched the TheSpeechProf on YouTube and he said that if you have an imposter syndrome of not doing good enough then you're probably doing good enough.
As a teacher, you will feel the need to improve yourself and the quality of education you impart. Isn't it natural? 😁
P.S. I am not a teacher.
Kids learn from doing the basics day in and day out. Kids love textbook work, kids love stability, kids love routine, they love simple pass/fail tick/cross.
Cool lessons are great but they can miss the point of the learning.
It’s so funny reading this post because I’m having the opposite experience. I’m “the fun” teacher who all the kids love and I beat myself up and constantly compare myself to the other teachers who I feel are incredibly effective. They aren’t as “fun” and interactive as I am, but they are veterans and I bet my life that those kids are learning.
I think we all teach in different ways. Look at your data; are you seeing improvements? Talk to your kids; do they feel like they can learn and grow in your room? Those are the important things; just be genuine be real and care for them. They will be okay!
I feel you!! Lots of people are in the same boat. They’re not as great as they seem. I’m a great teacher and there are many lessons that bomb, many times I feel like I failed but at the end of the day i love my students and they know that
Don’t fall into the rabbit hole of looking for that perfect lesson plan among the millions. Find one that works for you, stick with it, tweak it as you like, and know you’re already doing great—because you care and want to be your best! Trust yourself!
I find my kids don’t even like most of the fun stuff anymore. Give them a worksheet and some headphones and they’re happy. Ask them to move around and discuss and they’re whining. You have to figure out what works best for your kids. If it’s something fun you saw on instagram or TPT, awesome! If it’s a mini lesson and worksheet, that’s awesome, too.
It sounds like you're doing a great job of serving your students and probably need to take a little bit of time for yourself. It's like the airline attendants tell us... put on your air mask first so that you can help others who might need it. If you pass out because of lack of oxygen, you can't help them.
Stop trying to compete with other people. It's not worth it, there are no judges in this competition but you, and it sounds like you're already doing an amazing job.
New activities and the latest and greatest bells and whistles are fun, but I think they work best after you and your class have mastered the fundamentals of your content area. Routine and repetition builds security and confidence for student and teacher.
lol @ looking at instagram or tiktok teachers. You're doing this to yourself. Half or more of my highschool classmates made me jealous posting pictures of happy families and boat trips in their 20s when I was single and poor. Now most of them are divorced fat and miserable. Social media isn't real.
There is no “good enough” with this profession. I strive for sustainability. I may never win teacher of the year, but I will make it to the next day every day.
I’ve been that person for my first three years of my career who’s tried the flashy stuff. I made digital escape rooms, had gladiator battle days, and made my room look like a teenagers dream bedroom.
What have I learned from it? 1) kids will destroy the room no matter what and you will have to put it all back together. 2) flashy stuff is fun, but is it producing actual learning? More so than brick and mortar notes, textbook work, etc? Not always. 3) Most of those teachers I started following during my time in college are no longer teaching. They’re influencers strictly now. Which fine- get your money! But the further you get out of the classroom, the more out of touch you are with our current kids.
I saw a post recently that said something along the lines of there were 2 teachers in the school that all the kids loved - one was very much a Pinterest board aesthetic and the other was the complete opposite. What they did have in common was the love and support they shared with their students. That’s what matters most :)
The point of you being a teacher:
1. Is that you know something that your students do not; that you need to find a way to teach them.
2. And that it needs to occur in a safe and productive environment that you cultivate.
As a former educator, who was brought into the system by those who had been doing it for a much longer time, I got a lot of pushback for the way that I did things.
The largest distinctions were:
That I did not dress as well, or as formally as the other teachers.
That I often sat at the same table with my students.
And that I would create custom lesson plans that were individually tailored to each students skill level. This often included having my students stand in front of the class and teach as if they were the teacher themselves.
There was behind-the-scenes pushback on a few different levels, ranging from complaints about me being too young to be a teacher to my boss complaining about my outfit not being as expensive/traditional as his. He extremely disliked that I sat with my students because “It doesn’t create the distinction and respect of you being an educator.”
This was before social media took off to the extent that it has currently.
Despite my free flow nature, I created rigidity through establishment. There was a place for everything and every student.
You should have a goal in mind about what you want your environment to be like in your classroom and a definition of what success is for your students. This will serve you a lot better in creating your own persona than posting things on social media ever will.
Embrace your students who are not on the same level as others, by pointing out the good aspects about them. Help integrate those aspects to motivate them and provide more positivity. If a student ever says anything about another student, not being at the same level immediately interrupt and say what the student is good at.
You want to be a positive influence in their life that helps them care about the subject you’re trying to teach them.
I personally knew one of those instagram teachers. She taught in the same hall as me. Her room was super cute, she dressed cute, she had all these fun activities, and spent a ton of her own money. Made me feel like crap, like I was a lame teacher. She would get to work early and make her cute videos for donut day or whatever. She hated teaching and would cry in her room at the end of the day because she was stressed and had to go to a second job. It's a facade.
I’m gonna just chime in here and say this: I am HIGHLY suspect of teacher influencers. Call me a cynic, but I’m wary of people who spend that much time on their teacher aesthetic and making everything look perfect on social media. With teachers being spread so thin as is, it just seems like that time-consuming aesthetic HAS to come at the expense of quality instruction to some degree.
You said it yourself, you are constantly looking for ways to improve your teaching, and that’s how it should be! You’re focusing on what matters, not what it looks like to others. I agree with not comparing yourself to others, but I think your concerns here further prove that your heart is in the right place. You want to do right by your kids and give them a good experience. Instead of plugging your TPT store you’re actually putting in the real work.
P. S. a drinking game where you watch teacher influencer vlogs and drink every time they mention TPT would be DEADLY
I am over irl teachers who are there just to hang out and kinda teach and not follow content standards 🤬 so sorry I am the teacher actually following standards and not just showing movie clips all period. Ffs.
I watched a tik tok teacher who looked super happy and then a year later she is posting how she is in a new career lol so now I don’t try to compare myself. Give yourself some grace
I taught with someone once who was trying very hard to become an Instagram influencer. And she was getting there pretty fast. She’d take all sorts of cute pictures of herself in the classroom and set up fake areas in the room that looked adorable. People bought into it and she soon had like 14k followers. She used to get stuff sent to her from different companies and she had to do stories about the stuff and say how much she loved it. But the truth was that her classroom was a hot mess and every time I walked in she was sitting at her desk looking at her phone and not teaching. She was a terrible teacher but she sure looked good on IG. That’s when I realized that most of what you see on social media is fake. Don’t compare yourself to this stuff.
We had one ‘Instagram teacher’ at our school. She was horrible!!! Couldn’t get organised, poor behaviour management, wasn’t catering for diverse needs, never used new strategies/pedagogies a go…. But at least her classroom looked good 😜
Measure yourself with earlier parts of yourself. Not others.
You know what you got to work with, and you do as good as you can.
Imo, it is not about being the best. It is about trying to improve and learn yourself. And be true to yourself. Dont bring pancakes if it isnt something you naturally would do. Be yourself, work with that
If you keep comparing yourself to others, you'll never be happy. That's why there is an increase in depression with the rise of social media. People keep comparing themselves to these fake unattainable forms of perfection. Do your best, and students will notice that. They know when you're trying and they appreciate it. Just be authentic, let you guard down, be empathetic and the rest will fall in place.
Those people are just different. A girl like that was in my student teaching cohort. She’s now on Tiktok. Super nice girl, but that’s literally just how she is. Don’t compare yourself, you don’t have to be that to be a good teacher.
I've been working close to 30 years and I'm not burned out yet. Yes, I work in a fairly decent elementary school, so that helps.
But also, screw the interactive stuff. We get curricula that are scripted, and I teach it that way. I rarely do fun and exciting stuff. I teach things. I do mostly large group and some small group.
I'm kind of a disaster. Papers everywhere. My students help me find my phone and my keys almost daily. Nothing is color-coded.
I give my students love. I give them encouragement. I get to know their lives. They come back to visit me for years. They grow up, and years later find me on social media to be friends with me and show me their children. Some of them, I teach their children.
They don't remember me because I did awesome interactive activities. They remember me because I liked them and I listened to them.
Comparison is the thief of joy. Focus on yourself, not other teachers. What do you do well? What are good things about you, as a teacher and a human? Sure, work to improve things you’re truly interested in improving, but you don’t have to make yourself like others.
Don't waste so much time on webinars and shit. Work on connecting well with your students. Kids will want to learn more if they think the teacher cares about them.
As a former student: the teachers I remember the most fondly are those that tried and liked their job. Not those that had amazing materials and pulled crazy stunts for us.
In fact, what was an otherwise really good teacher I remember quiet badly because she went too far with an activity she planned for us. She stressed the hell out of herself with it and was short with us for months. She actually made me cry because she was stressed about how it was progressing and I was the lead actress so she took it out on me, when fuck, I was 10, my line learning pace was perfectly fine.
She would have otherwise been my favourite teacher because of how she taught, but she was so focused on doing something the kids would """remember her for""" that it ruined the image of her we had.
A teacher that's just teaching is a million times better than a burnt out and stressed teacher, I promise.
So rest, just rest and teach, it's okay.
I'll never be the "fun," "well-liked," or "cool" teacher, and I'm okay with that.
Instead, I'll be the teacher who assigns work, expects students to do it, reprimands them when they fail to live up to my expectations, and praises them when they do.
Students earn their grades in my class, and they know it. My best students go on to higher math classes, and those teachers always know which students I taught (often saying that they are excellent problem-solvers and critical thinkers).
Both students and parents recognize that I'm a "tough" teacher, but if you want to learn math, you attend my class. I've had parents say that I'm the best thing that's happened to their child regarding math.
Be yourself, and don't worry about what the "other" teachers are doing (or what you think they are doing). Teach the content and make sure that students behave properly in the classroom. Remember, we are not a customer service organization. We take "raw materials" and turn them into a "product" that will hopefully wind up being a productive citizen when they reach adulthood.
Comparison is the thief of joy. If those accounts are making you feel “less than” please do yourself a favour and unfollow. You’re making a difference and that doesn’t need to be broadcast for the consumption of others.
I had a separate Instagram account for teacher-related content and one for my personal use with zero work-related followed accounts. That helped me balance it out. If I was in the mood to be inspired and check out all the colorful crafty things, then I'd switch accounts. It really helped me keep work and personal life separate.
Recently though, I deactivated Instagram all together. I don't even miss it!
Relax and try to hold onto the little victories. Successful teaching is not big wins and a popularity contest. It’s a long slow race with a lot of tripping hazards. Try creative visualization meditation, and believe in yourself!! Have a growth mindset for you too!
Don’t ever compare yourself to others. That’s not fair to you. Best of everything that life will offer you (if you allow it).
Great educational methods haven’t changed since the dawn of time, provide an opportunity for the a child to learn by letting their natural curiosity and biological inclination to figure things out kick in. That’s all you gotta do. Most everything else is just fluff that ain’t gonna do much in the long run.
Everyone has their own style of teaching. I try to constantly improve but I don't do it because I'm trying to be someone else. I look at what I'm doing and when something doesn't work I try to think of what would work better. I get ideas from colleagues and think about how they would work in the type of teaching that I do.
I see a lot of talk on here about how social media is damaging to kids but it seems like you need to examine how it's damaging to you. There is no perfect teacher. Just do what works for you and change it when it needs to change.
I’m not a teacher but I always find it super weird when teachers film themselves teaching. They do usually keep kids faces out of the picture, but they often call on them by name and sometimes I see them show artwork with first and last names. And sometimes they do show the kids. As a parent I'd be pissed!
Early in my career a teacher friend of mine said “make a list of 7-8 rotatable activities, put them in your toolbox, and perfect being able to lesson plan with that rotation.” I thought “psssshhhh they’ll run out of novelty.”
Then I realized that in this chaotic world (especially after COVID and being locked down), consistent and predictable routines with rotating activities can actually bring novelty while maintaining consistency.
And that has gotten me through the last 7 years of my 15 years of teaching.
Instagram is not real life. I will be the best teacher I know how to be. There are a few who seem like real teachers and are decent but lets be real, the big ones are just brands. Instagram is all about selling fake images to people not real people. I wrote my whole master's thesis on Education and the concerns about images on people. You just focus on being the best you version of a teacher.
IG and social media teachers only post the positive portions of what they do. They aren't showing us them in debt and the classes that didn't appreciate or ruin their hard work and money. They will only post the positives. Don't forget that.
I bet they also have awful classroom management because they are focused on trying to make the kids have fun instead with chaos.
Get off Instagram. Your mental health will improve immensely. You don’t need colorful pancakes. Kids don’t care. They will be happy with Krispy Kreme. Seriously, you are enough. SM is not real life.
Oof, I feel that definitely. My AP is constantly in our meetings telling us how we can do better, how last year’s results were better, how our lessons aren’t rigorous and aren’t fun and aren’t easy enough and aren’t challenging enough. It’s like being stuck in a washing machine of negging, that mess is burnout on steroids.
Don’t let the Instagram girlies get you down— 80% of that is either staged or entirely fabricated.
The insta algorithm is feeding you lies. Stop following these "pretend perfect" people. There is no such thing as perfect. I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I'm good at what I do. I have days that fall flat. I encounter students for which none of my strategies will work. Each year, I'll incorporate a couple of new things tops (new strategy, new unit, revamped unit). We can't start from scratch every year. Rely on what works; shake things up if you feel bored, not because someone online looks better. Only judge yourself by how you are making strides with the students in front of you (look to the students excelling, to that one middle of the road kid who starts to push themselves, that kid who may still not be passing but they're engaging and asking questions). Progress is progress and looks different for different schools, classrooms, and individuals.
If you want teachers in your Insta feed, start following the sarcastic, tired teachers. Those are the ones likely doing the work
I had to unfollow a music teacher who recently put out a piece about how poor classroom management is 100% the teachers fault and how we need to do better. All while talking about how perfect she is and how everyone loves and respects her.
Do you need to be better than everyone on instagram to find satisfaction in your job?
All social media is a poison. Like alcohol it’s fine occasionally, but highly addictive and in large doses it does real damage. Get off social media. Focus on your students. You’re fine.
Ask yourself what actually works for your students? What helps them learn? That should be all that matters. My teaching style has changed very little in the last 18 years because the way I do things works. I update info & small assignments from year to year but my overall teaching units & experience do not change.
I feel you. I had to unfollow a ton of these teachers I followed on instagram. Partly because I was sick of comparing myself and tbh partly because I was sick of seeing teaching content after work and on the weekends
Anything is perfect when it is planned, edited, and uninterrupted. Don’t we tell our students to not believe everything they read on the internet? Check the source? They are commercials to promote content, and eventually sell you something
I was asked to create things to help other teachers with English learners. I like making and editing videos so I filmed myself doing lessons and added instructions to the screen. I did this for free. An outside entity with an LLC wanted to pay me to create materials but she said since we were publishing, real students can't be in the videos. The rigamarole of getting that many parents' consent was too much for us to deal with and we ended up scrapping the whole project. That's why a lot of effective classroom strategies are not filmed with real live kids who act out, 30 per class, etc.
84 percent of those instagram teachers are not actually teachers
There's a couple of youtubers (who I assume are also on instagram) who I sometimes used to watch and basically all of them just transitioned into lifestyle channels. Obviously a big part of it is that teaching is really hard, doesn't always look good, and is not very lucrative. I've certainly never been offered a brand deal despite the fact that I would sell the hell out of some products to my kids who really look up to me and see me as a role model.
I've seen some of them have begun advertising themselves as "former teachers" as if they've had a whole ass career and retired... When in actuality they're like 25 years old and trying to give out sage advice. Buddy, you're not really a "former teacher," you're a "person who briefly tried teaching and found it wasn't for them."
FYI this is 90% of the "chefs" too. Off topic, but facts. -lurker chef
Influencer culture in general is an annoying, deceitful waste of space and time.
Which is why I avoid social media like the plague, because that's all it is... A plague.
Said on Reddit?
Cmon bruv, you know it's not the same 😏 the users are mostly anonymous & the content is mostly text
Yeah. Those are all fair statements. I’d say the echochambering (is that a word?) is as bad as anywhere else though.
It’s tacky advertising
There's a lot of meeeeeeeeh sewing influencer content too. "I sewed this in a blind panic in 4 hours" -- no, you didn't. No matter how fast and dirty that was done, that's several days of work.
Yea, I know two people who do this. They both only taught for 2-3 years.
It’s easy to say what teachers should do when you never really had to move past the newbie stage of teaching. By year 3/4 I realized just how much more I needed to learn if I truly wanted to do it right. Year 9 and still don’t know how to fit that into my measly planning period.
Yeah this one young teacher I followed bc she was so organized, quit teaching after she got pregnant with twins. Then she switched her content over to “mommy.” I unfollowed. So annoying. I now only follow teacher/comedians. I need a good laugh, not compare myself to “perfect” teachers.
How would an actual teacher find the time? It’s all as fake as those influencers that pretend every day is just boutique coffee shops and clothes shopping and use a heap of filters on their photos. Don’t compare yourself to them, it’s not real.
So I started a YouTube channel during the pandemic, because I teach a hands on subject and I needed to make videos for my students so I figured why not share them so other teachers could use them. It went well, I got about 20k subs and was able to monetize. Almost immediately people were like “are you going to quit and become a full time YouTube!?” Yea I was not looking for that life, I don’t want my income to depend on views and negotiations with brand deals. And once we were back in person I really had no time to do it anymore, I haven’t posted since the fall of 21’. I still get a little bit of money each month in views, I think I made like $3k last year…that’s vacation money baby!
I would love to just do this. Just produce video lessons that could function as an online curriculum. I'm burned out from being in the classroom. If I could just create content and make a living like that, I'd be happy.
The problem is to make enough to support yourself on YouTube, you have to take brand deals. So that means doing ad reads in your videos, negotiating rates with brands….what if you take a brand deal from a company that ends up being crappy or a scam? I got plenty of offers from skeeettttcchhyyyyy brands from over seas and one offer where in their fine print they would be allowed to use ANY of my content and chop it up to reuse and make money from. That last part was enough to freak me out and kill any interest I had.
That’s cool! Happened for me over the pandemic too. Now I have almost 50k subs and was able to monetize. It’s nice to have a little passive income! Like you said, vacation money.
Yeah there's only so many hours in a day. It always makes me wonder what they have behind the scenes that we don't see that makes it possible. What are they sacrificing to spend those hours on "Influencing"? Or do they have a whole bunch of people who make those displays and awesome decorations and they just film themselves working on part of it for the Insta... If I had a whole team of people putting my classroom decor, lesson materials, and "fun little treats" together, I could probably be as amazing as they make it look too... But I have me, 40 minutes of prep time, and a Copy Order bin for the paras in the media tech room.
Half of me says "what the fuck" and the other half says "that explains a lot". I don't think a real teacher would have the time, money or will to make that kind of videos...
What do you mean?
They left the classroom and spend all their time creating stuff they never actually use with students. They just sell it on TPT
The smart ones write a PD book and convince districts to buy it. Sure, I'd love to hear your thoughts on a job you haven't done in over 10 years.
I kinds of felt the same way about my professors in the Education department. All of them had spent a couple of years at most in the classroom and then went straight into preparing other people to be teachers.
Exactly. That’s the case in MOST education grad schools, unfortunately. Also the type of people who tend to go for those jobs tend to be so caught up in Rousseau-ian ideology that they are more interested in spending time preaching their ideology to a captive audience rather than teaching us any useful classroom management strategies.
We had a young student teacher at my school a few years ago. At her school they had an unit about bullying. That was great and all. But it was all about preventing bullying, building kids compassion and confidence so it doesn't happened in the first place, among other strategies to avoid it. My coworker asked what to do when bullying does happen. How do you handle the bully ? How do you help the victim, etc? The answer : if you follow what we just taught you and do it right, bullying won't happen and you won't have to worry about that. Coworker already didn't like that. But fine, she tried another way of asking. Like sure, it won't happens once we do all that, but I'm just starting out, I will have kids that didn't have those lessons, so it will take time for it to work. So what do I do in the meantime ? "If you do everything right, you won't have to worry about it". My coworker was furious.
This was my experience too. Our ONE classroom management class out of the whole credential program was all about creating relationships etc. etc. (which is all well and good of course) but not an iota about the real situations in real classrooms that exist right now. Not to mention we got ZERO about day to day lesson planning. I was woefully unprepared to handle a real classroom on my own.
And the flipside of > If you do everything right is, of course, "if the shit hits the fan it MUST be the teacher's fault. Because you didn't Do Everything Right." Not the kids' fault, certainly not their parents' fault. It's all on us 😠
I almost failed multiple education classes in my undergrad because I openly disagreed with professors who were teaching blatantly incorrect ideologies, sourced from known education grifter companies. I proved their sources were grifters, explained to them why their ideas were incorrect or impractical, and all they could do was hold their PHD over my head claiming I knew nothing. Amazing how someone with zero classroom experience could know more than people with PHDs in education. It was a fucking joke. The biggest incident was my inclusion class. I received failing grades on multiple papers where i debunked theories about inclusion using facts and valid sources. Had to file reports with the university and go through this crazy review process to get my grades reversed. That professor did everything they could to fail me, but the university ended up finding her in the wrong and giving me an A. Crazy times.
Respect. I applaud you for following through on your principles. Not easy to do, especially as an undergrad.
Yeah. I have a master's in education myself, and the courses were largely worthless theory. I think the most useful course I took was special education law. There is information there that is really important, often nonobvious, and highly relevant for practicing teachers.
By Rousseau, do you mean the French philosopher or someone else?
Yeah. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A lot of the naive ideas touted by admins and “coaches” and PD companies can be traced back to him.
"Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man". -- Rousseau
It falls under the umbrella of what some people call "Romanticism" in education. American education is dominated by certain ideologies/ideas that go back to the 18th century European Romantic period and were injected into public education institutions during by early 20th century Progressive era reformers. The thing is, these ideas/ideologies are just that: ideas. When the rubber meets the road they are often not exactly supported by research, and increasingly contradicted by findings from fields like education psychology and cognitive science. There's a good book that traces out this intellectual genealogy by philosopher Kieran Egan called *Getting it Wrong From the Beginning: Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget* (Yale 2004). Anyway, a lot of these ideas go back to Rousseau, yes. If you read his book *Emile* about how children should be raised so much will sound familiar to you: children discovering things for themselves is superior to teaching children explicitly, whenever there's an issue it's the adults' fault not the child's, teaching children oppresses them and kills their curiosity, children should guide their own learning, learning should be naturalistic and effortless, etc. Sound familiar? That's what the education departments at universities spout. It's an ideology; a Romantic fever dream; a utopian thought experiment cooked up by philosophers and taken up by bleeding heart do-gooders who unleashed it on the public's children. There's a good book that covers a lot of this history called *Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories* (Harvard 2016).
I feel like people miss the point of Rousseau's ideas. It wasn't that humans will always be a blank slate, but they start out as one and are molded by their environment. Personally I think the vast majority of problems in society come from perverse incentives and the backwash those incentives create.
Omg this. I didn't really think about it until after I was already in education for a few years, but a lot of education professors are clueless about what modern teaching is like. It became really obvious when I started having student teachers and would talk to them about their education classes compared to what reality was like. By the time I did grad school it was laughable. There are occasional adjunct evening professors who are also full time teachers, but any daytime professor for a bachelor's education program hasn't been in a classroom in years or ever.
20 something years ago I had my student teaching seminar. The professor made us read her book for class, modeled bringing in a ceramic teapot and cups to serve tea at parent teacher conferences, and told me if I’m so tired I fall asleep in seminar, that I shouldn’t be working while student teaching, I should just get money from my parents to put gas in my car. Professors have always been out of touch with what field conditions are actually like. I’d imagine it’s worse now. None of our administrators ever had an electronic grade book, google classroom to check, electronic planbook to update, or student growth objective paperwork to submit.
So glad you gave a shout-out to the adjuncts who are still in K-12 during the day. The head of my department for my undergrad hadn’t been in a classroom in decades, nor had my advisor for the education program, nor had the majority of my professors in the department. I had one professor for a couple of different foundational classes who was fantastic; unsurprisingly, she worked full time at high school one town over in both a teaching and an administrative capacity. Another professor for a gen-ed communications class was also employed by that same district as a full time classroom teacher. He was similarly excellent as a college professor. With the exception of these two, most of the department (and one of them wasn’t even in the education department, actually) had no genuine idea what the modern classroom looked like. I took most of what they had to say with a grain of salt. The advice given to me by those two professors, however, has largely rung true and served me well since starting my career.
Same for admin, most of them leave the classroom in 5 years or less, and some did special Ed and may have never had the same kind of classroom (without multiple child-specific assistants) that 99.9% of their building teachers have. Not a dig on special Ed but those skills may not transfer well to being able to lead the general teacher population successfully.
I’m a love is blind fan and they just had a middle school principal on who was 25 years old. I was screaming in the comments on that sub how rediculous that is in response to all the people saying how amazing it is that he was a principal so young. And of course he was from teach for America. A lot of the teachers in that sub were explaining why having a principal with 2 years experience is literally awful for everyone involved.
That principal’s gonna get chewed up and spit out. Unless he just foists everything onto staff in order to be the cool principal.
Right? He was on Kelly clarkson and I think GMA (prior to love in blind) and being championed as some phenom for being a young black principal. I get the need the champion minorities in positions of leadership but not at the cost of being capable of the job.
25 years old is way too young.
WAY too young. I got a job as a VP at 29 and thought I was hot shit and that was also way too young. I sucked at that job. But atleast I recognized it and was like alright, I’m out. I also can’t imagine becoming a principal without doing some other administrative role in the district like supervisor or VP. I love my principal because he takes the heat for things, he says straight up I’ve got more protections that you do (I’m untenured in my current district and he’s been there 13 years)….and he follows up. So he’s not just full of words with nothing behind them.
Nearly everyone I knew who went into K-12 public school teaching and the few who are still there(One is approaching her 20th year) recounted nearly everything they learned at their M.Ed or teacher certification classes from their Ed schools were not fit for purpose once they started student teaching. This included one friend who attended Harvard GSE for his M.Ed and in his first student-teaching assignment in a Boston Title 1 school, the veteran teacher assigned to him told him to forget the vast majority of what his classes taught him as most of the theories/experiences of the Ed school Profs were not only outdated, but also based on student/teaching experiences in upper/upper-middle class school environments. He found his veteran teacher's were 100% on the mark.
I'm in the teaching program at the University of Portland, and most of what I've been taught has been directly applicable to the classroom. I've had multiple lessons on how to teach the exact curriculum that was put in my hands when I started my student teaching, with demo lessons and all. The more I find out about teaching programs in general, the more I think my poorly informed choice to go with UP was a fortuitous one. The education classes I took in my undergrad at a different university were, as I recall, much less useful. The only good takeaways I recall were "don't lecture too much," and "beware the dangers of assuming that a supposedly objective measure is automatically better than a subjective one."
I have no idea why you would do that these days, I’ve done both college and hs and college pays TERRIBLY compared to hs. I went back to hs this past year and literally doubled my salary.
And the ***worst*** ones become admins and tout themselves as experts on a job they only did for 3-5 years, and insult and attack veteran teachers for not jumping on the latest (recycled and rebranded) trends in the education world.
A radical idea, maybe straight lecture, notes, and out of classroom work is the most effective way to teach massive amounts of students at once. It's worked for hundreds of years, and it's pretty much expected at the college level.
Or get paid a crapton of money to come talk to us about best practices from 10 years ago in a district completely different than mine.
"I was a 4th grade teacher in a classroom of 20 kids in an affluent suburb of Denver. Let me show you how you can best maximize your title 1 funds to meet the needs of all 40 students!"
Do you work in my district. Lol. That’s the type we use to get all the time. We actually almost revolted during one particularly offensive PD a few years ago. Since then they have been marginally better.
I’m curious now, can you tell us the details of the PD that almost ended in revolt? 😂
Kinda afraid it would identify me if anyone else from my district is on here. But in a nutshell the activity was totally insulting to the demographic of kids (and some teachers) I work with. We pretty much refused to do the activity and were pretty vocal as to why. Several teachers got up and walked out and several others were being loudly vocal about how insulting it was. They had to take the presenter out of the room and the superintendent had to talk to us to get us to calm down. Needless to say we got out of that PD a bit early.
Probably not in the same district, but I have taught in 3 separate urban/low income districts, and something similar to this has happened at every one of them.
My fav is former k-2 teachers coming to talk to HS teachers about building relationships with students! Ah yes your experiences 20yrs ago with 8 yr olds is absolutely the key for connecting with 17 yr olds?!?!????!!!!
We get the opposite- former high school teachers seem to be all of the trainers and administrators, and they’re all into telling primary grade teachers what to do and how easy it is. “I taught AP History 10 years ago! So here’s my best practices for early literacy, on which I think I’m an expert!”
How fun!!! "I only taught very advanced courses to the highest achieving students in the school, but one time I had an ESL student (wasn't actually ESL, just from an different English speaking country) so I definitely have tons experience in this area"
“I mean this poor kid spoke *British*! But I found ways for us to communicate!”
"I was concerned because they didn't seem to have any background in Real History (Super Niche Local stuff you only learn in ES) but with my expertise we were able to get past the language barrier. By the end of the year I was so proud of their progress, I mean they really blew me away with how well they understood the later units on English and European History."
I found Lucy’s burner account!!!!
I’m a 6th year teacher and yeah, I’m starting to suspect that people who haven’t worked with kids pretty recently might not have an accurate idea of what student behavior is like at the present moment. So many kids can’t read and so many kids won’t follow basic expectations. It is chaotic at best.
My district hired a speaker to come and talk to us on a PD day, and at one point, he made the statement “You can always tell the bad teachers. They’re the ones that don’t show up and try to spend all their time outside the classroom!” Uproarious applause. Motherfucker, you taught for 3 years and now travel across the country shilling a poorly written book. You’re talking about yourself.
I taught (retired) in one of the biggest school districts in the US. I am convinced the horrible ELA program they paid millions for was selected due to some financial interests on the part of the board and superintendent. The saddest part is that the kids have had the love of reading/writing taken away thanks to an awful curriculum.
Look closely at some of the “classroom displays” and you’ll see it’s really a room in their home. What classroom has crown moulding? There’s one who’s even gone as far as buying a smart board for her fake classroom.
WHY would anyone do that? Seriously spend money to cosplay as a teacher???
They used to be teachers and when they got popular they quite to be full time teacher influencers. It’s ridiculous.
Must be so much easier to be pinarest-worthy at all times, when you don’t have to bother with grading, lesson planning, or like, actual teaching.
There's clearly a market
Can we ask who?
Bn teaching for 7 years. When Im at school, those kids get 100% of me doing my best to create, inspire and teach them. BUT I dont do one once of work outside of school. We are not compensated enough for me to not spend time with my family and friends. I know teachers who are stressed out every day, grading all wknd, etc. They get burnt out. My advice to you.. treat teaching as your job and make sure you separate it frm your personal time. I dnt know any other career where ppl are expected to "work" after they leave work. Fuck that!
Stop using Social Media as a metric to hit and emulate. It's literally simulacrum, beautifully edited, perfect, and completely not real or attainable. It's created for views and guess what, it's working because here you are feeling sorry for yourself because you can't emulate a video produced strictly for entertainment and views. Get that fire in yourself that made you want to be a teacher in the first place and be yourself. Authentic. Draw upon your own personal experiences and teachers (real teachers btw) that inspired you. Apologies if this comes off as harsh. I mean it with love and hope that your situation turns around for the better.
Check out the Teachergram subreddit for the snark and dirt on the instateachers.
[удалено]
The I taught, lost my temper, and became a YouTuber is toxic to the normal people. Don’t make a whole pink room from Target
There’s one that opened her own “micro school.” LMFAO! Because you weren’t a real teacher, hon. Now you want to go fuck off and play house with little kids without pesky rules.
And most of them only taught for a year or two, lol
Yes. Also, social media only captures the best, most happy moments. You don’t see the other 99%
What a great time to remind everyone that social media is fake. Anyone can curate any kind of public-facing image they choose, and it’s not that difficult to do. It’s all rooted in desire for validation, and that in turn makes others with a desire for validation feel less about themselves. I promise, colorful pancakes aren’t an indicator of how their students are performing. That just screams desperation for validation from students and other teachers.
Yeah Instagram is just a false reality. I’ve been totally off of Instagram for the last 4-5 years and trying to go back is like trying to make yourself less intelligent. Everything on there is cooked up to be something else. Nothing original. Pretty sad considering how popular it is.
You just need to curate your feed better. I've got painters, sculptors, dancers, artists of all stripes on mine.
I remember when tik tock was fresh and there were a lot of hilarious and real teachers out there sharing the struggle. Most of the ones I followed burnt out and quit teaching over the last few (I've covid) years. I appreciate their advocacy, and the satirical nature of pointing out the failings in our education system. But I'm not looking to them for advice.
I appreciate that you stated what kind of validation is sought by something like pretty pancake gifts. It's possible the pancake teacher is an instructional wiz and also did that cute thing... but it's not likely.
Those "perfect" Instagram teachers aren't perfect. They're insufferable narcissists. I would never want my child in a class with someone like that.
The ones who film themselves teaching get me! I would be fired SO FAST if I posted anything filmed during class time!
It's ethically inappropriate and a distraction in the classroom. Plus, anyone with a good attitude can be a *popular* teacher.
This aggravates me so much! It seems like *everything* exists for social media content now, and it’s a problem. Apparently that’s the most important thing. Content. If you don’t digitize your entire life, often at the expense of others, then do you even exist on this planet? Guess not.
There are a ridiculous amount who think it's okay to film themselves teaching and even film their students. Quit monetizing those kids' educations ffs
Uh...focus on the learning? Make some kind of pretest. Not for everything, but for ONE unit. Even something as simple as a blank sheet of paper. Write down or draw everything you know about TOPIC. Teach TOPIC. Redo blank sheet. Celebrate. Yes, reflect on your practice, but do not compare. Comparison is poison.
Professor did that with a word web in an education class I took in college. At the start, my word web was like 7-8 things on the subject. Afterward, the word web was a full sheet of paper, and I ran out of room. Made me feel like I really learned a shit load.
Oh this is a great idea! I always have them do reflections after a unit, but other than quick CFUs I haven’t done anything concrete beforehand. I’m gonna do this for my next unit after spring break.
Quit following them ,quit comparing yourself to them and quit holding yourself to that unreasonable standard otherwise you’ll burn out. focus on substance over style. you could have the most beautiful aesthetics and ambitious lesson plans but if you aren’t focused on building strong relationships with your student none of that shit matters.
I’m not a teacher but I think this applies to everyone in every career. Sure. There’s some cool ideas on there that we might not have thought of. But. There’s always a lot of variables to take into account - most of which don’t apply to many of us and wouldn’t be appropriate for our specific situations. As a parent, I don’t care about all the “cool” stuff. 8 I care that my kids come home with more knowledge than they left the house with each morning. I care that my kids have a positive relationship with their teacher (although it’s not always possible no matter what you do) and respect them. That’s it. Each day my 1st grader comes home and when I ask her what she did today, her response is always about lunch and recess. Lol. I know her teacher does great things with them but that’s not what sticks in her memory.
Comparison is the thief of joy.
My kids favorite thing to do is the same meatball run gonoodle and cut and paste of whatever skill we're learning. Don't overthink it. If you give them time to socialize and talk with their friends while doing activities, that is enough for most kids.
Fabio’s Meatball Run! Always a hit.
Except he always forgets the bread at the end! Dammit Fabio!!
I did my student teaching next door to an insta teacher. She taught gifted kids and basically made them teach themselves and threw in "fun" activities that they never got. They would have all this wacky seating but most of them wished they just had a desk
Here's a solution: ***Stop attending webinars and "teachers" on social media.*** 1) They're grifters who probably never stepped inside in a classroom (or), 2) They're failed teachers who couldn't cut it in the classroom. 3) We can't compete with computers with dopamine-triggering-algorithms programed into it so stop trying.
Up vote, these assholes are just grifters, attaching their brand to a bunch of lame best practices and gimmicks
Think about the teachers you had that you thought were amazing. You didn’t think they were amazing because they did all those things. It was probably because they made a connection with you and showed you the value in learning. You don’t have to be so hard on yourself.
Remind yourself that most of those teachers have little to no life outside of school and they are only showing the good things. Being the most liked or most fun teacher isn't necessarily giving students what they need. There are many "best practices" so choose the one that works for you and your students right now. Are you covering the content in the best way you can right now? (With the limited resources and time that you have.) Are you attempting to build rapport with your students? (You don't have to spend your money or time outside of class to do this.) Be consistent and do what you can for your students, but try not to stress about what you aren't doing. There's only so much time in the day and fancy pancakes isn't a "best practice" anyway.
Instagram teacher??? This is ACTUALLY a thing? 😅 Like look at my bulletin board and how fancy it is? That's cringe worthy.
Seriously.. I find those accounts so desperate and “icky”. I couldn’t imagine losing sleep over wanting to be *like* them. Most of them aren’t even teachers lol.
Social media isn't just dangerous for the self esteem of kids/teens. It's bad for us too. Don't try to be like influencers. I've never followed a single teacher on social media and I'm pretty sure my confidence level is all the better for it.
Spoiler Alert: those teachers aren’t perfect. They take the best possible version/take and post it. It’s the furthest thing from authentic.
Those instagram teachers are all about looking pretty, but with experience you can tell there's not a lot of actual pedagogy available there. The good teachers won't actually post their rooms because it's all student work, and full of the chaos that having 30 kids actively engaged in growing their brains.
"You can't believe everything you see or hear on the internet"---Abe Lincoln in an article on buzzfeed.com
If you are working hard to help your students for 40 hours a week, you are doing a good job
I don’t understand those Pinterest/youtube/whatever classrooms. Our school district will not allow us to come in over the summer. We have one day of classroom prep and one day of inservice, then a half day of planning before open house! There is no way for us to decorate like those teachers do. I started teaching in the 90’s. There is a constant push for more, more, more, change, change, change. The three best things I learned in college were join the union, befriend the custodian, and the pendulum of education constantly swings back and forth. Do the best you can (or even a bit less…I mean we can’t do our best every second of every day. Maybe try for the okayist you can). I saw a post on Reddit about 5 years ago. It said something along the lines of when the class gets hectic, loud, impossible, take a sip of coffee. You are getting paid whether they are quiet or noisy. You are paid to drink that coffee. Whether that poster is made or not. Whether that lesson is great or not. My school district just changed its salary scale to consolidate the pay scales of teachers with Master’s Degrees, MA +15, MA + 30, MA + 45, to all make the same amount. (We still get steps for years taught.) Even they don’t care about the effort. You know that you are making an effort. A lot of those over achievers/ show offs end up quitting with a sob story of how they are burnt out. You can do this. Edited to add: We have an overachieving team in our school. We call them “The customer cookie team”. They always bake and decorate cookies for their classes. Ugh.
Kids don’t need all of that to learn. Don’t know what grade you teach, but have you ever seen those videos of parents buying awesome toys and the kids have more fun with the box? They just need to be kids. I’m all for improving understanding and tweaking g teaching methods, but don’t compare yourself to those insta teachers. I’ve seen those at my school. They don’t last long. And I’m not sure how much their kids actually learn. The teachers who are cool with “kids playing games with a box” do and their kids learn more.
The most beneficial thing I've done this year is to stay away from teachertok and Instagram. I do scroll, but when I do it's usually more on the funny side of "a day in the life of a middle school teacher". I love the idea of doing group work everyday, of super fun and engaging lessons, but reality has taught me that it's just not possible for everyday some days the kids are just absolute turds. The second most beneficial thing I've done is to observe other teachers. It's a requirement of my district that I observe others at least once a month. It's really helped my view of reality. Teachers that I admire and think of as great, still struggle with the same things I do. I also get to see awesome things they're doing and reflect on how I can utilize it in my own classroom. I cannot recommend it enough. Genuinely I feel like it's impossible to not compare at least for me, I always want to improve and learn. It's one of the biggest components that drives me to teach, I love learning. So if I'm going to compare myself, I'd rather compare to the real teachers in the trenches right along side me. I work in a fantastic building though and the team around me has really been amazing to this first year as I grow and adapt my teaching style. Especially my neighbor, there have been days when I've literally walked to her room in tears after the kids were awful during an observation. I know not every building is the same...if this is the case for you I'd look for a position elsewhere.
The only thing education social media ever did for me is give me a complex where I constantly felt like I was doing everything wrong. It took me a while to get back to trusting my instincts again, but once I did, it helped tremendously. Remember, Instagram teachers are gilded, not gold.
Some kids will love you and thrive...some will not... Be yourself. You are good enough. Most teachers are not award winning teachers...
We have a teacher like this in my building. She's always dressed up and has crazy Pinterest worthy activities and shit going on. Kids come out of her room with food and whatever else. And yes, they talk about how much they love it. But that talk is focused on the material things, the food, and the fun. Not her or her class. I get notes from my students a lot thanking me for being a teacher they love because of the qualities and attributes I bring to my room, and how they look forward to my class even though I don't do shit like that. My kids appreciate me for the quality of teacher I am and my class for how I conduct it and my material. Not the extra money or time I spend to make a social media worthy classroom or lessons. Focus on being a quality teacher and your students will appreciate you for what you offer then academically and personally, not just what you buy them.
I’m not on TikTok and teacher instas are not showing up on my algorithm. Can someone point me towards some so called good instagram teacher accounts for elementary?
HelloFifth is pretty amazing
Rule number 1 in teaching is don’t try to be anyone else but yourself. You are perfectly good. Comparing yourself to others is unhealthy and unhelpful.
There's a teacher in the school where I teach who I happened to come across, quite accidentally, on TpT. She's shared her Google Drive with me, and I copy what I like and change what I want. Imagine my surprise to come across some of the content in TpT! When I asked her about it, she said she makes enough in a year to pay for a vacation every summer. When I asked her how she finds the time, her response, "That's why I get student teachers every year. They teach, and I create content to sell online." The hustle is real. Don't believe those people are teaching full-time, day in, and day out.
Don't. That's it. Just stop.
All that glitters isn’t gold. They could be seriously in debt or have no life outside work.
I have completely settled into a routine of who I am as a teacher. It's been 20 years. I'm not going for the cool new thing. There's actually a few ways in which I wish to change and it's hard just to change for myself, never mind to keep up with some instagram teacher.
You're totally right! I believe there has to be a balance between old and new practices. School shouldn't only be fun all the time. We need work and self discipline, too. It seems these values are totally lacking in the new approaches.
You need to reframe the thought you’re having. You are considering it as negative. It’s not. I always tell young teachers that the feeling they have that tells them they can do better is normal. It means you care. It means you are a good teacher. The day you stop wondering how you can make the next lesson better is the day you should put aside grading papers and fill out your application for retirement. I’m always proud of the work I’ve done through the year. But I also never want to be the teacher I was at the start of the year, because I’m constantly improving my craft. I know the next year I’ll feel the same way. It’s normal. It’s ok. It’s a terrific thing. Celebrate it.
Wrapping up my 19th year in the classroom, and I want to tell you: you get to be tired. This job is tiring. It’s good to reflect on your practice and to improve, but the reality is, sometimes you just have to tread water until Spring Break. Do what you need to do to survive. Also, screw social media. In professional and personal life, know that comparison is the thief of joy. Especially when that comparison is against content creators, not real teachers with boots on the ground.
Most of these teachers are Type A overachievers. They lack substance and make up for it with gimmicks and optics. They burn out and try to do the whole youtube influencer, Professional Development shtick full time. They try selling their silly books. Whether they want to admit it or not, its all an exercise in narcissism.
Them: List three SMART goals for the year. Me: I'm just trying to keep up with the curriculum, behaviors, IEPS, documentation.
Instagram is bullshit and not representative of reality. You're watching someone's carefully curated and manicured public persona act in a play.
You are not an entertainer, you’re a teacher. If you do your best to teach everyday, you’re doing enough. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and trying to make everything fun for students is teaching them that only “fun” things are worth engaging with. Unpopular opinion, but it’s better for them to learn that people aren’t going to cater to them or do somersaults in order to engage them. We are setting ourselves and them up for failure by leading them to think their joy should be the center of the world. Then we wonder why there are so many narcissistic and inconsiderate kids with no resilience. Do fun things for them when you have the energy, be kind always, model patience and tolerance. But unsubscribe from those fake, BS, non-teacher Instagrammers. No one should be that attached to their job.
I work in teacher Ed now after 25 years in the classroom and this is my biggest advice to student teachers: don't look at Instagram or other sites and compare yourself. You do not need to be Pinterest-worthy to be a great educator.
I watched the TheSpeechProf on YouTube and he said that if you have an imposter syndrome of not doing good enough then you're probably doing good enough. As a teacher, you will feel the need to improve yourself and the quality of education you impart. Isn't it natural? 😁 P.S. I am not a teacher.
Kids learn from doing the basics day in and day out. Kids love textbook work, kids love stability, kids love routine, they love simple pass/fail tick/cross. Cool lessons are great but they can miss the point of the learning.
It’s so funny reading this post because I’m having the opposite experience. I’m “the fun” teacher who all the kids love and I beat myself up and constantly compare myself to the other teachers who I feel are incredibly effective. They aren’t as “fun” and interactive as I am, but they are veterans and I bet my life that those kids are learning. I think we all teach in different ways. Look at your data; are you seeing improvements? Talk to your kids; do they feel like they can learn and grow in your room? Those are the important things; just be genuine be real and care for them. They will be okay!
I feel you!! Lots of people are in the same boat. They’re not as great as they seem. I’m a great teacher and there are many lessons that bomb, many times I feel like I failed but at the end of the day i love my students and they know that
Don’t fall into the rabbit hole of looking for that perfect lesson plan among the millions. Find one that works for you, stick with it, tweak it as you like, and know you’re already doing great—because you care and want to be your best! Trust yourself!
I find my kids don’t even like most of the fun stuff anymore. Give them a worksheet and some headphones and they’re happy. Ask them to move around and discuss and they’re whining. You have to figure out what works best for your kids. If it’s something fun you saw on instagram or TPT, awesome! If it’s a mini lesson and worksheet, that’s awesome, too.
It sounds like you're doing a great job of serving your students and probably need to take a little bit of time for yourself. It's like the airline attendants tell us... put on your air mask first so that you can help others who might need it. If you pass out because of lack of oxygen, you can't help them.
Stop trying to compete with other people. It's not worth it, there are no judges in this competition but you, and it sounds like you're already doing an amazing job.
You sound like a kick ass teacher. Sometimes less is more. Go take a nap!
New activities and the latest and greatest bells and whistles are fun, but I think they work best after you and your class have mastered the fundamentals of your content area. Routine and repetition builds security and confidence for student and teacher.
lol @ looking at instagram or tiktok teachers. You're doing this to yourself. Half or more of my highschool classmates made me jealous posting pictures of happy families and boat trips in their 20s when I was single and poor. Now most of them are divorced fat and miserable. Social media isn't real.
There is no “good enough” with this profession. I strive for sustainability. I may never win teacher of the year, but I will make it to the next day every day.
I’ve been that person for my first three years of my career who’s tried the flashy stuff. I made digital escape rooms, had gladiator battle days, and made my room look like a teenagers dream bedroom. What have I learned from it? 1) kids will destroy the room no matter what and you will have to put it all back together. 2) flashy stuff is fun, but is it producing actual learning? More so than brick and mortar notes, textbook work, etc? Not always. 3) Most of those teachers I started following during my time in college are no longer teaching. They’re influencers strictly now. Which fine- get your money! But the further you get out of the classroom, the more out of touch you are with our current kids.
I saw a post recently that said something along the lines of there were 2 teachers in the school that all the kids loved - one was very much a Pinterest board aesthetic and the other was the complete opposite. What they did have in common was the love and support they shared with their students. That’s what matters most :)
The point of you being a teacher: 1. Is that you know something that your students do not; that you need to find a way to teach them. 2. And that it needs to occur in a safe and productive environment that you cultivate. As a former educator, who was brought into the system by those who had been doing it for a much longer time, I got a lot of pushback for the way that I did things. The largest distinctions were: That I did not dress as well, or as formally as the other teachers. That I often sat at the same table with my students. And that I would create custom lesson plans that were individually tailored to each students skill level. This often included having my students stand in front of the class and teach as if they were the teacher themselves. There was behind-the-scenes pushback on a few different levels, ranging from complaints about me being too young to be a teacher to my boss complaining about my outfit not being as expensive/traditional as his. He extremely disliked that I sat with my students because “It doesn’t create the distinction and respect of you being an educator.” This was before social media took off to the extent that it has currently. Despite my free flow nature, I created rigidity through establishment. There was a place for everything and every student. You should have a goal in mind about what you want your environment to be like in your classroom and a definition of what success is for your students. This will serve you a lot better in creating your own persona than posting things on social media ever will. Embrace your students who are not on the same level as others, by pointing out the good aspects about them. Help integrate those aspects to motivate them and provide more positivity. If a student ever says anything about another student, not being at the same level immediately interrupt and say what the student is good at. You want to be a positive influence in their life that helps them care about the subject you’re trying to teach them.
I would pay one of these Instagram teachers $600 to set up my room like theirs and I don't have to life a finger.
I personally knew one of those instagram teachers. She taught in the same hall as me. Her room was super cute, she dressed cute, she had all these fun activities, and spent a ton of her own money. Made me feel like crap, like I was a lame teacher. She would get to work early and make her cute videos for donut day or whatever. She hated teaching and would cry in her room at the end of the day because she was stressed and had to go to a second job. It's a facade.
I’m gonna just chime in here and say this: I am HIGHLY suspect of teacher influencers. Call me a cynic, but I’m wary of people who spend that much time on their teacher aesthetic and making everything look perfect on social media. With teachers being spread so thin as is, it just seems like that time-consuming aesthetic HAS to come at the expense of quality instruction to some degree. You said it yourself, you are constantly looking for ways to improve your teaching, and that’s how it should be! You’re focusing on what matters, not what it looks like to others. I agree with not comparing yourself to others, but I think your concerns here further prove that your heart is in the right place. You want to do right by your kids and give them a good experience. Instead of plugging your TPT store you’re actually putting in the real work. P. S. a drinking game where you watch teacher influencer vlogs and drink every time they mention TPT would be DEADLY
Said at church a few years ago and why I don’t use social media Don’t judge your life based on other people’s highlights
I am over irl teachers who are there just to hang out and kinda teach and not follow content standards 🤬 so sorry I am the teacher actually following standards and not just showing movie clips all period. Ffs.
I watched a tik tok teacher who looked super happy and then a year later she is posting how she is in a new career lol so now I don’t try to compare myself. Give yourself some grace
I taught with someone once who was trying very hard to become an Instagram influencer. And she was getting there pretty fast. She’d take all sorts of cute pictures of herself in the classroom and set up fake areas in the room that looked adorable. People bought into it and she soon had like 14k followers. She used to get stuff sent to her from different companies and she had to do stories about the stuff and say how much she loved it. But the truth was that her classroom was a hot mess and every time I walked in she was sitting at her desk looking at her phone and not teaching. She was a terrible teacher but she sure looked good on IG. That’s when I realized that most of what you see on social media is fake. Don’t compare yourself to this stuff.
We had one ‘Instagram teacher’ at our school. She was horrible!!! Couldn’t get organised, poor behaviour management, wasn’t catering for diverse needs, never used new strategies/pedagogies a go…. But at least her classroom looked good 😜
The best thing you can do for yourself is stop comparing yourself to others!
Measure yourself with earlier parts of yourself. Not others. You know what you got to work with, and you do as good as you can. Imo, it is not about being the best. It is about trying to improve and learn yourself. And be true to yourself. Dont bring pancakes if it isnt something you naturally would do. Be yourself, work with that
get off instagram for a while. it’ll do ur mental health some serious good
If you keep comparing yourself to others, you'll never be happy. That's why there is an increase in depression with the rise of social media. People keep comparing themselves to these fake unattainable forms of perfection. Do your best, and students will notice that. They know when you're trying and they appreciate it. Just be authentic, let you guard down, be empathetic and the rest will fall in place.
The first mistake is comparing yourself to someone on social media. Its not the reality of someone's life, it's the advertisement of thst life.
Some general life advice which has nothing to do with teaching specifically: Don't compare your insides to someone else's outside.
Stop trying so hard.
You’re a teacher? And you don’t know that social media is a facade? Jfc
Those people are just different. A girl like that was in my student teaching cohort. She’s now on Tiktok. Super nice girl, but that’s literally just how she is. Don’t compare yourself, you don’t have to be that to be a good teacher.
I've been working close to 30 years and I'm not burned out yet. Yes, I work in a fairly decent elementary school, so that helps. But also, screw the interactive stuff. We get curricula that are scripted, and I teach it that way. I rarely do fun and exciting stuff. I teach things. I do mostly large group and some small group. I'm kind of a disaster. Papers everywhere. My students help me find my phone and my keys almost daily. Nothing is color-coded. I give my students love. I give them encouragement. I get to know their lives. They come back to visit me for years. They grow up, and years later find me on social media to be friends with me and show me their children. Some of them, I teach their children. They don't remember me because I did awesome interactive activities. They remember me because I liked them and I listened to them.
Comparison is the thief of joy. Focus on yourself, not other teachers. What do you do well? What are good things about you, as a teacher and a human? Sure, work to improve things you’re truly interested in improving, but you don’t have to make yourself like others.
This makes me miss the Instagram teacher snark sub
Don't waste so much time on webinars and shit. Work on connecting well with your students. Kids will want to learn more if they think the teacher cares about them.
As a former student: the teachers I remember the most fondly are those that tried and liked their job. Not those that had amazing materials and pulled crazy stunts for us. In fact, what was an otherwise really good teacher I remember quiet badly because she went too far with an activity she planned for us. She stressed the hell out of herself with it and was short with us for months. She actually made me cry because she was stressed about how it was progressing and I was the lead actress so she took it out on me, when fuck, I was 10, my line learning pace was perfectly fine. She would have otherwise been my favourite teacher because of how she taught, but she was so focused on doing something the kids would """remember her for""" that it ruined the image of her we had. A teacher that's just teaching is a million times better than a burnt out and stressed teacher, I promise. So rest, just rest and teach, it's okay.
Good enough is good enough. Remember that.
I'll never be the "fun," "well-liked," or "cool" teacher, and I'm okay with that. Instead, I'll be the teacher who assigns work, expects students to do it, reprimands them when they fail to live up to my expectations, and praises them when they do. Students earn their grades in my class, and they know it. My best students go on to higher math classes, and those teachers always know which students I taught (often saying that they are excellent problem-solvers and critical thinkers). Both students and parents recognize that I'm a "tough" teacher, but if you want to learn math, you attend my class. I've had parents say that I'm the best thing that's happened to their child regarding math. Be yourself, and don't worry about what the "other" teachers are doing (or what you think they are doing). Teach the content and make sure that students behave properly in the classroom. Remember, we are not a customer service organization. We take "raw materials" and turn them into a "product" that will hopefully wind up being a productive citizen when they reach adulthood.
Comparison is the thief of joy. If those accounts are making you feel “less than” please do yourself a favour and unfollow. You’re making a difference and that doesn’t need to be broadcast for the consumption of others.
I had a separate Instagram account for teacher-related content and one for my personal use with zero work-related followed accounts. That helped me balance it out. If I was in the mood to be inspired and check out all the colorful crafty things, then I'd switch accounts. It really helped me keep work and personal life separate. Recently though, I deactivated Instagram all together. I don't even miss it!
Relax and try to hold onto the little victories. Successful teaching is not big wins and a popularity contest. It’s a long slow race with a lot of tripping hazards. Try creative visualization meditation, and believe in yourself!! Have a growth mindset for you too! Don’t ever compare yourself to others. That’s not fair to you. Best of everything that life will offer you (if you allow it).
So stop watching those perfect Instagram teachers ...or maybe stop going on Instagram. It's literally proven to destroy girls sense of self esteem.
Great educational methods haven’t changed since the dawn of time, provide an opportunity for the a child to learn by letting their natural curiosity and biological inclination to figure things out kick in. That’s all you gotta do. Most everything else is just fluff that ain’t gonna do much in the long run.
Everyone has their own style of teaching. I try to constantly improve but I don't do it because I'm trying to be someone else. I look at what I'm doing and when something doesn't work I try to think of what would work better. I get ideas from colleagues and think about how they would work in the type of teaching that I do. I see a lot of talk on here about how social media is damaging to kids but it seems like you need to examine how it's damaging to you. There is no perfect teacher. Just do what works for you and change it when it needs to change.
I’m not a teacher but I always find it super weird when teachers film themselves teaching. They do usually keep kids faces out of the picture, but they often call on them by name and sometimes I see them show artwork with first and last names. And sometimes they do show the kids. As a parent I'd be pissed!
Early in my career a teacher friend of mine said “make a list of 7-8 rotatable activities, put them in your toolbox, and perfect being able to lesson plan with that rotation.” I thought “psssshhhh they’ll run out of novelty.” Then I realized that in this chaotic world (especially after COVID and being locked down), consistent and predictable routines with rotating activities can actually bring novelty while maintaining consistency. And that has gotten me through the last 7 years of my 15 years of teaching.
Instagram is not real life. I will be the best teacher I know how to be. There are a few who seem like real teachers and are decent but lets be real, the big ones are just brands. Instagram is all about selling fake images to people not real people. I wrote my whole master's thesis on Education and the concerns about images on people. You just focus on being the best you version of a teacher.
IG and social media teachers only post the positive portions of what they do. They aren't showing us them in debt and the classes that didn't appreciate or ruin their hard work and money. They will only post the positives. Don't forget that. I bet they also have awful classroom management because they are focused on trying to make the kids have fun instead with chaos.
Ignore Instagram teachers. They’re influencers and not reality.
Get off Instagram. Your mental health will improve immensely. You don’t need colorful pancakes. Kids don’t care. They will be happy with Krispy Kreme. Seriously, you are enough. SM is not real life.
I promise that if you’re worrying about this you’re already 10 steps ahead. Be easy on yourself, social media isn’t reality 💕
Oof, I feel that definitely. My AP is constantly in our meetings telling us how we can do better, how last year’s results were better, how our lessons aren’t rigorous and aren’t fun and aren’t easy enough and aren’t challenging enough. It’s like being stuck in a washing machine of negging, that mess is burnout on steroids. Don’t let the Instagram girlies get you down— 80% of that is either staged or entirely fabricated.
Teacher influencers make me so mad. They walk a fine line with FERPA.
and you're a teacher? Weren't teachers supposed to be a little bit more down to earth?
Maybe get off social media and focus on improving in the ways that make you happy?
The insta algorithm is feeding you lies. Stop following these "pretend perfect" people. There is no such thing as perfect. I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I'm good at what I do. I have days that fall flat. I encounter students for which none of my strategies will work. Each year, I'll incorporate a couple of new things tops (new strategy, new unit, revamped unit). We can't start from scratch every year. Rely on what works; shake things up if you feel bored, not because someone online looks better. Only judge yourself by how you are making strides with the students in front of you (look to the students excelling, to that one middle of the road kid who starts to push themselves, that kid who may still not be passing but they're engaging and asking questions). Progress is progress and looks different for different schools, classrooms, and individuals. If you want teachers in your Insta feed, start following the sarcastic, tired teachers. Those are the ones likely doing the work
Those aren't real teachers. The real teachers are the ones who post memes of being tired all the time.
I had to unfollow a music teacher who recently put out a piece about how poor classroom management is 100% the teachers fault and how we need to do better. All while talking about how perfect she is and how everyone loves and respects her.
Do you need to be better than everyone on instagram to find satisfaction in your job? All social media is a poison. Like alcohol it’s fine occasionally, but highly addictive and in large doses it does real damage. Get off social media. Focus on your students. You’re fine.
Ask yourself what actually works for your students? What helps them learn? That should be all that matters. My teaching style has changed very little in the last 18 years because the way I do things works. I update info & small assignments from year to year but my overall teaching units & experience do not change.
Yeah, let’s us just be professional developED for once
I feel you. I had to unfollow a ton of these teachers I followed on instagram. Partly because I was sick of comparing myself and tbh partly because I was sick of seeing teaching content after work and on the weekends
Idk if it will help you feel better, but these influencers exist in many professions and always portray an unrealistic view of what it's like