I had a security system installed in my home recently. The installer, I’ll call him Stan, and I would get chatting every once in a while. Once he discovered that I was a teacher he wanted to pick my brain about “kids today”. Turns out he was a source of valuable information about our students.
“Do the kids listen to you in school?” was his lead off question. “Hmmm,” I thought aloud, forming my response. “It does take a lot of work to get and keep their attention,” my diplomatic reply. What I wanted to say was, “No! They don’t listen! It’s like every day is a new day and I have to go over and over what listening in school looks like and sounds like!” But I chose instead to maintain a more professional stance.
“Well let me tell you,” Stan continued. “They don’t listen to their parents. And they don’t respect their parents either. It’s like all parents want to do is be their kids’ friend. Instead of disciplining them, they negotiate with them when. Even my own daughter does it and that’s not how I raised her.” He went on to describe some scenes from homes he had been in. Children smacking their parents because they couldn’t get what they wanted and mom or dad explaining why they had to say no. Parents negotiating with their kids regarding whether they should be allowed to eat a cookie right before dinner and being allowed ‘half now and half later’. Moms and dads bargaining with their kids to try to get them to listen and behave.
As Stan spoke I began to get a picture of where the school behavior was coming from. Let’s use picking up behind yourself as an example. Every day I have to remind my class to pick things up off the floor. EVERY DAY! And when I walk down the hall after school lets out I see the garbage being swept out of classrooms. Pencils, crayons, erasers, highlighters, Expo markers, small toys, food wrappers, Post-its, stickers…all being swept out at the end of the day rather than being picked up by the children during the day! According to Stan, kids come in from school, throw down their backpacks, sweatshirts, shoes, jackets, and whatever and leave it there. An adult comes along and picks things up, not the kids.
Next time you get the opportunity, pick the brain of the people who see the families in action. I don’t know about you, but my colleagues and I are always trying to figure out what is different about our students these days. Is it the effects of hybrid learning due to Covid, is it the interruption they experienced to their education, is it too much screen time or parents trying to make up for all their children may have lost? We may not ever truly know, and it is probably a little of this and a little of that, but understanding what home life might look like right now for our kids may help us understand the new challenges we face as educators.
writintime 
An interesting perspective. It can be helpful to have another set of eyes…I also wonder…are the kids changing or am I? In the same way I can’t truly remember how badly my last cold felt, I wonder if I’m erasing some of the pencils and erasers out of my memory.
Either way, I too will be asking students to pick up, and sometimes naming each piece of floor debris by name.
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You can make a graph of what they lose most often! Haha!
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Often, I say to a student, “You are behaving in this fashion because it is tolerated in other places…” or “You are trying this approach with me because it works on other adults…” I then add that in this classroom for which this adult is responsible, things are different. In the vast majority of cases, students adjust. They rise to the standards set and reinforced in a new context. This gives me faith and respect in our students. Too many have permissive parents, I agree. Our culture has distracted so many so-called grown-ups from their missions. Still, it makes the work of responsible professionals all the more important. Thanks for posing this viewpoint.
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Yes! My students knew that I would not tolerate bad language. I came down hard on each situation. Later in the year, if another student, who wasn’t one of mine happened to be in a classroom after school with their friend, my student, said something inappropriate, they were immediately shut down by my student with the admonishment, “Mrs. Zody doesn’t allow that kind of language.” It always made me proud of my students.
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Students know what they can get away with whom. My students were required to clean up and leave a room neat before they went out the door. The housekeeping staff always thanked me for the clean rooms I taught in. I would have students come to me for various items during the day, sometimes a memo the office had sent out, because their teacher didn’t have that item or memo. One time I asked a student why she was in my room to get whatever she needed. “Because you are the only teacher I have who is organized and knows where things are.” And this was 20 years ago. so, things haven’t changed so much. We all have to have very high standards and maintain them.
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At least it is good know know that’s the struggle is universal.
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