Teachers report instances and trends of student behavior – and general student climate – across their various contexts.
- “I had zero students show up to class today. It’s a class for students who are repeating 10th grade. At the halfway mark, students who passed their classes and got back on track switched back to 11th grade, so I lost all my students who were attending consistently. Usually I have 3-4 show up out of 14 rostered, but today I finally hit the lowest number possible. Heartbreaking because I really wanted to see most of them get back on track and graduate on time.” —High School Teacher in Pennsylvania
- “My HS teacher friend received this from a sophomore student today.: ‘I would like to inform all of you about the fact that I am only at school for attendance purposes. I am not required to do any work that is given to me. You can still give me the work if you choose, but it won’t get done. If you have any questions, please contact me one-on-one through email or in person. During school hours: (student email) After school hours. (personal gmail) Feel free to ask whatever questions you want about what I have said, and I will try my best to answer’. —Anonymous
- “This sounds absurd, but I’ve come to fully believe that a significant part of [students’] helplessness is because they quite literally don’t know how to make decisions. About anything. Every second they aren’t directly asked by an adult to do something, they are plugged into a half dozen different algorithms on their phones. Insta, TikTok, YouTube, whatever. All of these do the same thing. They feed the kids the next video, the next ad, the next content based on their prior online behavior. There is zero evaluation on the part of the kid at any point. Then they ‘engage’ with whatever brainrot or rage bait gets the longer views. They do this for hours and hours every single day, which atrophies their critical thinking skill down to nothing. It also annihilates reading and thinking longevity and stamina. Then they come to school and are asked to contrast two authors’ themes or categorize species or evaluate and select the best multiple choice answer. These tasks are complex and require multiple decisions at different stages. They simply cannot do it. Their brains are mush and that is why they just look at you helplessly, shrug their shoulders and then ask when they can be plugged back into the Matrix.” —Teacher in New York
- “I swear the number of MIDDLE SCHOOLERS I work with who will just sit staring at the table because ‘I don’t have a pencil’ when the pencils are literally a few feet away is insane. It also drives me insane how many adults I work with will just do things for them, further enabling their laziness/learned helplessness.” —Middle School Paraprofessional
- “They don’t know how to be interested in something. They live a life of curated entertainment. They never have to think, ‘what do I want to do/watch/play.’ It’s decided for them by an algorithm. It is absolutely a skill to know what interests you and to seek it out. Most of these kids don’t have the skill. They’ve never had to use it.” —High School Math Teacher in New York
- “I always give a ‘get to know you’ paper early in the year, and I put questions on it about hobbies, volunteer work, jobs (these are high school students) as well as what they like to do in their free time. I used to get really cool answers! Of course, I started teaching before cell phones and tablets/iPads. The last few years the majority of my on-level kids have no hobbies aside from ‘sleeping’, ‘playing video games’, or ‘play on my phone’, and these are the same answers for what they do in their spare time. It’s really sad.” —High School Teacher