Language Arts Teacher Considers Quitting Because Her 10th Grade Students Don't Know How To Read
In her 14 years of teaching, she has never seen students this far behind in their reading.
Pheelings media / Shutterstock Teacher shortages and staffing issues in schools have been a hot topic for a while now, as more and more educators are speaking out about the reasons they are leaving the profession — and it's not just because of poor compensation.
In this case, a language arts teacher who has been teaching for 14 years is considering quitting her job because many of her students are at least seven grades behind their target reading comprehension level.
The veteran teacher has contemplated quitting for the past two years because her high school students can barely read.
The teacher in New Jersey shared in a Reddit post that the past couple of years have been very stressful for her, but the straw that broke the camel's back was when she realized her 10th-grade students could not read at their grade level. In fact, they could barely read at all.
She explained that instead of reading books at a high school level, these sophomores are reading 2nd and 3rd-grade books like "Charlotte's Web" and "The Bridge to Terabithia."
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In absolute shock, she turned to fellow teachers in her school for advice. As it turns out, her experience wasn't limited to her classroom, but many teachers observed that students homeschooled during the pandemic, versus students exposed to the virtual classroom, were much more advanced.
The biggest issue seems to be that her students lack the desire to learn.
In sheer desperation, the teacher admitted, "I’m at a loss."
The parents are mad because the kids are failing, but there's not much she can do, especially when it comes to their behavior which she categorized as "rude, always on their phones, destructive."
“I feel like my school isn’t doing anything. I have lost my passion in the last two years. We have lost a tremendous amount of education for our kids,” she wrote. “I would rather be an online teacher... I need wine; I need something; I don’t know what.”
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"I don’t believe Covid is the issue," she insisted. "It’s the system and our country that doesn’t believe in education."
For years, other countries have been outperforming the U.S. education system.
Jon Fogel, an author and parenting expert, explained on TikTok that struggling students are not the root cause of the problem. Rather, as he put it, "School in the United States is not set up with kids in mind."
Similarly 30-year teaching veteran, author, New York Times op-ed journalist and outspoken critic of the American education model, John Taylor Gatto, wrote, prior to his passing, “I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my 30 years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet."
He continued, "No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes, politicians in civics classes, or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach you anything except how to obey orders.”
Finland has a global reputation for having the best education model.
Turns out, the reason Finland has such successful students is because they put their kids first.
Instead of teaching to the tests like in the U.S., Finnish teachers are given carte blanche to actually teach. They use their ingenuity to engage students and adapt to the needs in their classroom, not some arbitrarily legislated criteria.
Not only that, there's no homework, school days are shorter, and there are more breaks during the day. It shouldn't come as a surprise that when kids stop hating school, they actually start learning.
The U.S. education system needs to be revamped in order for teachers and students to succeed.
For now, it feels like our public school system is caught in a bureaucratic loop of neverending policies and procedures. The kids get lost in the mix and the teachers suffer the collateral damage.
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The only way out is to restructure, but that takes time, money, and fresh new minds at both the school administrative level and in the government. In the meantime, parents have only a few options: private school (which is expensive), homeschooling (which comes with its own set of problems), or working within the system we currently have, which is proving not to be a viable option.
What parents can and should do, however, is get involved — vote in school board elections, get involved in state government and join the PTA. But most importantly, advocate for your kids and support your teachers.
Lauren Reams is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news.