I need advice from the older generation. Have youn...

Mentor

I am “older” educator. From my experience, children and families have changed very much and it is so much harder to teach now than it was 25 years ago. There are so many things that have changed!

1. Family values: when I started teaching, families seemed to appreciate and value manners, respect, hard work, and the privilege of a good education. I rarely had behavior problems in the classroom. If I did have a problem, parents were my partners in helping the child learn and correct whatever the problems were. Now, I have actually heard “Ha! I have no control over him! He’s your problem for 6 hours a day!” And “ What did you do to piss him off? If he doesn’t want to do something, let him go play. I don’t see these problems at home. Let him do what he wants.”

2. Kids don’t read or practice math facts or do much of anything to help build meaningful connections to learning outside of school. Kids are not learning and applying academic knowledge to life situations or building upon prior knowledge . They can work an iPad but can’t measure, fix something, solve problems, follow directions to cook or build something. .. and most don’t have any experiences with board games or card games that require math or logic… or patience or social skills…This does not help them in real life or in school.

3. Lack of background knowledge and basic skills: Even 10 years ago kids started kindergarten toilet trained, able to dress themselves, able to tie their shoes, and eat with utensils. The kids who start with us now can’t do anything independently and lack the confidence to even try. They used to know shapes, colors, sing the abc’s, know how to handle a book, understand how to wait, tell you the difference between big and small or heavy and light- and hold a conversation. Now I have kids who start school knowing NONE of these things. I have kids who can’t pretend to cook in the play kitchen, who lack the basic vocabulary to tell the names of fruits or vegetables or cooking tools. I set up a pretend grocery store and only 2 out of 17 kids knew how to play there. They either don’t go to the store or they are in the cart on their parent’s phones the whole time so they have no background knowledge to build upon! And we have kids who are still in pull ups starting Kindergarten who do not have special needs. The parents “don’t want to deal with potty training” or “she doesn’t want to”. This all takes away from teaching academic content. When you have to toilet train a 5 year old, teach them how to use a fork and spoon, and start at toddler level skills and content, the kids are already terribly behind.
4. The required curriculum does not meet kids where they are- the lessons jump right into assuming that kids have all kinds of skills and background knowledge and experiences. But they don’t have them. The day one lesson one, day two lesson two format leads to kids struggling right from day one. When admin insists that teachers follow the curriculum with fidelity, teachers are set up to fail because the kids are just not ready. Some of the curriculum materials we use are terrible- not engaging or meaningful at all. And then there are the endless assessments that take up entire weeks of instructional time. The data they want to collect is useless since we aren’t allowed to deviate from the curriculum to let the data drive instruction. It was not this way in the past. We were allowed to use our children’s skills and interests to build their knowledge and engage them in motivating ways. That is no longer allowed.
5. This is just my theory but, the lack of boundaries, unclear and inconsistent expectations, inconsistent consequences for unsafe and unkind behavior, and permissive parenting has led to kids being super anxious and lacking in confidence on top of the gaps they have in learning. We have major emotional struggles with even our youngest learners. These emotional challenges present as behavior problems. It is now common to have a first grader eloping from their classroom, a third grader pulling the fire alarm, and a preschooler trashing an entire classroom during a tantrum in the same day.

None of this stuff happened in the past. We are dealing with so much more now, but still expected to teach developmentally inappropriate content to address standards that are impossible to meet when our kids can’t do the basics just to be able to learn in a group setting.

How do we help? I wish I had the answers. I think that parent education should be a requirement for one. Every parent should be made aware of the basics of child development and have access to resources that will help them give their kids the tools they need for success. In addition, I would say that we need to let go of the awful curriculums we use, and go back to the basics for expectations and accountability for students’ behavior. And bring back homework within reason. It would be even better if giving kids a phone would be illegal until they are 14… but i know a lot of people would disagree with that.

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