I could of gone to the movies...

[Aging Audra]

I taught in the public school system for 43 years. So we are talking the early 80's to the end of the school year last year. Certainly in those decades, I have seen a lot of changes other than my age and my growth over the years. In the early years of my teaching the way I view it as an educator is that students were not coddled as much as they are today.

In my view this is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Students in my earlier years of teaching seemed to get away with more bullying or it was tolerated more often than it is today. I am not sure if students back then had thicker skin or they were just holding things inside more back then which would not be good. (And this is from the perspective of a teacher who taught Kindergarten in an Elementary School that at first was from grades Kindergarten to Grade 6 and later only Grade 5 .) So we are talking mostly the older Elementary aged students.

Todays student is way more emotional and bullying is not tolerated at all in schools as it should have been all along really in my opinion. Students however today are much more emotional and much more complex than they were back even in the 80's and 90's and maybe that was because those students from that time in the 80's and 90's were just keeping it all inside.

I got to see the full spectrum though and yes bullying and attacking teachers no matter what decade it happens in is wrong and should not be tolerated in any school and should be handled accordingly, but in my opinion students today seem to play the system too much at times and want to utilize the school counselor way too often, sometimes to get out of class. This never happened in my Kindergarten classes, but from my colleagues who taught 4th, 5th, 6th grade through the time I taught they said it happened.

 

[Eupher]

I don't have the perspective of a teacher, because that's a job I could never do -- especially in a public school setting. Had I done so, I'd probably still be serving time in prison.

I just don't tolerate the kind of buffoonery that most teachers, including my wife, experience.

That said, I do have experience in the workplace in dealing with entitled, self-indulgent young people who believe the world owes them a living. Ran into that more and more and more as the years went by, which was a great driver in me retiring 6 years ago.

 

[Aging Audra]

I don't have the perspective of a teacher, because that's a job I could never do -- especially in a public school setting. Had I done so, I'd probably still be serving time in prison.

I just don't tolerate the kind of buffoonery that most teachers, including my wife, experience.

That said, I do have experience in the workplace in dealing with entitled, self-indulgent young people who believe the world owes them a living. Ran into that more and more and more as the years went by, which was a great driver in me retiring 6 years ago.

I actually loved teaching. Now would I be saying the same thing to you if I spent 43 years teaching Junior High/Middle School or High School. I don't know, I probably would have retired a lot earlier than just at the end of last school year. Teaching Kindergarten was special. These young little minds really had a yearning for learning. It made what I did a lot of fun.

 

[Eupher]

I actually loved teaching. Now would I be saying the same thing to you if I spent 43 years teaching Junior High/Middle School or High School. I don't know, I probably would have retired a lot earlier than just at the end of last school year. Teaching Kindergarten was special. These young little minds really had a yearning for learning. It made what I did a lot of fun.

My wife loved teaching too, but as a music teacher, her experience wasn't quite the same as many teachers who find themselves teaching those students with little or no interest in learning, who thrive on being disruptive, and enjoy gaming the system. Even she had trouble with a few of her students who drove her nuts -- she was dealing with students who wanted to be there, who had an aptitude of playing a string instrument or singing. It incensed her that the time she wasted dealing with the few little cretins took time away from the majority of students who really wanted to be there.

 

[Aging Audra]

My wife loved teaching too, but as a music teacher, her experience wasn't quite the same as many teachers who find themselves teaching those students with little or no interest in learning, who thrive on being disruptive, and enjoy gaming the system. Even she had trouble with a few of her students who drove her nuts -- she was dealing with students who wanted to be there, who had an aptitude of playing a string instrument or singing. It incensed her that the time she wasted dealing with the few little cretins took time away from the majority of students who really wanted to be there.

The specialty teachers usually had it pretty good even in the higher grades other than maybe the P.E. teachers with the students that just didn't want to do anything and complained all the time. Usually if a student was taking a music class it was because they had some sort of talent with singing or a musical instrument and wanted to be there.

 

[officerripley]

I worked at a state university for years and some of the instructors there had taught in the public school system (K-12) before they went into university teaching and all said the hardest grades by far to teach were junior high/middle school (grades 7, 8, and sometimes 9), even harder than high school (grades 9 or 10-12).

 

[VaughanJB]

Easy the worse "loose" instead of "lose".

 

[KSav]

Easy the worse "loose" instead of "lose".

Another pet peeve of mine.

 

[Olivia]

I could of gone to the movies...​

I could have gone to the movies...​

Repeat each verbally twice. Sound the same?
That can lead to confusion.

 

[Nathan]

I hate that 'of'' instead of 'have'..it's becoming endemic...

I just wonder: maybe they are hard-of-hearing.

Perhaps they haven't yet completed and passed 4th grade grammar.

I do notice the improper language usage, but I don't really care.

 

[KSav]

This thread reminds me of the spoof of "Blurred Lines" that Weird Al Yankovic did several years ago. All three of my kids loved this song, as do I. I think it's catchy and clever. It definitely made the rounds among my publishing peers.

 

[ChiroDoc]

I could of gone to the movies...​

I could have gone to the movies...​

Repeat each verbally twice. Sound the same?
That can lead to confusion.

Yeah, I think that the contraction form, "could've" sounds like "could of", so people who don't visualize words, or have poor education in grammar believe that "could of" is correct English.