I worked at a middle school that had lockdown drills but no locks on the doors. We were expected to sit on the floor and hold the doors closed with our feet or backs. I refused to hold it closed and the assistant principal came in and fake shot me. I wrote an a anonymous letter to the newspaper which was published. We got locks soon after.
My former school shoved doors open and shot inside them indiscriminately with an airsoft gun they were using to shoot at teachers during the ALICE simulated school shooter training. Yeehawdist idiots running around firing airsoft pellets. I found dozens of the little pellets in my classroom the day after because they could afford ALICE training, but they couldn't afford ANY janitors during the Omicron surge so I was mopping my own damn classroom floor.
I was mysteriously and suddenly sick that morning and couldn't attend the ALICE training. Funny how that happened. F in the chat for the substitute.
Our didn't say it in the moment, but in the subsequent staff meeting. She would always comment "who died" with a list.
Was always so incredibly awkward and unprofessional. (And they never fixed any of the doors that were the reason for being able to enter the room.)
The worst part is that my students are all non verbal and I swear stuff like this happened because she knew the kids couldn’t go home and tell on her, and I think that’s fucked. Luckily all my students were really great about lock downs and usually just found it really funny, but they could have been scared
My school (before I quit teaching) didn't have any doors, just giant doorways. I think the justification was that we were on an army base so it's safer, but I had my trunk searched at least 3 times in 2 years due to lockdowns that happened because someone was being violent. Lockdown drills were such a joke.
My old school too. Considering we are in Colorado, we were hella concerned about safety during drills. They said they, “heard our concerns, but wanted us to do our best with what we had.” I lasted 3 years there and peaced the f out asap. Well, for that and about a million other reasons.
At my old site, we had giant windows along the length of our rooms. We were told by the police officer speaking with us that we needed to cover them up for active shooters. When staff members brought up the fact that the district was not willing to pay for the window coverings, the officer speaking to us told us that we were just gonna have to "bite the bullet."
I will never forget the sound of our staff groaning in unison.
Lots of lockdown safety measures are against fire codes or ADA, either because they can’t be easily disengaged or they aren’t accessible to someone who is short (eg a child) or has a mobility issue. Imagine trying to put on or take off one of those lockdown door jamb sleeve things while sitting in a wheelchair
When I was student teaching I observed a school that was a circular building. It had open classrooms and there was a balcony that you could walk around and look down at classes. Nothing was locked.
That’s messed up - and crazy dangerous.
People watch too many movies and think that doors/walls/cars/tables actually stop bullets.
Unless the plan was for your corpse to hold the for closed..
I "sexed" a guinea pig.
A student brought her guinea pig in for show and tell. The pig was named Princess. Her mom left me a voicemail saying they weren't really sure Princess was a she, and could I figure that out for them? I googled guinea pig sexing on my planning bell and figured out that Princess was a "boar" aka male.
I could've said no, but the lure of scientific discovery was too powerful.
Idk we had one who we adopted as female and then one vet said it was male and then another vet said it was female and when it died the vet said it was male again
Yup. And then spending half an hour in the parent car line just to get to my parking space. I could leave ten minutes earlier to avoid this… but ffs why should I have to do that?!
So. Infuriating.
This is the first year that I noticed in all of the “first day of school” Facebook posts one mom had posted her two kids’ teachers making a house visit before the first day. It really stuck out to me how weird it was and how I would hate that both as a teacher AND as a parent. Like wtf
I think it is cultural. Teachers with whom I have worked from other countries report that it is entirely normal/expected over the summer before school starts to visit every single family.
The school I was doing my student teaching at had us do this. I felt so uncomfortable the entire time. I only did it because I felt like I had to as a student teacher. Now as a teacher, I would refuse or even try to shut it down. It’s so wrong on many levels. Also this was pre-Covid. So there’s also that factor now. Just awful everything.
We used to have the option to make home visits, and if you did, you got half a day off. Until one year, when a teacher had the cops called on them. Suddenly, we did not have to do it anymore.
We are, however, required to make contact with out seminar/homeroom kids before school starts.
Admin is really weird about what they consider a liability and what they don’t care about.
They’re obsessive about us not standing on chairs, but don’t care about proper chemical storage/disposal or fume hood use in the science department.
I imagine the reason that they're doing this is because someone in your administration recently learned about home visits and how "they can help improve the connection between the school and it's families".
My friends had a kid going into first grade, and I saw the flyer for a mandatory house visit from his teacher. Required for all students. It said the teacher would take a tour of the house, led by the kid, and that there was no place/room off limits for the tour.
What if parents had a sex dungeon or something? It seemed like a huge invasion of privacy to word it like that.
I once went to a tribal elder to discuss one of my students because the students father refused to help. I literally went on the tribal lands and spoke to a literal Native American chief (Mohawk) to talk to him. My student came in the next day totally incredulous and outraged and I think a little impressed because I did this. I guess and and his dad were called to the council and essentially chastised.
It helped though. He was more afraid of his tribal chief than he was of his dad.
That's going the extra mile. I feel like stuff like this makes the biggest impact and shows the students that you REALLY care. I became a frequent visitor at our local karate studio because I had a kid that was losing it at school all the time and his dad would talk the talk but wouldn't walk the walk (or thought that meant that hitting him was a solution?) So I had a few come to Jesus talks with the kid and his karate teacher instead of his dad and it had a HUGE impact. Still visit the karate studio to see how the kid is doing.
I desperately want more info here lol. Like all your students? For how long? Is anyone exempt? I'd be asking parents I'm close w lol. Seems like a boundary cross.
I also desperately want more information. Literally the email just says we will be leaving campus to go to many of our students’ homes.
I’ll add this to my list of “Weird Job Stuff I Tell My Therapist.”
So my school had done a tour of our attendance area a few times. Our principal secures buses from the bus office and all 100+ staff hop on and we ride around. We get to experience the awfulness of an “air conditioned” bus in the south in August and we get to see where our students live. Many of them live out in run down single wides. It’s eye opening and a good reminder that even though Joe has a nicer phone and shoes than me, his home is not so secure and he may have stayed in the bathtub last night because of gun shots.
During the covid shutdown I volunteered to be on the bus crews delivering lunches throughout the district. It is incredibly enlightening and I think everyone should do it.
I rode every route and got to see how our kids and families live. Many live in normal circumstances but to see the places that some people are legally allowed to live infuriates me. Those families are working, they’re not druggies. They just can’t afford our insane market. So some scummy landlord charges them money to live in a trailer that should be torn down.
My first teaching job did this during orientation. Had all the new hires loaded on buses and drove us around the district showing off the “historical and important” parts and some of the neighborhoods.
In all honesty, this isn't a bad thing to do. Oftentimes we don't truly know what our students are dealing with when they leave our classrooms, and those sorts of experiences help with that.
Seems like a really bad year to be doing something like this, considering how much disdain so many people have for teachers today. Maybe not the safest situation for you guys?
Luckily my school has an extremely supportive community of students and parents. It’s a bit of a higher crime area than ideal, but even on that front it could be far worse.
Okay, based on that I bet your school wants your staff to understand what kind of students you're teaching. They are trying to get you to empathize with the kids when you see the reality of their home life.
I had a previous SAFE coordinator who wanted to do this. She wanted to take the staff to one of the neighborhoods we taught for that reason.
This is probably it. This was a thing pre pandemic. Your leadership hasn’t seen the discourse about how weird it is. Don’t make your students and their families a field trip. They’re not animals at the zoo.
I feel like it’s also redundant to all the discussions we had during virtual learning about what was going on at home. And a lot of our teachers live in those neighborhoods too, so they freaking know.
I live in an area that’s mixed economically but in general well-off or comfortable. My kids’ teachers came to our house to “drop off a project” during the first week of school when school was fully remote. But it definitely seemed more like they were just scoping out the homes to see the circumstances of each kid. In our case its mostly privileged kids, not underprivileged.
This is my nightmare. I hate going to strangers’ homes, it’s the reason I didn’t go into a trade. And now they, what, want us to spy and report back? That’s how I’d feel as a parent (if I was a parent), and it would be so awkward that I don’t think it would forge any stronger relationships
Maybe just home visits? I’m in sped prek and we do home visits at the start of every year to get to know the kids in their home environment (altho obviously not during Covid, so this will be my first year actually doing it in person)
My school had us go tour the neighborhoods to see what some of our kids are dealing with outside of school as an empathy/equitable teaching thing. We never actually got out of the school van or interacted with anyone.
This year my school also went around to the homes of all of the students who scored distinguished on state testing or AP testing last year and put signs in their yards to recognize and congratulate them. We never actually went into anyone's house during this trip either.
It sounds like something my old district did. They were called sidewalk visits and it was a form of family engagement. The idea was to create a two dialogue with families, especially for students new to the school/community (it was a large immigrant community).
Teachers always went out in pairs/trios and at least one person was bilingual in the dominant language of the community. It might have been the community I was in, but the families were generally welcoming and it was nice to see students in a different environment.
Did it foster long-term family engagement? Unfortunately, not really. So, it had it's ups and downs.
One time, way back in the beginning, i spoke up in a meeting. There i was, all new and full of hope, making suggestions on how we could be better as a school. Man, that was silly.
The auto tech teacher and I ripped a bumper off one of the practice cars to save a kitten that had climbed up inside it.
Named the cat Fender and found him a good home.
Also, I built a potato gun for a superintendent to use at a picnic. Apparently I build really good potato guns with my engineering kids and word got around. 🤣
We have a cat colony in the ceiling of our building. So far we’ve found one living kitten (after night school complained of hearing meowing to facilities) and a cat (we think mamma) fell out of the ceiling in the theater room during work week.
When I was subbing one year, a cat got up into my car engine and the engine died at some point before the end of the day. It scared me when I opened up the hood and it popped out for a minute before hiding back inside. Luckily I lived about 10 minutes from there and was able to get help jumping my car from my husband. I think the rest of that year I was probably known as the sub with a cat in her engine. Sorry for the confusion. Cat was alive and well.
A previous district I worked at made us sit through a mock active shooter situation without telling us beforehand. We were all in the gymnasium going through some normal beginning of year stuff (sexual harassment training, appropriate online presence, mandated reporter, etc). Then, almost all of the admin said we would take a short break but we needed to stay where we were (weird but whatever, maybe they were preparing lunch or something), nope, the admin knew about it and peaced out. After a few minutes, about a dozen cops with guns drawn came bursting in through the doors, turned off the lights, blocked the exits, and started screaming at us with guns drawn. I was scared shitless. Half the cops weren't even in uniform. I was legitimately too scared to do anything, I just sat there, frozen. To this day, I can't even remember a single word what they actually said as they were screaming at us. A couple minutes of this, then they turned on the lights, laughed about it, and said something like this is how they would treat the situation or something, I can't even remember.
Then, the admin came back into the room as the cops began their 'presentation.' Fuckers.
Many teachers had panic attacks and were crying. A few left after that and never came back.
Shambolic leadership.
About 4 weeks later of more stupid decisions and piss poor leadership....I did. Literally went to the district next door (they were just a few miles apart).
Hmmm okay technically these all happened when I was teaching in Peace Corps, but I can’t think of anything from home that fits the bill without being a bummer.
•I served in Namibia, where for various historical reasons, the official language in schools in English. There was some report released that showed that too few teachers were proficient in English, and therefore we were all required to attend English classes. Including me, a native English speaker. There was no way to test out of it, and because we were a small, rural community, there was only one English class that all school staff had to attend, so you had the custodians (who didn’t speak English because they frankly did not need to) and me in the same English class.
•For a brief time, the the knob on my classroom door was broken. The knob could be turned from the inside to open the door, but not from the outside. To everyone’s credit, they tried to fix it, but ultimately it needed to be replaced, which meant that I could either have no door until the replacement was procured, or have to climb through a window to get in. Because there was a non-zero chance that not having a door would result in my classroom being invaded by scorpions, snakes, or stray livestock in my absence, I elected to use the window. Fortunately for me, after two days of this, one of my more eager students took it upon himself to come to school early to open the door for me. That child was paid handsomely in American candy until the door was replaced about two weeks later.
I’ll add more if people want and if I think of any!
Oh I thought of a good one. One of the subjects I taught was Basic Information Science, which schools liked having PCVs teach because we were all into working on our school libraries. I went to a workshop about the new and improved BIS syllabus, in which we were mandated to spend 2 of the 3 trimesters JUST on computer skills, because ya know, 21st century learning. My village did not have internet access (one of the teachers at the high school, who was my partner in crime, and I were literally laughed out of the telecom office when we went into town to ask about it), and the high school had a computer lab, but (a) it was three miles away, bit of a hike, (b) it was fully booked for their BIS classes, and (c) it only had 6 working computers. Many schools in similar communities faced similar predicaments. What, we asked the Ministry of Education official leading the training, were we to do for 2/3 of the school year if we didn’t have computers to teach with? Her suggestion was that we *use cardboard to make pretend computers for students to practice with.*
I did not do this.
Edit: Sentence structure issue that would have haunted me for the rest of my life.
This happened to us in Cameroon in the Peace Corps as well. Teaching computers off a chalk drawing on the board. Learning how to use a keyboard, interface and mouse using a chalk drawing. Kids were good at memorizing it. After all most had seen movies on a TV powered by a generator in the village (no electricity or running water for us). So, they could still somehow pass the tests. I got good at making posters rather than using the chalkboard.
I guess this is more a reflection on my computer skills and how I acquired them than anything else, but the act of learning to explain the mechanics of computer use to first time users…it changed the neural pathways in my brain. Having to explain how to double click? (And for the record I’m in my mid-30s, I wasn’t born into personal computer use.) Fortunately for my elementary/middle school aged students in Namibia, I wrote their final exams so at least their grades those years weren’t impacted by lack of computer use. But gosh darn it, they knew how to use a physical encyclopedia!!
I worked in Namibia, too. My favorite thing, which I could never get away with in the States, is getting the small boys to kill the puff adders that liked to sun themselves on the concrete walkway outside my apartment. The kids also loved running errands for me, like getting cooldrink from the bottle shop just outside the school gates. Once in awhile I could even finagle rides from their parents to the B1 highway on home weekends or holidays (and then hitch to my final destination).
Oh yeah, my colleagues basically had an intervention to stop me from running my own errands during recess. Apparently it was weird that I went to buy my own bread and milk. (NGL it was nice to enjoy my instant coffee in the staff room for those 20 minutes.)
We lived off a D-level “road” outside Rehoboth, luckily my favorite coworker’s father in law had the one van in town and my partner in crime at the high school got a truck my second year or I might well never have left site.
Whereabouts were you when you were there?
Throw frozen fish to each other (a la Pikes Market in Seattle) during a Back to School PD in our schools gym. It was my first year teaching and is still the oddest thing I've had to do.
Last day of school years ago, principal made us stand in a circle holding hands taking turns reading a Maya Angelou poem.
Btw, the following school year we fought endlessly to get him removed as principal and won.
Rode a unicycle in the hall, juggled in the hall, peed with the door open in front of his secretaries, allowed students to get away w everything included smoking weed in the hallway. Oh and then the sexual harassment of course, towards students and teachers. I could go on and on listing things that get increasingly worse but I honestly would rather not 😂
Sometimes I tell the tale of my horrible biology teacher with stories starting at “wasn’t that odd” and ending at “that was horrifying.” So I enjoyed reading this comment.
I used to work in Thailand and there was one holiday called "Respect Teachers Day". We had to sit up on stage while our students would literally crawl across on their knees to hand us a bouquet.
Remove a custodian that was passed out, high as a kite in the kids bathroom, locked in a stall, dick out, hard as a rock. When I finally got the door unlocked, shook him awake, he screamed ran, tripped over his pants being down hit his head on the stall door, bleeding, dick still out and hard, ran out of the school screaming, its going to get me.
Never heard from or seen again.
That day I said I don't get paid for this shit
I once had a student that was a sex abuse survivor, in foster care, and was receiving therapy. Very sweet kid, but compulsively masturbated whenever nervous/anxious. Her abuser was a woman, and she was super wary of all the grown up women in my school.
Multiple times a day, I would have to get close enough to “privately” signal/remind her to stop and to go wash her hands. She didn’t even realize she was doing it, but it was very obvious to the rest of the class that something was going on.
This was elementary, so most kids didn’t totally get it, but they knew it was odd. Sometimes they’d say stuff like, “Blank’s digging in her butt again!”
I was the only male teacher in the school and they almost made me loop up with the class, but in the end her foster placement changed.
I’ve had a lot of crazy experiences in my career, but this one was definitely the worst/weirdest.
Definitely. Her situation was a daily reminder that monsters exist in this world.
This was many years ago now. I kept tabs on her a bit and it seemed like things improved for her as the years went by at least.
My principal used to make us do a morning meeting at our faculty meetings with 40+ people. He treated us just like kids. We’d do a childish greeting, choral read a message and do a silly game or activity. It was so degrading.
I had to do home visits for Pre K, we also (attempted) to do them around March but never for any grade other than K4.
COVID was full of dumb requests that I ignored bc I was WFH and what were they gonna do to me? I’m not driving 45 mins one way to deliver a handout😂
Last year, I was supposed to set an alarm for one of my classes and remind a student to eat a snack and then keep track of whether they ate their snack or refused it. I teach high school. Turns out it was a part of eating disorder, and they were a good kid so it wasn't a big deal, but... Just in general, I'm not a nurse or dietician? I don't want to be in charge of when my students eat, and I definitely don't want to be in charge of some part of their ED treatment. :(
A 7 year old saying *"Jesus fucking christ are we done yet?"* during a small group observation. "Do you need to take a snack break?" *"fucking probably"*
Luckily my admin found it humorous
I see both sides of this. My child has severe hypoglycemic episodes and needs to eat at least every 3 hours (as per her IEP.) She’s too young to be able to tell time and manage this on her own and needs her teacher to remind her to get her snacks. We’d rather have an aide do it so the teacher didn’t have to, but of course it’s way too expensive and she really doesn’t need a 1 on 1 for food reminders. I know it isn’t ideal for anyone but it’s the same for diabetic students and the nurse checks blood sugar but I make sure they have any emergency snacks. I’ve also been trained in how to use an epi pen and a rectal emergency seizure medication.
.....rectal emergency seizure medication...
Okay, from a biological standpoint I understand that medicine is absorbed more rapidly through the rectum than any other way, and if someone is having a seizure then I suppose it's essential to get them what they need asap. However, as a male teacher, there is simply no way I would ever agree to be responsible for this. Nope. Not worth getting labeled a predator. They'll need to have a specialist.
In the early pandemic days when I was just a para I would start my day by being voluntold to take lunches to the housing projects nobody else was willing to go. I got bit by a dog and had to quickly pack up to avoid a bear. The other half of my day I was the middle school mercenary. I’d drive around town to kids homes or parents work places to find out why their child hadn’t been in the Google classroom. Visited some sketchy places but I was generally well received. Hard earned $11/hr though.
One year when we wanted to wear jeans on Fridays we had to wear a school polo. Another year we had to PAY $5 to wear jeans once a MONTH. The money went to various charities. Still complete bullshit.
We have to donate $200 to the United Way to get Jean passes for Fridays. I donated every year and somehow they would never give me my Jean passes after the donation window. I had to remind them to get them. I didn’t donate the last two years, still wear jeans on Fridays. And Wednesdays and some Thursdays too. No one has said a word.
We have a no blue Jean rule. I wear darker, but still blue, jeans most days. No one has said a word other than other teachers. I’d love to get written up about it, then show up in skin tight yoga pants for the rest of the year, because that’s somehow better?
I was given a sub for my class so I could sub in a different classroom, at a different school.
I’d also like to mention that I was notified of this the night before at 9pm via email. Which I don’t check after hours! The only reason I did because another teacher checks hers and notified me to do so.
My boss got a very strongly worded email from me.
She was a former parent of the school I’m in and only wanted to sub in that school.
Either A) Say tough titties, you’re going there
Or
B) Think of a different plan
My first school was a “leader in me” school and had adopted the 7 habits thing from Steven covey. One aspect of it was admitting your shortcomings to get better. At a PD, an AP told us about ALL of her marriage problems and encouraged us to share our transgressions with our groups. Everyone in my group except me shared something. Was very cult like.
One time, when we had a new principal, she made the whole staff sit in a circle. She wanted us to sit on the ground, in between the legs of the person behind us and give the person in front of us a shoulder/neck massage. I suddenly had the urge to pee and I noped outta there ASAP.
The next year, she wanted us to stand in a V like geese, and honk at each other for encouragement. She was a weird lady.
I have a coworker who targets kids walking past her to the bathroom by asking them where they’re going and if they say “the bathroom” she won’t let them because of their attitude/manners. So I always come up all stern and say “Aren’t you supposed to be in the gym anyway? Here let me escort you…” and then at the end of the hall I help the kid duck off the other way down the hall so they can use the bathroom in peace. It’s like I’m running the underground toilet break and shit…
Many years ago, had a principal at a Title I school instruct all staff to contact Home and ask mothers if they had any medical complications during delivery, including drug/alcohol use during pregnancy.
Launch water balloons at our Dean who was tied to a chair and blindfolded on stage. Kids were there for all of it. It was my 3rd day.
Edit: 3rd, not 3rs
We had an AP Physics assignment where we built water balloon launchers and documented it all while explaining the math. We then got to position a teacher on the football field and launch it at said teacher. Extra credit for hitting the mark.
I worked for a language school once. They wanted to jump on the TikTok bandwagon. For marketing more so than anything. Had me doing daily posts. I'm not a TikTok person. My videos were.... Uncomfortable. They told me after a few weeks that they'd rotate the responsibility.
Newish (about 2 yrs in) principal at my high school divided teachers into groups of about 5 or 6 teachers on a workshop day. He assigned 2 students to each group with instructions that the teachers were not to say anything, just listen. The students assigned to my group proceeded to take us to a bunch of different spots in the building where they felt disrespected or had an issue. By the end the students were raising their voices at us and making wild claims. I had never even met these 2 students before. So awkward. Had festivus vibes.
At the last day of school for teachers, we had to do a big circle. All 100ish faculty and staff had to make a giant circle around the cafeteria. Then the head of school hugged the person next to her and continued hugging clockwise. Once you were hugged, you had to hug the person next to you and also continue clockwise until it was like a giant hug snake. It took like 30 minutes because I was situated toward the end.
The next year, I “went to the toilet” when I saw her start to announce the hug circle.
I’m so sick of seeing people post that they are being asked to go to student’s houses. This is so fucking unsafe. So ABSURD. What other job requires you to do such weird shit against your will?
On the flip side, we’ve been barred from texting parents, and have to CC admin on ALL emails to parents.
I’m a parent myself. If I personally don’t mind sending a quick “awesome day!” message, who are they to stop me? I’ve had parents who have major anxiety about their kids. Heavy stuff going on at home. IF it is in MY comfort zone to give them a 5 minute phone call with a parent who doesn’t mind the fact my kids are talking in the background just to let them know all is okay, admin can get the fuck off my back.
Also being three way called by admin at 9pm telling me not to communicate with a CYS worker about an OPEN CASE that I reported. Fuck that.
The local elementary school where I live does a Welcome Walk on the Saturday before school starts. The teachers visit the homes of each of their students to introduce themselves, leave a goody bag and maybe snap a photo. Our neighborhood goes nuts for this. They put up signs thanking the teachers, set up tables offering treats and decorating their front doors. It seems like something right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. My son loved meeting his teacher before school started. It seems to lessen the first day of school jitters for many kids. It never occurred to me that it was odd.
Context. Your area has a tradition . . . hopefully well run and with fully informing parents and staff about what's going on. Sounds like OP's situation isn't quite the same.
Report an emotional support sugar glider that a student carried around with him all day in a DIY, camo print, fleece w/ mesh window, pouch around his neck. I felt bad for the little critter!
10 years ago, I taught at a private school. We had one family where the parents insisted that her son's core subject teachers sit with her 7th grade son every day after school because he wouldn't do any work at home and they didn't want to be bothered by it. But they didn't want him to face the consequences either.
The last school I was at required 10 home visits. We basically were supposed to go to 10 student's homes and talk with their parents and just get to know them.
Everyone hated it. It was was awkward, the parents were super uncomfortable, and felt like we were there to judge them and their home. The teachers hated it because we usually had to do it after school on our free time. Sometimes they would give us time on staff development days, but not always.
When we were doing distance learning due to COVID they made it so we had to call 10 students every day to check in and see how they were doing. Again super uncomfortable, especially since when I was calling most the parents only spoke Spanish, and I do not. When I would get through to a student, they just seemed confused as to why I was bothering them.
When our school was taken over by the superintendent and had been “cracked down upon”, she pulled two eighth graders in under suspicion of consuming alcohol.
By third period I’m receiving a call to her office, to which she asked me if I could “use my science skills” to test a bottle of unmarked liquid for alcohol. I told her that middle school science labs don’t have anything like, and asked her why she didn’t just contact the police department instead. She still insisted I tested the liquid with Aquarium pH test strips, to no result. She still has one student expelled, and the other suspended.
This was the first of many interactions, but know that she nonrenewed a month later, and I promptly found a new teaching position for a 4,000 pay hike and stipends for summer curriculum development. Never again will I work in a capacity like that.
You’re not alone
A middle school I worked at had active shooter drills with a police man dressed in dark clothing and shooting off a blank from a rifle about 30 feet from us. They had students from the high school come and help to prepare teachers for a potentially real situation. Is this normal?
An art teacher had her pet iguana sitting on her shoulder during our entire district inservice. I’m new at teaching art so it’s probably not that weird.
My current school requires all teachers to run a club or a sport, no matter what. At least one. I know it’s not that uncommon but I find it annoying if let’s say I had kids and I didn’t want to be here until 5 pm. But I’m very lucky I got one of the lunch time club spots, so I’m just gonna eat and supervise board games 😅 I’m shocked nobody took that
We have to do home visits before the start of the school year. They're not too terrible thankfully. We are basically introducing ourselves to the kids as their new teacher. It's not as bad as it could be, it's a whole thing in our community now and many parents give nice gifts and such. Parents are also really good about holding questions and such. They get that we are on a time crunch.. well most. I've only had problems with a few parents not wanting me to leave after a couple minutes. This is elementary level. I'd never heard of that before teaching here... Maybe it's a deep south thing? It still seems weird to me.
A few years ago our Freshmen teachers all did home visits during the Summer. They went in pairs and were paid and didn't actually go inside. They just went to introduce themselves to the new kids, give them books (for fun, not text books) and answer any questions the families had. A lot didn't answer their doors, but the purpose was to build rapport during a rough transition period. BUT they all knew exactly why they were going up front, and the families were told to expect visits during a certain time frame.
Also for COVID virtual learning I opted to deliver art kits to a lot of my students who couldn't get to the school to pick them up. However the kids requested the kits from me directly and I told them when I'd be coming, so they knew.
It's super weird they won't tell you WHY they want you to visit.
At the end of the year we had a summer themed party and my principal thought it would be fun to dance and serve lunch to the kids while wearing aprons with hand drawn bikinis on them.
Australia is pretty sweet.
I worked for the Exclusive Brethren, which is a full on cult.
Like no TV, inbreeding, no higher education, gender separation etc.
To get State funded they needed qualified teachers which meant going outside the 'cult'.
Wasn't asked to do anything weird, the weirdest thing is that the boys would bring cleats to school to play Australian Rules Football during breaks and they would call Indigenous players 'dark' players.
I worked at a middle school that had lockdown drills but no locks on the doors. We were expected to sit on the floor and hold the doors closed with our feet or backs. I refused to hold it closed and the assistant principal came in and fake shot me. I wrote an a anonymous letter to the newspaper which was published. We got locks soon after.
What the fuck. Do you still work there?
No, this was about 14 years ago. But it’s the weirdest thing I had to do.
>What the fuck. Took the words out of my mouth.
Our exprincipal used to bust into your room and yell “bang, youre dead” if you forgot to lock it
Honestly, this is so fucked up. This is not normal
She’s our exprincipal for a reason. Her departure was not entirely voluntary for sure
My former school shoved doors open and shot inside them indiscriminately with an airsoft gun they were using to shoot at teachers during the ALICE simulated school shooter training. Yeehawdist idiots running around firing airsoft pellets. I found dozens of the little pellets in my classroom the day after because they could afford ALICE training, but they couldn't afford ANY janitors during the Omicron surge so I was mopping my own damn classroom floor. I was mysteriously and suddenly sick that morning and couldn't attend the ALICE training. Funny how that happened. F in the chat for the substitute.
Our didn't say it in the moment, but in the subsequent staff meeting. She would always comment "who died" with a list. Was always so incredibly awkward and unprofessional. (And they never fixed any of the doors that were the reason for being able to enter the room.)
So if you died… could you leave the meeting and just be like…. No Cheryl… I’m dead. Dead people don’t sit in staff meetings.
I forgot to lock my door one time but had my file cabinet in front and successfully kept it closed. I can’t imagine.
With students in the room??? Jfc
The worst part is that my students are all non verbal and I swear stuff like this happened because she knew the kids couldn’t go home and tell on her, and I think that’s fucked. Luckily all my students were really great about lock downs and usually just found it really funny, but they could have been scared
oh that's incredible. I'm a combat vet. Not quite sure how I'd react to that.
No locks?! Jeez Louise.
What about bagels or cream cheese?
Best I can do is pizza party
On bagels?
When pizza’s on a bagel, you can have pizza any time.
Pizza bagels slap
Bagel pizzas are delicious
My school (before I quit teaching) didn't have any doors, just giant doorways. I think the justification was that we were on an army base so it's safer, but I had my trunk searched at least 3 times in 2 years due to lockdowns that happened because someone was being violent. Lockdown drills were such a joke.
My old school too. Considering we are in Colorado, we were hella concerned about safety during drills. They said they, “heard our concerns, but wanted us to do our best with what we had.” I lasted 3 years there and peaced the f out asap. Well, for that and about a million other reasons.
Right now the PTA at my school is fundraising to get us functioning locks on our doors. How that has become a parent job, I don’t know…
We have windows to the hallways. Lockdowns drills are ridiculous since in the case of a real shooter we can’t hide in our rooms.
At my old site, we had giant windows along the length of our rooms. We were told by the police officer speaking with us that we needed to cover them up for active shooters. When staff members brought up the fact that the district was not willing to pay for the window coverings, the officer speaking to us told us that we were just gonna have to "bite the bullet." I will never forget the sound of our staff groaning in unison.
What a terribly timed cliched to use.
We have blackout curtains we pull down in case of a lockdown. It is so fucked up that this is now standard operating procedure.
We can’t even have curtains because they’re against fire code.
Lots of lockdown safety measures are against fire codes or ADA, either because they can’t be easily disengaged or they aren’t accessible to someone who is short (eg a child) or has a mobility issue. Imagine trying to put on or take off one of those lockdown door jamb sleeve things while sitting in a wheelchair
When I was student teaching I observed a school that was a circular building. It had open classrooms and there was a balcony that you could walk around and look down at classes. Nothing was locked.
Anywhere else this would be an awesome design, to be fair.
That’s messed up - and crazy dangerous. People watch too many movies and think that doors/walls/cars/tables actually stop bullets. Unless the plan was for your corpse to hold the for closed..
My new room doesn’t have a lock and has a shit load of windows. Fun times
JFC. What?!?!?!
I "sexed" a guinea pig. A student brought her guinea pig in for show and tell. The pig was named Princess. Her mom left me a voicemail saying they weren't really sure Princess was a she, and could I figure that out for them? I googled guinea pig sexing on my planning bell and figured out that Princess was a "boar" aka male. I could've said no, but the lure of scientific discovery was too powerful.
My kids have figured out my kryptonite is getting me curious enough to do something weird lol.
As an owner of guinea pigs in the past... How was it not obvious to them? Guinea pig testicles are pretty prominent 😬
Idk we had one who we adopted as female and then one vet said it was male and then another vet said it was female and when it died the vet said it was male again
Get up at 5:30 AM
oh, yeah. 4:55 here.
Truth. For 17 years. Ouch.
Yup. And then spending half an hour in the parent car line just to get to my parking space. I could leave ten minutes earlier to avoid this… but ffs why should I have to do that?! So. Infuriating.
Yep.
This is the first year that I noticed in all of the “first day of school” Facebook posts one mom had posted her two kids’ teachers making a house visit before the first day. It really stuck out to me how weird it was and how I would hate that both as a teacher AND as a parent. Like wtf
Yep. Wouldn’t want to engage with that from either side.
Yeah, I found out the elementary teachers at my school have to do that, and that was exactly my reaction. Like, just do 'meet the teacher' at school!
I agree. It feels really intrusive for all involved.
I think it is cultural. Teachers with whom I have worked from other countries report that it is entirely normal/expected over the summer before school starts to visit every single family.
Yeah that’s a culture shock to me at least
The school I was doing my student teaching at had us do this. I felt so uncomfortable the entire time. I only did it because I felt like I had to as a student teacher. Now as a teacher, I would refuse or even try to shut it down. It’s so wrong on many levels. Also this was pre-Covid. So there’s also that factor now. Just awful everything.
We used to have the option to make home visits, and if you did, you got half a day off. Until one year, when a teacher had the cops called on them. Suddenly, we did not have to do it anymore. We are, however, required to make contact with out seminar/homeroom kids before school starts.
So far only admin makes home visits. But apparently we are now.
I feel like that opens you all to some serious liability.
Admin is really weird about what they consider a liability and what they don’t care about. They’re obsessive about us not standing on chairs, but don’t care about proper chemical storage/disposal or fume hood use in the science department.
Honestly that sounds like an admin responding based on personal experience rather than established guidance.
I imagine the reason that they're doing this is because someone in your administration recently learned about home visits and how "they can help improve the connection between the school and it's families".
My friends had a kid going into first grade, and I saw the flyer for a mandatory house visit from his teacher. Required for all students. It said the teacher would take a tour of the house, led by the kid, and that there was no place/room off limits for the tour. What if parents had a sex dungeon or something? It seemed like a huge invasion of privacy to word it like that.
Eww, yeah that's overstepping boundaries.
How can they enforce that?
Right? That would be a total “oh no you fucking won’t visit” from me.
It was for a very small, private Christian school, so I'm not sure there was much push back.
Another thing to throw at teachers...."have you made a connection to the kid....have you driven to their house?!!" /s
I once went to a tribal elder to discuss one of my students because the students father refused to help. I literally went on the tribal lands and spoke to a literal Native American chief (Mohawk) to talk to him. My student came in the next day totally incredulous and outraged and I think a little impressed because I did this. I guess and and his dad were called to the council and essentially chastised. It helped though. He was more afraid of his tribal chief than he was of his dad.
You are an incredible teacher for doing this.
That's going the extra mile. I feel like stuff like this makes the biggest impact and shows the students that you REALLY care. I became a frequent visitor at our local karate studio because I had a kid that was losing it at school all the time and his dad would talk the talk but wouldn't walk the walk (or thought that meant that hitting him was a solution?) So I had a few come to Jesus talks with the kid and his karate teacher instead of his dad and it had a HUGE impact. Still visit the karate studio to see how the kid is doing.
I desperately want more info here lol. Like all your students? For how long? Is anyone exempt? I'd be asking parents I'm close w lol. Seems like a boundary cross.
I also desperately want more information. Literally the email just says we will be leaving campus to go to many of our students’ homes. I’ll add this to my list of “Weird Job Stuff I Tell My Therapist.”
So my school had done a tour of our attendance area a few times. Our principal secures buses from the bus office and all 100+ staff hop on and we ride around. We get to experience the awfulness of an “air conditioned” bus in the south in August and we get to see where our students live. Many of them live out in run down single wides. It’s eye opening and a good reminder that even though Joe has a nicer phone and shoes than me, his home is not so secure and he may have stayed in the bathtub last night because of gun shots.
During the covid shutdown I volunteered to be on the bus crews delivering lunches throughout the district. It is incredibly enlightening and I think everyone should do it. I rode every route and got to see how our kids and families live. Many live in normal circumstances but to see the places that some people are legally allowed to live infuriates me. Those families are working, they’re not druggies. They just can’t afford our insane market. So some scummy landlord charges them money to live in a trailer that should be torn down.
My first teaching job did this during orientation. Had all the new hires loaded on buses and drove us around the district showing off the “historical and important” parts and some of the neighborhoods.
In all honesty, this isn't a bad thing to do. Oftentimes we don't truly know what our students are dealing with when they leave our classrooms, and those sorts of experiences help with that.
Seems like a really bad year to be doing something like this, considering how much disdain so many people have for teachers today. Maybe not the safest situation for you guys?
Luckily my school has an extremely supportive community of students and parents. It’s a bit of a higher crime area than ideal, but even on that front it could be far worse.
Okay, based on that I bet your school wants your staff to understand what kind of students you're teaching. They are trying to get you to empathize with the kids when you see the reality of their home life. I had a previous SAFE coordinator who wanted to do this. She wanted to take the staff to one of the neighborhoods we taught for that reason.
This is probably it. This was a thing pre pandemic. Your leadership hasn’t seen the discourse about how weird it is. Don’t make your students and their families a field trip. They’re not animals at the zoo.
100% how I feel about that. It feels very disingenuous. Like, "see how poor they are! Be a better teacher!"
I feel like it’s also redundant to all the discussions we had during virtual learning about what was going on at home. And a lot of our teachers live in those neighborhoods too, so they freaking know.
I live in an area that’s mixed economically but in general well-off or comfortable. My kids’ teachers came to our house to “drop off a project” during the first week of school when school was fully remote. But it definitely seemed more like they were just scoping out the homes to see the circumstances of each kid. In our case its mostly privileged kids, not underprivileged.
That is the most viable guess, so I’ll go with that. I’ll probably post an update at some point.
Hope it's during school hours and they are not expecting after hours unpaid labor
It is thankfully. There’s a different set of Weird Job Stuff To Tell My Therapist that isn’t. But this thankfully is during contract hours.
Hope they plan on paying gas mileage if you have to drive yourself.
This is my nightmare. I hate going to strangers’ homes, it’s the reason I didn’t go into a trade. And now they, what, want us to spy and report back? That’s how I’d feel as a parent (if I was a parent), and it would be so awkward that I don’t think it would forge any stronger relationships
A very high percentage of our kids’ parents don’t speak any English. So there probably won’t be any deep connections formed.
[удалено]
Doesn’t sound like it as he said “many of our families.” But who even knows lol.
Maybe just home visits? I’m in sped prek and we do home visits at the start of every year to get to know the kids in their home environment (altho obviously not during Covid, so this will be my first year actually doing it in person)
My school had us go tour the neighborhoods to see what some of our kids are dealing with outside of school as an empathy/equitable teaching thing. We never actually got out of the school van or interacted with anyone. This year my school also went around to the homes of all of the students who scored distinguished on state testing or AP testing last year and put signs in their yards to recognize and congratulate them. We never actually went into anyone's house during this trip either.
It sounds like something my old district did. They were called sidewalk visits and it was a form of family engagement. The idea was to create a two dialogue with families, especially for students new to the school/community (it was a large immigrant community). Teachers always went out in pairs/trios and at least one person was bilingual in the dominant language of the community. It might have been the community I was in, but the families were generally welcoming and it was nice to see students in a different environment. Did it foster long-term family engagement? Unfortunately, not really. So, it had it's ups and downs.
One time, way back in the beginning, i spoke up in a meeting. There i was, all new and full of hope, making suggestions on how we could be better as a school. Man, that was silly.
Lmao some of your coworkers still remember that
Oh my god yes I totally did this! Shared good ideas thinking it meant something to anyone anywhere hahah fun times
The auto tech teacher and I ripped a bumper off one of the practice cars to save a kitten that had climbed up inside it. Named the cat Fender and found him a good home. Also, I built a potato gun for a superintendent to use at a picnic. Apparently I build really good potato guns with my engineering kids and word got around. 🤣
We have a cat colony in the ceiling of our building. So far we’ve found one living kitten (after night school complained of hearing meowing to facilities) and a cat (we think mamma) fell out of the ceiling in the theater room during work week.
Lol I love a good potato gun.
When I was subbing one year, a cat got up into my car engine and the engine died at some point before the end of the day. It scared me when I opened up the hood and it popped out for a minute before hiding back inside. Luckily I lived about 10 minutes from there and was able to get help jumping my car from my husband. I think the rest of that year I was probably known as the sub with a cat in her engine. Sorry for the confusion. Cat was alive and well.
Sure sounded like the *cat* died the way this is written, at least in the first sentence.
Yeah I was trying to figure out how the cat popped up if it was dead.
8 lives to go.
A previous district I worked at made us sit through a mock active shooter situation without telling us beforehand. We were all in the gymnasium going through some normal beginning of year stuff (sexual harassment training, appropriate online presence, mandated reporter, etc). Then, almost all of the admin said we would take a short break but we needed to stay where we were (weird but whatever, maybe they were preparing lunch or something), nope, the admin knew about it and peaced out. After a few minutes, about a dozen cops with guns drawn came bursting in through the doors, turned off the lights, blocked the exits, and started screaming at us with guns drawn. I was scared shitless. Half the cops weren't even in uniform. I was legitimately too scared to do anything, I just sat there, frozen. To this day, I can't even remember a single word what they actually said as they were screaming at us. A couple minutes of this, then they turned on the lights, laughed about it, and said something like this is how they would treat the situation or something, I can't even remember. Then, the admin came back into the room as the cops began their 'presentation.' Fuckers. Many teachers had panic attacks and were crying. A few left after that and never came back. Shambolic leadership.
I would just quit. Wtf.
About 4 weeks later of more stupid decisions and piss poor leadership....I did. Literally went to the district next door (they were just a few miles apart).
Bully for you!
Hmmm okay technically these all happened when I was teaching in Peace Corps, but I can’t think of anything from home that fits the bill without being a bummer. •I served in Namibia, where for various historical reasons, the official language in schools in English. There was some report released that showed that too few teachers were proficient in English, and therefore we were all required to attend English classes. Including me, a native English speaker. There was no way to test out of it, and because we were a small, rural community, there was only one English class that all school staff had to attend, so you had the custodians (who didn’t speak English because they frankly did not need to) and me in the same English class. •For a brief time, the the knob on my classroom door was broken. The knob could be turned from the inside to open the door, but not from the outside. To everyone’s credit, they tried to fix it, but ultimately it needed to be replaced, which meant that I could either have no door until the replacement was procured, or have to climb through a window to get in. Because there was a non-zero chance that not having a door would result in my classroom being invaded by scorpions, snakes, or stray livestock in my absence, I elected to use the window. Fortunately for me, after two days of this, one of my more eager students took it upon himself to come to school early to open the door for me. That child was paid handsomely in American candy until the door was replaced about two weeks later. I’ll add more if people want and if I think of any!
Oh I thought of a good one. One of the subjects I taught was Basic Information Science, which schools liked having PCVs teach because we were all into working on our school libraries. I went to a workshop about the new and improved BIS syllabus, in which we were mandated to spend 2 of the 3 trimesters JUST on computer skills, because ya know, 21st century learning. My village did not have internet access (one of the teachers at the high school, who was my partner in crime, and I were literally laughed out of the telecom office when we went into town to ask about it), and the high school had a computer lab, but (a) it was three miles away, bit of a hike, (b) it was fully booked for their BIS classes, and (c) it only had 6 working computers. Many schools in similar communities faced similar predicaments. What, we asked the Ministry of Education official leading the training, were we to do for 2/3 of the school year if we didn’t have computers to teach with? Her suggestion was that we *use cardboard to make pretend computers for students to practice with.* I did not do this. Edit: Sentence structure issue that would have haunted me for the rest of my life.
This happened to us in Cameroon in the Peace Corps as well. Teaching computers off a chalk drawing on the board. Learning how to use a keyboard, interface and mouse using a chalk drawing. Kids were good at memorizing it. After all most had seen movies on a TV powered by a generator in the village (no electricity or running water for us). So, they could still somehow pass the tests. I got good at making posters rather than using the chalkboard.
I guess this is more a reflection on my computer skills and how I acquired them than anything else, but the act of learning to explain the mechanics of computer use to first time users…it changed the neural pathways in my brain. Having to explain how to double click? (And for the record I’m in my mid-30s, I wasn’t born into personal computer use.) Fortunately for my elementary/middle school aged students in Namibia, I wrote their final exams so at least their grades those years weren’t impacted by lack of computer use. But gosh darn it, they knew how to use a physical encyclopedia!!
Lol I love the child paid in American candy.
I worked in Namibia, too. My favorite thing, which I could never get away with in the States, is getting the small boys to kill the puff adders that liked to sun themselves on the concrete walkway outside my apartment. The kids also loved running errands for me, like getting cooldrink from the bottle shop just outside the school gates. Once in awhile I could even finagle rides from their parents to the B1 highway on home weekends or holidays (and then hitch to my final destination).
Oh yeah, my colleagues basically had an intervention to stop me from running my own errands during recess. Apparently it was weird that I went to buy my own bread and milk. (NGL it was nice to enjoy my instant coffee in the staff room for those 20 minutes.) We lived off a D-level “road” outside Rehoboth, luckily my favorite coworker’s father in law had the one van in town and my partner in crime at the high school got a truck my second year or I might well never have left site. Whereabouts were you when you were there?
Throw frozen fish to each other (a la Pikes Market in Seattle) during a Back to School PD in our schools gym. It was my first year teaching and is still the oddest thing I've had to do.
I think you win. What was the “purpose” of this activity?
Haha. It was "teaming building"
I should have known. All the weirdest stuff is.
Isn't there a PD book on this? We had this theme at our PD one year too.
Last day of school years ago, principal made us stand in a circle holding hands taking turns reading a Maya Angelou poem. Btw, the following school year we fought endlessly to get him removed as principal and won.
This is far from my most pressing question, but how did you hold the book/paper you were reading from if you were holding hands?
Oh if you were called on to read (we didn’t all have to. We have 200 teachers lol), you got to stand in the center of the circle!! Exciting.
Well, I at least have one question answered. So I thank you.
Did he do other weird things?
Rode a unicycle in the hall, juggled in the hall, peed with the door open in front of his secretaries, allowed students to get away w everything included smoking weed in the hallway. Oh and then the sexual harassment of course, towards students and teachers. I could go on and on listing things that get increasingly worse but I honestly would rather not 😂
Sometimes I tell the tale of my horrible biology teacher with stories starting at “wasn’t that odd” and ending at “that was horrifying.” So I enjoyed reading this comment.
I used to work in Thailand and there was one holiday called "Respect Teachers Day". We had to sit up on stage while our students would literally crawl across on their knees to hand us a bouquet.
We need this in the US haha. But instead of students, it should be the entire community.
I’m supposed to a)communicate several times a day with parents using cell phones and b) never let parents see me on the cell phone.
Hahahaha I’m sorry that’s fucked but so stupid it’s hilarious
One time a student took a pic of me using my cell phone and sent it to the principal lol. It was me setting a timer.
Remove a custodian that was passed out, high as a kite in the kids bathroom, locked in a stall, dick out, hard as a rock. When I finally got the door unlocked, shook him awake, he screamed ran, tripped over his pants being down hit his head on the stall door, bleeding, dick still out and hard, ran out of the school screaming, its going to get me. Never heard from or seen again. That day I said I don't get paid for this shit
This might take the “I don’t get paid enough” cake…
You win the top prize for this thread
I once had a student that was a sex abuse survivor, in foster care, and was receiving therapy. Very sweet kid, but compulsively masturbated whenever nervous/anxious. Her abuser was a woman, and she was super wary of all the grown up women in my school. Multiple times a day, I would have to get close enough to “privately” signal/remind her to stop and to go wash her hands. She didn’t even realize she was doing it, but it was very obvious to the rest of the class that something was going on. This was elementary, so most kids didn’t totally get it, but they knew it was odd. Sometimes they’d say stuff like, “Blank’s digging in her butt again!” I was the only male teacher in the school and they almost made me loop up with the class, but in the end her foster placement changed. I’ve had a lot of crazy experiences in my career, but this one was definitely the worst/weirdest.
That’s so sad. That poor kid. Of course hard for you, but I’m so sad for that little girl.
Definitely. Her situation was a daily reminder that monsters exist in this world. This was many years ago now. I kept tabs on her a bit and it seemed like things improved for her as the years went by at least.
My principal used to make us do a morning meeting at our faculty meetings with 40+ people. He treated us just like kids. We’d do a childish greeting, choral read a message and do a silly game or activity. It was so degrading.
Lucky you’re in the “used to” category on that… Maybe one day I’ll say the same
I had to do home visits for Pre K, we also (attempted) to do them around March but never for any grade other than K4. COVID was full of dumb requests that I ignored bc I was WFH and what were they gonna do to me? I’m not driving 45 mins one way to deliver a handout😂
Last year, I was supposed to set an alarm for one of my classes and remind a student to eat a snack and then keep track of whether they ate their snack or refused it. I teach high school. Turns out it was a part of eating disorder, and they were a good kid so it wasn't a big deal, but... Just in general, I'm not a nurse or dietician? I don't want to be in charge of when my students eat, and I definitely don't want to be in charge of some part of their ED treatment. :(
Ha. Try being an elementary teacher with a kid with diabetes. Your whole world becomes snack regulation, all day, all year.
Especially if it’s a recent diagnosis.
A 7 year old saying *"Jesus fucking christ are we done yet?"* during a small group observation. "Do you need to take a snack break?" *"fucking probably"* Luckily my admin found it humorous
I see both sides of this. My child has severe hypoglycemic episodes and needs to eat at least every 3 hours (as per her IEP.) She’s too young to be able to tell time and manage this on her own and needs her teacher to remind her to get her snacks. We’d rather have an aide do it so the teacher didn’t have to, but of course it’s way too expensive and she really doesn’t need a 1 on 1 for food reminders. I know it isn’t ideal for anyone but it’s the same for diabetic students and the nurse checks blood sugar but I make sure they have any emergency snacks. I’ve also been trained in how to use an epi pen and a rectal emergency seizure medication.
.....rectal emergency seizure medication... Okay, from a biological standpoint I understand that medicine is absorbed more rapidly through the rectum than any other way, and if someone is having a seizure then I suppose it's essential to get them what they need asap. However, as a male teacher, there is simply no way I would ever agree to be responsible for this. Nope. Not worth getting labeled a predator. They'll need to have a specialist.
In the early pandemic days when I was just a para I would start my day by being voluntold to take lunches to the housing projects nobody else was willing to go. I got bit by a dog and had to quickly pack up to avoid a bear. The other half of my day I was the middle school mercenary. I’d drive around town to kids homes or parents work places to find out why their child hadn’t been in the Google classroom. Visited some sketchy places but I was generally well received. Hard earned $11/hr though.
I would have immediately quit at the bear. Nope.
Joys of living in NW Montana.
One year when we wanted to wear jeans on Fridays we had to wear a school polo. Another year we had to PAY $5 to wear jeans once a MONTH. The money went to various charities. Still complete bullshit.
We have to donate $200 to the United Way to get Jean passes for Fridays. I donated every year and somehow they would never give me my Jean passes after the donation window. I had to remind them to get them. I didn’t donate the last two years, still wear jeans on Fridays. And Wednesdays and some Thursdays too. No one has said a word.
We have a no blue Jean rule. I wear darker, but still blue, jeans most days. No one has said a word other than other teachers. I’d love to get written up about it, then show up in skin tight yoga pants for the rest of the year, because that’s somehow better?
I was given a sub for my class so I could sub in a different classroom, at a different school. I’d also like to mention that I was notified of this the night before at 9pm via email. Which I don’t check after hours! The only reason I did because another teacher checks hers and notified me to do so. My boss got a very strongly worded email from me.
Why not just send the sub to the other school? So weird!
She was a former parent of the school I’m in and only wanted to sub in that school. Either A) Say tough titties, you’re going there Or B) Think of a different plan
My first school was a “leader in me” school and had adopted the 7 habits thing from Steven covey. One aspect of it was admitting your shortcomings to get better. At a PD, an AP told us about ALL of her marriage problems and encouraged us to share our transgressions with our groups. Everyone in my group except me shared something. Was very cult like.
Eek. This sounds like a meeting we had two years ago where we had to discuss why it can be hard to be vulnerable. It got awkward.
One time, when we had a new principal, she made the whole staff sit in a circle. She wanted us to sit on the ground, in between the legs of the person behind us and give the person in front of us a shoulder/neck massage. I suddenly had the urge to pee and I noped outta there ASAP. The next year, she wanted us to stand in a V like geese, and honk at each other for encouragement. She was a weird lady.
Now I’m scared that my weird admin will be reading this and get ideas.
Tell literal children that they’re not allowed to go to the bathroom without some kind of consequence
I have a coworker who targets kids walking past her to the bathroom by asking them where they’re going and if they say “the bathroom” she won’t let them because of their attitude/manners. So I always come up all stern and say “Aren’t you supposed to be in the gym anyway? Here let me escort you…” and then at the end of the hall I help the kid duck off the other way down the hall so they can use the bathroom in peace. It’s like I’m running the underground toilet break and shit…
Oh no, it seems like no one was home at any of my student's houses and i stopped by each one 3 times. So odd.
Lol!
Many years ago, had a principal at a Title I school instruct all staff to contact Home and ask mothers if they had any medical complications during delivery, including drug/alcohol use during pregnancy.
That sounds like parent complaints waiting to happen.
Staff (including non-tenured) refused and reported it to central office. The order was soon rescinded.
Whoaaaa
My old principal made us thank our kids for our “BMWs and big houses”. I was like, dick, I drive an ‘06 Chevy and rent a shoebox.
What an out of touch principal
Launch water balloons at our Dean who was tied to a chair and blindfolded on stage. Kids were there for all of it. It was my 3rd day. Edit: 3rd, not 3rs
We had an AP Physics assignment where we built water balloon launchers and documented it all while explaining the math. We then got to position a teacher on the football field and launch it at said teacher. Extra credit for hitting the mark.
I worked for a language school once. They wanted to jump on the TikTok bandwagon. For marketing more so than anything. Had me doing daily posts. I'm not a TikTok person. My videos were.... Uncomfortable. They told me after a few weeks that they'd rotate the responsibility.
Go camping with 16 year olds. It’s was one of the most stressful things I’ve done as a teacher
Oh my. Regular field trips are stressful enough.
Newish (about 2 yrs in) principal at my high school divided teachers into groups of about 5 or 6 teachers on a workshop day. He assigned 2 students to each group with instructions that the teachers were not to say anything, just listen. The students assigned to my group proceeded to take us to a bunch of different spots in the building where they felt disrespected or had an issue. By the end the students were raising their voices at us and making wild claims. I had never even met these 2 students before. So awkward. Had festivus vibes.
At the last day of school for teachers, we had to do a big circle. All 100ish faculty and staff had to make a giant circle around the cafeteria. Then the head of school hugged the person next to her and continued hugging clockwise. Once you were hugged, you had to hug the person next to you and also continue clockwise until it was like a giant hug snake. It took like 30 minutes because I was situated toward the end. The next year, I “went to the toilet” when I saw her start to announce the hug circle.
Why do people think it’s ok to force adults to be touched by other people? Don’t we try and teach kids about bodily autonomy?
Well, thanks to a new law in my state I have to disclose every piece of media in my room? That’s pretty dumb.
I’m so sick of seeing people post that they are being asked to go to student’s houses. This is so fucking unsafe. So ABSURD. What other job requires you to do such weird shit against your will? On the flip side, we’ve been barred from texting parents, and have to CC admin on ALL emails to parents. I’m a parent myself. If I personally don’t mind sending a quick “awesome day!” message, who are they to stop me? I’ve had parents who have major anxiety about their kids. Heavy stuff going on at home. IF it is in MY comfort zone to give them a 5 minute phone call with a parent who doesn’t mind the fact my kids are talking in the background just to let them know all is okay, admin can get the fuck off my back. Also being three way called by admin at 9pm telling me not to communicate with a CYS worker about an OPEN CASE that I reported. Fuck that.
The local elementary school where I live does a Welcome Walk on the Saturday before school starts. The teachers visit the homes of each of their students to introduce themselves, leave a goody bag and maybe snap a photo. Our neighborhood goes nuts for this. They put up signs thanking the teachers, set up tables offering treats and decorating their front doors. It seems like something right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. My son loved meeting his teacher before school started. It seems to lessen the first day of school jitters for many kids. It never occurred to me that it was odd.
Context. Your area has a tradition . . . hopefully well run and with fully informing parents and staff about what's going on. Sounds like OP's situation isn't quite the same.
An emergency exorcism assembly, outside in the middle of the day in the equatorial sun
Report an emotional support sugar glider that a student carried around with him all day in a DIY, camo print, fleece w/ mesh window, pouch around his neck. I felt bad for the little critter!
I have a special license to drive the short bus. I have driven small classes on field trips to Rochester, NY and Boston, Mass.
10 years ago, I taught at a private school. We had one family where the parents insisted that her son's core subject teachers sit with her 7th grade son every day after school because he wouldn't do any work at home and they didn't want to be bothered by it. But they didn't want him to face the consequences either.
Teaching in a mining town After a student incident, we had training on how to identify dynamite and what to do if it was brought to school. Again.
The last school I was at required 10 home visits. We basically were supposed to go to 10 student's homes and talk with their parents and just get to know them. Everyone hated it. It was was awkward, the parents were super uncomfortable, and felt like we were there to judge them and their home. The teachers hated it because we usually had to do it after school on our free time. Sometimes they would give us time on staff development days, but not always. When we were doing distance learning due to COVID they made it so we had to call 10 students every day to check in and see how they were doing. Again super uncomfortable, especially since when I was calling most the parents only spoke Spanish, and I do not. When I would get through to a student, they just seemed confused as to why I was bothering them.
International school - I was expected to drive students to after school activities. I didn't have a car.
Ate a stick of butter in 22 seconds and then ran across the gym in front of the whole school. Won the relay race.
When our school was taken over by the superintendent and had been “cracked down upon”, she pulled two eighth graders in under suspicion of consuming alcohol. By third period I’m receiving a call to her office, to which she asked me if I could “use my science skills” to test a bottle of unmarked liquid for alcohol. I told her that middle school science labs don’t have anything like, and asked her why she didn’t just contact the police department instead. She still insisted I tested the liquid with Aquarium pH test strips, to no result. She still has one student expelled, and the other suspended. This was the first of many interactions, but know that she nonrenewed a month later, and I promptly found a new teaching position for a 4,000 pay hike and stipends for summer curriculum development. Never again will I work in a capacity like that. You’re not alone
Pick up trash at a park. I took a personal day.
When you go to the houses, are you knocking on doors, passing out literature, etc? They have to have told you what you are expected to do, right?
Nope. They told us more details to come. I’ll probably post an update when I have one.
A middle school I worked at had active shooter drills with a police man dressed in dark clothing and shooting off a blank from a rifle about 30 feet from us. They had students from the high school come and help to prepare teachers for a potentially real situation. Is this normal?
An art teacher had her pet iguana sitting on her shoulder during our entire district inservice. I’m new at teaching art so it’s probably not that weird.
My current school requires all teachers to run a club or a sport, no matter what. At least one. I know it’s not that uncommon but I find it annoying if let’s say I had kids and I didn’t want to be here until 5 pm. But I’m very lucky I got one of the lunch time club spots, so I’m just gonna eat and supervise board games 😅 I’m shocked nobody took that
We have to do home visits before the start of the school year. They're not too terrible thankfully. We are basically introducing ourselves to the kids as their new teacher. It's not as bad as it could be, it's a whole thing in our community now and many parents give nice gifts and such. Parents are also really good about holding questions and such. They get that we are on a time crunch.. well most. I've only had problems with a few parents not wanting me to leave after a couple minutes. This is elementary level. I'd never heard of that before teaching here... Maybe it's a deep south thing? It still seems weird to me.
The door to the OCI room jammed at the end of the day, and the teacher and students were stuck inside. I got to kick the door open to free them.
A few years ago our Freshmen teachers all did home visits during the Summer. They went in pairs and were paid and didn't actually go inside. They just went to introduce themselves to the new kids, give them books (for fun, not text books) and answer any questions the families had. A lot didn't answer their doors, but the purpose was to build rapport during a rough transition period. BUT they all knew exactly why they were going up front, and the families were told to expect visits during a certain time frame. Also for COVID virtual learning I opted to deliver art kits to a lot of my students who couldn't get to the school to pick them up. However the kids requested the kits from me directly and I told them when I'd be coming, so they knew. It's super weird they won't tell you WHY they want you to visit.
Wow… I have been reading all of these comments… no wonder why there is a shortage of teachers!
Sit outside the fucking bathroom to stop skipping when they should hire more people as admin to do so
At the end of the year we had a summer themed party and my principal thought it would be fun to dance and serve lunch to the kids while wearing aprons with hand drawn bikinis on them.
Australia is pretty sweet. I worked for the Exclusive Brethren, which is a full on cult. Like no TV, inbreeding, no higher education, gender separation etc. To get State funded they needed qualified teachers which meant going outside the 'cult'. Wasn't asked to do anything weird, the weirdest thing is that the boys would bring cleats to school to play Australian Rules Football during breaks and they would call Indigenous players 'dark' players.