This popped up in my feeds:

My response: I’m glad I retired when I did… I loved the “mission” of teaching kids, but the environment was not safe or even doable in the end. I feel badly for those still fighting the fight. Of my 28-years as a teacher, I spent 20-years in low SES public schools. It’ll age you and wear you down to nothing. We did good things with what we had, we worked like hell and I loved most of the amazing folks I worked with. It’s a tragedy that our culture has deemed teachers and public education as an expendable pawn in their quest to “win.” For the most part it was never about teaching skill or style, or curriculum or even technology moving so much faster than educational policies. It was almost always about culture and accountability changes that no one “in authority” wanted to talk about or do anything about (beyond blaming teachers, that is). I feel for those still showing up every day, to do their best and help students learn.

Post-script: A friend asked in the comments, why do you think it’s happening?

My response: Great question, there’s a definite breakdown in accountability and respect. Our culture “respects” individuality and has no conscious appreciation of the commons and what is needed for a constructive society. We don’t want anyone telling us what to do (which I have to admit, I strongly identify with), and our unregulated technologies empower the few to hurt “others” on a level that was never possible before… sadly this is not what “most” kids would dream of doing, but it’s the unchecked tyranny of a loud but small segment of kids, and most common reaction by those in authority is to look the other way and hope it goes away. No public official, administrator, school board member is going to tell parents that their kids are acting like disrespectful assholes because they’re “politicians” with their jobs largely dependent on support from said parents. So, teachers get blamed and minority groups get blamed… And, in my experience, things were worse after the pandemic, largely because some students had “forgotten” what it was like to be in a roomful of people and acted however they wanted to act with some dedicated to not cooperating. And with reduced numbers of teachers, administrators were also overwhelmed and had no meaningful response to the problems we faced daily. In my 28-years I never experienced so many teachers walking out and never coming back in the middle of the school year as I did in the two years following the pandemic (and a record number of assistant principals left or moved elsewhere too). I just can’t imagine what these unfortunate teachers have been going through. Personally I don’t care what others might think about me, especially online, but to be attacked online by one’s own students or groups of students, that’ll take the wind out your sail.

I once joked when a fellow Full Sail professors quipped that teaching there would be the perfect job except for the people (she was a bit of a introvert, who, I might add had lots of friends who absolutely loved her)… Anyway, I have to say after my many long years, that I agree with her, this was the perfect job except for (some of) those pesky students. I would have loved to have put in another two or so years (it would have helped financially, for sure), but the same a-holes who came back from the pandemic would have continued to make things not doable for those two years… and I was so worn out that I didn’t even want to look elsewhere (which is what a huge portion of my co-workers did when I was leaving… what does that tell you…). So, obviously, even after a full year away, I’m still processing the “experience” and I don’t have an answer or “happy thoughts” about said experiences. Most of it was amazing, but the bad parts were bad enough for me to say, “nope” when the offer to return comes up.

Another comment from an online friend: I have a 16 yr old and a 10 yr old at home, which lends me some insight. Here’s where that may have sparked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaBB8qVqjBQ

My response: Wow. Thanks for the links. I taught middle school in California in the 2000s and for three years here in Las Vegas. Some fellow teachers and students found my YouTube channel but it wasn’t for them so they quickly lost interest and I wasn’t posting to YouTube with any frequency (because I was so damn overwhelmed teaching…). So I’m thankful that I didn’t have to deal with any online harassment. But then, I’ve been maintained some online presence since the 2000s and while I speak from the heart, I know to edit my online-self and not leave myself just as I would in a face-to-face public setting. But this is not to say that anyone being harassed deserves to have fake accounts created in their names or any of that. We live in weird times and I no longer have the excuse of being too busy to notice. Thanks for your responses and point of view.

Sources:

Tags: teachers targeted online, personal tech and education, problems with TikTok, social error not ed or tech, TikTok deep fakes

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