I’ve taught in the very same extremely low socioeconomic public regional high school since 2000. It’s a super rough school, as bad as it gets. So I’ve had 23 years of watching the very same kids and families come in and out of our school. I currently have 2 students whose mothers I taught.

So I’ve had a really rare opportunity to be able to compare apples with apples for 23 years - and them still be apples. The kids haven’t really changed. They’re probably more tolerant that they used to be if anything, but that’s about it.

I have done for 23 years and still do see some shocking behaviours each day.

I think though, the difference is that 20 years ago we were focussed on teaching and had the time and energy to focus on learning our craft. We had the emotional time and energy to put into learning management strategies.

Schools used to be much more collegiate and you would chat to everyone in the staffroom at lunch and ask around if someone taught the kid who is making your life hell and the oldies would offer tips. You’d get an offer to pop into an oldies classroom to observe and actually be able to observe cause you weren’t filling out reams of paper work. An oldie would offer to take the painful kid out of class and pop them into their senior class to give you a break - and not have to fill out reams of paperwork to do a favour.

Now every poor bastard is just so overwhelmed emotionally and time wise with trying to get all this superfluous shit done that no one has time to chat and help each other out. Everyone is so overwhelmed they don’t have time to chat and throw around ideas, let alone any of the other stuff.

I’ve seen a plethora of new grads struggle under the workload and actual teaching and learning isn’t the priority.

The behaviours haven’t changed, we’re just not allowing new grads the time to develop their craft in the classroom so that they can manage these behaviours. Too many other things take precedent. We’ve taken the focus away from learning your craft and focus instead on admin.

The school system is failing grads in that they aren’t allowing them to learn the tools they need to better their classroom craft.

Ok, rant over, sorry. The workload new grads especially face, really grinds my gears.