Tag Archives: High school teachers

Teaching Tips, Uncategorized

The Real Reason For the Teacher Shortage – There is Never Enough Flair

I have a confession to make. I quit my teaching job two years ago. It was a job that I enjoyed, a job at which I was highly skilled, and a job that gave me purpose, but I still quit. It was the height of the Covid pandemic and I had a baby at home. I was scared of getting myself or my family sick. I was also worried about keeping my students safe, calm, and productive in the midst of such stressful times. If I’m really honest though, Covid is not the only reason why I walked away from teaching. It was definitely a motivating factor for my departure, but the actual reason was that I just didn’t have enough flair.

By flair, of course, I am referring to the 1999 movie Office Space, in which Joanna (Jennifer Anniston) works as a waitress at Chotchkie’s Restaurant and is encouraged to wear buttons or “flair” on her uniform. The restaurant required her to wear 15 pieces of flair but the manager continually encouraged Joanna to wear more, pointing out other workers who wore more than double the minimum.

So how does this relate to teaching? Well the teaching profession has it’s own pieces of flair. These are the unspoken expectations and obligations every teacher takes upon themselves that go beyond their actual job description; the sometimes visible, often invisible, tasks that cause escalating stress and challenges.

Some examples of teacher flair are:

  • Sponsoring clubs or extracurricular activities
  • Lunch duty / Hall duty / Bus duty
  • Study Hall Supervision
  • Buying classroom supplies
  • Chaperoning events
  • Coaching
  • Professional development
  • Teambuilding exercises
  • Detention supervision
  • Attending musicals, plays, art shows, sporting events, etc.
  • Active shooter drills
  • Organizing events
  • Creating play props, flyers, posters, etc.

The list really goes on and on. Depending on the age level, subject, and school, each teacher has a monumental list of flair that is expected of them.

Then there are the pieces of flair that weigh the most, the emotional flair. It’s seeing students sent to school filthy and disheveled, students who don’t sleep at home and are zombies at school, students who have been through trauma and are doing their best just to keep it together, and students who are bullied. And then you also have to deal with those students who are the bullies, students who purposely damage your classroom supplies and tools, students who are cruel and demeaning, students who are violent. You have to try to meet each of these student’s unique needs and, let’s face it, it’s a monumental and somewhat impossible task. It’s hard not to feel like you’re constantly dropping the ball somewhere.

Couple all of this with the fact that teachers are often treated as glorified babysitters. In the midst of a huge teacher shortage, politicians are lowing teacher standards and shoe-horning unqualified people into the profession, assuming that anyone can teach. I guess that’s easier and cheaper than exploring the reasons that qualified educators are leaving in droves. Still, without addressing these issues, we will just keep seeing shortages. Do we really only want a cheap babysitter for our kids? Don’t they deserve educators who understand how to meet a variety of students’ learning needs, and who also have a vast understanding of subject matter? I guess when you are looking for someone to do a job that no one else wants, expertise isn’t high on your list of requirements.

And in a profession in which 75% of those employed are women, teachers are rarely afforded with necessities like paid maternity leave, a comfortable and secure place to pump at work, childcare assistance, or even enough time to go to the bathroom during the work day. My workplace did not offer paid maternity leave so I worked up until the day before I gave birth. Many days I was almost in tears waiting to go to the bathroom, and then I would scramble to make it to the bathroom and back during a five-minute passing period. I managed as well as I could until I fell on my stomach on my last day at work. Luckily, my baby and I were both fine. Still, I can’t help but think the stress of working that last month was not good for my pregnancy. How many other women are put in similar or worse situations?

Then you have the shadow of mass shootings looming over schools, tainting each new year with an unspoken unease. Teachers have to train students to constantly notice their surroundings, to flee or fight in the case of an active shooter. As a teacher, I was trained to tell my students how to distract the assailant by throwing items at him while rushing him to get the gun. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, thinking that we are convincing these kids they might actually have a chance against someone with a semi-automatic rifle. All they have to do is act like they are John McClane in Die Hard and they’ll save the day.

A mannequin with a colorful blouse on and a jean jacket over that with many colorful novelty buttons. The text at the top says, "there is never enough flair".

And here is the kicker: Most teachers are not minimum flair people. We want to meet all these expectations. Teachers feel immense guilt when we haven’t taken on enough or gone the extra mile. We love our students and feel like it’s our job to make sure that they are succeeding. Though I’m sure there are the rare few out there, I don’t know a single teacher who is merely just showing up. Most are trying to do it all, and all with a smile. Teachers just continue to find a way to make the impossible work day after day after day. But while that is happening, we take an enormous mental load home. We never stop thinking about our jobs. We go to sleep and wake up thinking about how we can do better. It is one of the most wonderful and yet most taxing parts of teaching.

Even though teachers soldier on in the face of impossible demands, everyone has a breaking point. For me, it was when I was asked to do lunch duty in the height of Covid, in a cafeteria with poor ventilation, with hundreds of students unmasked, and all while I was still pumping at work. I was mainly afraid of contracting Covid and bringing it back to my baby and husband. At the time, it was still a very deadly disease and no vaccines were available. On top of that though, I would lose my prep period in order to perform lunch duty. That meant that I would have a mere 25 minutes to rush the bathroom, eat, and pump. I would have to hold the pump on me while I was scarfing down my lunch. Then I had to be composed and prepared for my next class. It was too much, just too many pieces of flair, if you will.

The bottom line though is this: Most teachers have more than enough energy and talent to give to their job if we would just get out of their way and let them do it. We need to let educators concentrate on what they do best, teaching. Let’s get the focus off of the flair, and back on the fundamentals. Let’s give teachers some dignity by allowing them to have basic restroom breaks and lunch hours. Let’s support pregnant and nursing teachers who may need extra accommodations. I guarantee that teachers will flock back if they feel respected, supported, and empowered to teach. And they’ll probably still supply some of that extra flair because that’s just what teachers do.

Teaching Tips

Five High school discipline strategies that work

Like most secondary teachers, I’ve struggled with finding the right high school discipline strategies for my classroom. If I’m honest, discipline has never been my strong suit, but I have learned (sometimes the hard way) some techniques that actually work for me and have made my teaching life easier. I’ll share my insights on these high school discipline techniques below and I’d love to hear feedback from other teachers on their go-to classroom management strategies.



1. Build Relationships – Show You Care

This may be an obvious strategy to most teachers, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to build a positive rapport with your students. When students know you care about them, they respond better to your teaching and classroom rules.

Obviously, this strategy is proactive and will require you to make a daily effort to really get to know your students. I try to walk around every class period and ask personal questions of each student. I try to make the questions specific because teens can be vague and elusive. Instead of asking, “How was your weekend?” I might say, “What was the last good movie you saw?”. I also look for conversation starters based on the student’s possessions. For instance, if a student has a Cubs shirt on, I may ask if they’ve ever been to a game or if they have a favorite player. If they are reading a book, I may ask them what types of books they enjoy reading or would recommend. Showing you care about their interests and value their opinions is a great way to build relationships.

I also make an effort to inject humor into my interactions with students. Whether it’s through funny memes or groan-worthy jokes, I want to make the classroom a space where it is safe to be a little goofy. That also helps students feel relaxed and more willing to open up.

Finally, I make sure my students know I am here to listen to them. I’ve been a shoulder to cry on and an open ear to many of my students who were going through issues from a bad break up to a parent’s passing. I always let them know they have a safe space to talk through these things with me, but I also stress that any serious issues will need to also be shared and followed up with our administration.

Relationship building is so essential to the success of every other initiative in your classroom, but it’s even more than that. It’s also so enjoyable to get to know your students and to build the kind of mentoring relationship that will allow you to help them grow and succeed both in and beyond high school. It’s as rewarding for a teacher as it is for the student.

2. Don’t Jump to Conclusions

You know that old saying about what happens when you assume? Well it can apply to teachers as well. Sometimes we are hard-wired to assume a student is trying to pull one over on us because, often times, they are. Jumping to conclusions, however, can possibly damage positive relationships and create an embarrassing situation for you or the student. For example, one time I heard a digital notification in my classroom that sounded like a phone. I immediately stopped what I was doing, walked to where I heard the sound, and demanded the student turn over their phone. As it turns out, it was not their phone that made the sound, but rather a digital insulin monitor. Even though it was an honest mistake, I felt horrible and I know the student had to be embarrassed.

Here is how I could have addressed the situation better: I could have reminded the students as a whole that phones needed to be off. I could then pull the student aside when the class started to work and ask them if they accidentally left their phone on. This would show that I don’t automatically assume the worst of my students and it avoids the embarrassment of disciplining in front of the other students.

Now, it’s important to note that this doesn’t mean you always believe anything a student says. If you’ve given a student a warning, they are doing something dangerous, or are chronically abusing a rule, they’ve lost the benefit of the doubt. That said, it doesn’t hurt to start from a position of trust.

3. Use Classroom Management that Puts the Student in Charge

This is a strategy that requires a leap of faith, but whenever I’ve implemented it, my life’s gotten easier. This strategy recognizes that students are capable of self-discipline and can handle the responsibilities and privileges that go along with that. This is not to say that there won’t be certain students who still can’t manage themselves and will lose the privilege. It also doesn’t mean that you don’t monitor students. In fact, this strategy can often create more detailed records of student activities and behavior with less work on your part.

You can give students more responsibility in a number of ways but you can get the greatest success through the establishment of classroom norms and routines. It might be as simple as having a work portal on your learning management system that they are responsible for checking daily and can refer to if they missed a day. You may even structure each class period the same with scheduled activities the students need to accomplish before the end of each day (a checklist works well for students to track this). You may flip the classroom and make students responsible for watching instructional videos outside of class before addressing a topic in class. Whatever you do, make sure there is a record that they can keep and that you periodically check.

I’ve found a lot of success from a bathroom pass policy I’ve implemented that allows students to monitor themselves. Even though they fill out a sign-out form, I monitor it to make sure students are gone appropriate amounts of time and aren’t abusing the privilege. Because they can choose to leave at any time it’s made for less interruptions during class time and students like the extra freedom.

4. Allow Emotions but Not Distractions

No one is perfect and we’ve all had rough days. For teens who lack impulse control and may not understand how to process their emotions, this can result in somewhat melodramatic reactions and even anger and lashing out. It’s important as an educator to remember not to take this personally, but still make sure the student knows what is acceptable behavior in your classroom.

If a student responds in an irrational, angry, or rude way, don’t immediately cut them off because it can make them even more argumentative and defensive. Instead, calmly allow them to finish their thought before responding. Then acknowledge that they are feeling frustrated and that is okay, but remind them that it is never acceptable to to be disrespectful, even if they are upset. Once they are calm, ask them why they are upset and remind them that you are here to listen, or offer to contact their counselor if they don’t want to talk to you. If discipline is necessary, follow through, but make sure they know their actions were the problem and not their emotions.

It’s important to remove a student whose emotions cause them to be a distraction or students who are overly rude and aggressive. Depending on the case, you may choose to send the student to guidance or the principal’s office. In less extreme cases, you might just ask them to take a walk to the bathroom to clear their head.

5. Don’t Argue but Do Follow Through

It is pointless to argue with a teenager. Let me say that again. It is pointless to argue with a teenager. If you try, you are just wasting everyone’s time.

Instead of arguing, have clear and consistent consequences for student’s actions. If they want to argue over those consequences, calmly state that it’s not up for discussion. Don’t take a sarcastic or angry tone, but make sure to model a calm and respectful demeanor. You may have to repeat yourself, but make sure you just calmly reiterate that you will not argue over the issue.

If the student won’t take no for an answer, send them to the office. You can’t take time out of your class to argue. You will hopefully only have to do this a few times before students realize you intend to follow through on rules and it’s pointless to argue about it.

High School Discipline Strategies

So there you go, my top five strategies for managing discipline in my classroom. As you can see, most come down to respect, caring, and consistency. It’s also important to stress that no one strategy will always be successful because we’re working with people and people are complicated. Adjust your techniques and reassess situations as needed.

It’s also important to realize that you’ll probably make mistakes as a teacher because you’re only human as well. Don’t expect perfection from yourself and go easy on yourself if you make a mistake. As long as you keep trying, that’s all that matters. And anyway, the beauty of teaching is you always get another chance each year to improve what you do.

I hope you find some of these tips encouraging. I’d love to hear from you other seasoned teachers about what works best in your classrooms. Feel free to comment below and good luck on another upcoming school year. Hopefully this will be your best yet!