Teacher Reveals 4 Things That Have Become Normalized In High School — That Shouldn’t Be Normal At All
On top of everything else, teachers are also dealing with these new harmful "norms" in the classroom.
Ground Picture / Shutterstock.com Teaching has always been considered a noble profession. However, in recent years, teachers have left the profession because it is no longer rewarding for a multitude of reasons.
Teachers today carry vastly different burdens than those of even two decades ago — from school violence to online learning, they’re often tasked with more than just educating. While many of these obstacles to teaching have been acknowledged, although not rectified, many teachers argue there are a million different things lurking just beneath the surface that they deal with every day.
High school history teacher Alissa on TikTok said there are several things she’s noticed in her classroom alone that have affected the learning culture — all of which have now been misguidedly normalized.
A teacher revealed 4 things that have become normalized in high school that shouldn't be normal at all:
1. Parents texting or calling high school students while they’re in class
“If I had a dollar for every time I asked a child to put their phone away, and they were like, ‘My mom is texting me,’ I would have a lot of money,” Alissa shared. “If it’s not a legitimate emergency, it can wait until lunch.”
Although parental involvement is essential to student success, parental interference and meddling are not. Parents intentionally calling and texting their children throughout the day is disruptive, undermines teacher authority, and serves as a message to other students that it’s okay to use your phone if you have the right excuses ready.
2. The students struggle to follow directions
“I generally have my instructions on the board, on the assignment, and I say them verbally,” Alissa explained. “I still have so many students asking about what we are doing.”
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Despite having her instructions on the board and saying them “verbally four or five times,” she said she always has a student asking what they’re supposed to be doing.
While a great deal of this lapse in attention can be attributed to technological distractions, many experts argue that the post-pandemic shift from online learning has severely impacted students’ attention spans.
3. Teachers spend more time fending off distractions than educating
Especially in our new-age digital landscape, it’s inevitable that there will be technological distractions — especially for high school students.
However, as Alissa explained, tech-related distractions don’t cover even half of the diversions she’s tasked with tackling every day. In fact, she alluded to spending more time dealing with distractions than actually teaching her students. “The amount of sheer distractions makes it super challenging to actually do my job,” she said.
“Whether it be phones, kids coming in tardy, kids giving a high five to the office aid, constantly interrupting me… I’m not able to actually deliver the content I need to because I’m spending so much time monitoring behavior and just trying to get people’s attention.”
While it’s not an entirely new problem, new levels of disrespectful behavior in the classroom have erupted in many school districts in recent years. According to Pew Research Center, one in five teachers admit their students have major disrespectful behavior issues — yet they haven’t been able to address them efficiently.
4. Students don’t come to school prepared — ‘No pencil, no paper, no binder’
“I think that the shift to distance learning during the pandemic definitely disrupted school norms and routines for students and I’m super sympathetic to that,” Alissa said of the unpreparedness. “But it’s also been super frustrating as a teacher.”
Many teachers are forced to make up for lost time because of the pandemic. Having kids come to class unprepared is a serious hindrance to learning.
In many cases (especially given the geographic location and economic status of the community), these students will fall behind without a standard of preparedness, as teachers, districts, and peers don’t have the equitable resources to provide “an extra” pencil, paper, or binder.
“It’s really hard to do your job when kids show up so ill-equipped coming to high school.”
While the pandemic and socio-economic culture have quite clearly affected new generations of students, a great deal of blame can purely be attributed to change. We live in a new world with new problems and challenges, and children are going to inevitably behave differently.
Despite that inevitability, teachers shouldn’t be tasked with dealing with it, especially in an underpaid and overworked culture.
Equipping students and parents with appropriate resources, restructuring school institutions and expectations, and ensuring teachers are properly valued are key to making classrooms a better, safer, and more productive place — not playing the blame game.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories.