I think that’s what the college kids were playing with when I was in high school.

Started college in 1995, and I indeed did have ICQ before too long. Still remember my number (6725571).

You probably had all three installed on your computer and probably all running at once.

I remember using a program called Trillian (which is still around!) in the late 90s/early 00s. It allowed you to connect multiple IM accounts in one app. It was sorta finicky, but it got the job done.

Are these the kids got hit hardest by the pandemic lockdowns?

The prevalent theory among my colleagues is that it was something about the age these students were during virtual learning (ages 9-11) that may have been the deciding factor in why they are comparably so much worse behaved that any class of students before or after them, but I couldn’t say.

I enjoy teaching, or at least, transferring knowledge and experience, I’ll do it to pretty much anyone who sits still long enough,

Samesies. I love teaching, but sometimes I really dislike “being a teacher” because of the lack of support or any attempt at understanding what actually goes on inside the classroom day-to-day by admins, parents, or community members. I am good with mentoring a couple students each year and going them overcome their issues. But I don’t have the capacity to do it for all 50+ kids who are making it impossible for the other 120 to learn.

Good luck, and I hope things get better for the kids and teachers everywhere.

Thanks, preesh.

[x] doubt

Sorry, where did you get your two education degrees from again, and how many years have you been teaching?

You mentioned class sizes of 30+ this year, were they that large in the past? That size class is way too large and lends itself to chaos as it is hard to keep them all engaged.

I am new to this school, but the teachers at the school who had 8th graders last year have confirmed their class sizes last year were the same, but the student’s were not nearly as unruly. The 7th grade teachers who had my students last year have some classes in the 30s this year and last year, and they have confirmed that this group of 8th graders were also hell on wheels last year, but that their 7th graders this year are much more well-behaved.

Hate to break it to you, but this is my 6th year teaching 8th graders and my 18th overall, everything from elementary school through college, and I know more than you…namely, how these 8th graders this year are very, very different from any other group of students any of the 8th grade teachers this year have ever experienced.

I am autistic as well. I am not joking. More details.

I’ve been teaching for 18 years. Every year before this one, things have gone relatively well. They talk a little, I quiet them down, we have a lesson, time is embedded in it for group work, and I tell them I’d like 85% of their conversation to be about the assignment. Most kids are decent. A few are superb. Some do jack shit and I struggle all year to get them to do anything. And about 5% of the students cause problems and make it harder for their classmates to learn, but they get dealt with.

Not this year. Four classes of 30+, and in all six classes a full third of the 8th grade students can’t see beyond two seconds from now. My shit is getting stolen, students leave their binder in their locker when they’re supposed to bring it to every single class in the building, and their entire purpose in any given moment is to say/do/destroy whatever they can to create laughs/anger/shock in someone else, who could as easily be right in front of them as they could be on the opposite end of the room. A third. Of each class. And it is relentless. The teacher next door to me had her interactive TV display destroyed by a kid yesterday…the screen is completely shattered.

Every teacher that shares these kids is having the exact same issues across the board. So we are presenting a united front and shutting it the fuck down.

The one thing that requires zero effort is shutting the motherfucking hell UP during a lesson, but my 8th grade students can’t seem to make it happen, so I separated their desks yesterday afternoon and pointed all of them forward, and they’ll no longer be engaging in group work.

Edit: Because we have a bunch of Dunning-Krugers in this comment thread, I will clarify.

I’ve been teaching for 18 years. This is my 6th year teaching 8th grade. I have four classes with more than 30 students, and a full third of the students in all six classes won’t stop talking. This is not an incompetent first-year teacher saying this. This is not a jaded, about-to-retire teacher saying this. This is not just a paycheck for me. It is my vocation and I take it seriously. I earned a Bachelor’s in education and a Master’s in math education; my K12 students generally love my classes because I am knowledgeable and make math fun to learn, and I always get the highest evaluation scores for the undergraduate classes with students regularly saying “I always used to struggle with/be afraid of/hate math, but [teacher] helped me get my first A/B ever in a math class.”

The entire school…from the teachers to the administrators…knows what I know about this group of 8th graders, that the behavior of one-third of them is beyond the pale. None of us has had a set of students like these before, and none of us has a great solution. So we are just going to take away all privileges and give them back slowly over time once they’ve shown that they have earned them.

It’s not just that they talk to much. It is that it is a third of every class, that they make it impossible to teach the two-thirds who are capable of being decent students on any given day, that they take pride and literal pleasure in being disruptions, that they have little shame or humility and thus no impetus to allow their teachers to teach, that phone calls home are fruitless, that we have little recourse as far as the administration is concerned and have to keep them in class, that I am autistic with auditory processing disorder and can’t understand what a kid right in front of me is saying even with me putting my ear right next to their mouth and them repeating their question three times…

So please save armchair teachering because you really, really don’t know what you’re talking about.

You are literally shaming the bodies of people who have small penises, something that they cannot control which is not any indication of their character.

Body shaming isn’t necessary. We can shame people for things that are within their ability to control.

My parents each smoked two packs a day inside the house for the entire 20 years I lived with them, and my mom had a massive heart attack and died at age 63. I carry a lot of trauma around all that, so I have a boundary about being around people who smoke anything, really. I should have exercised it that day, but my boundaries were sort of flimsy then.

Possibly from stoners? Not badmouthing weed, and I have anxiety myself so I get it, and I get that some people medicate with it for the purpose of anxiety. But holy cow man, you gotta respect a person’s time.

She was an hour and a half late. I only waited for her because she was responding to my messages, apologized for her tardiness, and said a couple times she’d be there withing 20-30 minutes which led to a 90-minite wait). Once she got there, she told me that she was late because she was having some anxiety that day and went to a friend’s to smoke a bowl first. She chainsmoked on the patio, and I sat away from her because I don’t want to smell that while I’m eating. She told me about a terrible book she was writing, with the sort of stupid plot you’d get from r/writingprompts. And then she said she needed to get high again and asked me if I wanted to come to her car with her while she did. I declined and said I was gonna head home. Proceeded to promply never see her again.

I’m 47 in the US, and I have felt this way most of my adult life. In my teens and 20s, I always felt like an afterthought. I’d ask to be included to group events, and I rarely remember ever being invited. I’d try to chime in when people were talking, but what I’d say never quite seemed to land right. The microexpressions on people’s faces indicated to me that I wasn’t a social equal but that I was simply being tolerated.

It didn’t even occur to me that I was autistic until I was 39, and it took until I was 46 for me to get myself diagnosed with ASD1. But I’ll tell you…something happened in my 30s. I don’t know what it was exactly that changed things for me in this regard, probably a multitude of things, but I am no longer the person I was in my 20s.

Maybe it was the fact that I got two degrees. Or that I was married for 17 years (now divorced, but it was my decision) and have two great kids. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I developed a career as a teacher and have felt pride in the accomplishments I’ve made in my vocation. Or maybe it was just the passage of time that allowed me to develop coping mechanisms that work for me…time that tempered my worries about myself and my place in this world among others.

Whatever transpired, I’m no longer the sort of person who cares what people think of me. Of course, I always aim to be the best version of myself, someone people will admire and recognize as a safe, consensual, trauma-informed person, so I do want people to consider me a good and decent person.

But I can never control their perception of me as an autistic person. I’m different. Everyone knows it when they get to know me. When I discovered at age 39 that I was likely autistic, I told my colleagues, and they were shocked that I didn’t already know that about myself because they all clocked me as autistic pretty much immediately after meeting me three years prior.

So, instead of trying to hide it better in order to fit in. I wear my autism right on my sleeve. I tell people “When I’m in a group and say something awkward, and I can see the awkwardness on their faces 🤨, I just respond with ‘🫤😯…I…I’M AUTISTIC. 😬🙃’ And then everyone goes 'OH! Okay, that’s what it is, gotcha…I knew it was something like that! 😁”.

By telling people this, it let’s them know my sense of humor about my condition and sets them (and me) up for awkwardness in the future. Because it’s going to happen. Not all my jokes will land. Sometimes I’m gonna chime into a conversation and my comment will completely flop. But my out can always be “'🫤😯…I…I’M AUTISTIC. 😬🙃”. They’ll remember that my awkward comment isn’t my fault, that it’s this wacky thing about my brain and the way it works, and they won’t just sit their with a weird look on their face trying to figure out how to move past what I’ve just said. They’ll laugh, because I can laugh at myself! And I don’t feel so alone any more. I get invited to parties, and I’m included in the conversation.

Beyond having a sense of humor about yourself, the best advice I can give is to learn how to really listen, ask questions, and care about the responses and the people who give them. Low self-worth has been a constant companion in my life. I rarely felt valued, so I tried to create value among others by providing them with entertainment…being the funny one, or having off-the-wall talents (developed through periods of hyperfixation). I know now that my worth as a person can only be evaluated by me, and I know that I am as valuable as a human being as anyone else is, regardless of what I provide others.

That being said, what brings me great joy is being considered a friend and confidant, someone people value as a companion. And I foster that by caring about them, their experiences, and their feelings. I listen to them…really listen…not just waiting to say what I want to say in response, but thinking of questions I can ask, considering how their experiences make them feel, and proferring up advice when it is requested.

Anyway, that’s a lot. Off to work. Good luck to you!

invariably someone

a robotic voice

I’m 5’ 9" and dated a 6’ 3" cis woman for a year. She’d wear six-inch heels when we’d go out. There was no “poor fella” about it, she was an Amazonian knockout, and I got to fuckin’ climb her like a tree.

Tai Chea

From r/sbubby way back when. “A funcking beesechurger for monch.”

“…that’s China.”

“YOU’RE China!”

If the budget is there then I’ll consider it, kupo!

I want to open a Final Fantasy-themed Vietnamese restaurant in south central Arizona. I’m going to call it “Pho Enix”.

Not sure where to open up shop, but I’m thinking Scottsdale.