Even for students without disabilities, a calculator removes the cognitive demand of the arithmetic. If I am teaching algebra, I want most of their cognition to be taken up by the algebra, not the arithmetic.

I disagree.

I tutored a college student who had dysgraphia. They originally had a calculator accommodation, but this was removed at the request of the instructor.

The student was in no way incapable of learning the material in the class - a remedial math course mostly on basic statistics and presenting data. But they were incapable of remembering most of the multiplication table.

There’s no reason to force a person to do long division by hand. The student was perfectly capable of understanding the process of calculating an average, but actually doing the problem meant that they were counting out by threes on their hand to do 3x7.

I’ve worked with dyslexic students on writing assignments - they are just as capable of intelligently responding to a writing prompt if you ask them verbally. Why should they be punished because they can’t spell (especially when we had like a decade of NOT TEACHING PHONICS)?

I draw a hard line at generative AI, but as long as the thoughts are theirs, I’ve never been concerned too much with students using tools to help them.

Sure, you can do that once. Then you are out the job. Talking about politics will get you in more trouble than raping a kid.

I went into teaching because I care about making the world a better place. It cost me my marriage, it has sunk me into some of the deepest pits of despair that my mental health could take, it has meant physical and verbal abuse.

Buying pencils for kids is the kind of thing that you don’t mind too much, because at least it is a problem you can fix.

Once, I had a student ask me for a pencil. (He’d ask me everyday - usually in response to me asking why he wasn’t doing his work.) He looked me in the eye, snapped it in half, and asked for another.

I gave it to him. Who cares. I couldn’t fix the sinks which didn’t work and stunk because kids shoved shit into them, but I could fix the fucking pencil.

It’s a terrible job where you are expected to save the world and hated for everything you do. But, as a dog returns to his vomit, I’ve ended up saying yes to a middle school position and start tomorrow. It’s part of my soul.

Bingo.

First week of the job: “hey, stop talking about your college experiences with the kids. These kids are never going to college, so none of it will ever connect with them.”

Canvas has a very neat “annotation” tool, where the teacher can upload a document and students can write on it and submit.

I also see a lot of canvas assignments where the answer is in an auto graded quiz, but the teacher has the students take a picture and upload to show their scratch work. This can be added as a “question” to the assignment.

There are good ways to use the tools for sure - I did really like that the auto graded quizzes on canvas could use randomized numbers. Eg, when I did speed/distance/time, I could write a word problem where it would randomize the quantities so each student got a unique quiz and couldn’t cheat.

Tools like PHeT/CK12/other simulation programs are also a godsend. Even working with college chemistry, being able to show visual representations of acid/base dissociation or how to balance an equation makes things so much easier.

The platforms are great - the work flow problems are more consequent to the way the school system is set up, especially in the Title 1 hell schools that are left to fall through the cracks.

White flight and a state that hates education.

The rest of the science department were “emergency certified” - eg, random bachelors degrees.

I know for the fact the district has put teachers in without BACKGROUND CHECKS.

Also spent several hundred just on vinegar and baking soda for labs.

But yeah, I actually had to quit teaching after my divorce because I could no longer afford to do it!

The most I dealt with was around 36. I had around 28 chairs.

However, the feeder middle school had class sizes of 60+. There were literal riots, with multiple teachers injured, that the district covered up.

There are multiple such platforms - Canvas, ClassDojo, InfiniteCampus. Heck, you can even go with the free and open source Moodle. Most of these also integrate with useful online tools, like Desmos (graphing calculator) and PHeT (science simulations.)

This can help with workload, because you can often set up things like multiple choice quizzes that grade themselves (but how often should that be your primary way of assessing students?)

The problem is that some skills simply need to be learned with pen and paper. I have taught and tutored chemistry for years - balancing equations and stoichiometry are skills that you can’t really learn on a computer.

There’s also evidence that computer based notetaking is less effective - that students remember less.

Yeah. The system in the US works on exploiting, crushing, and discarding young teachers. Almost none of the other teachers I met while teaching are still in the profession. You are expected to martyr yourself for the job - I usually didn’t get to eat lunch, because I was busy. I stopped drinking water, because I ended up pissing myself one day when I couldn’t get to the restroom.

They also have to be paying for the software that tracks how many prints you use. It’s fucking stupid, and it’s just one of a million little ways that they make sure to punish anyone stupid enough to teach.

I ended up buying my own printer. Printing alone got me to the maximum $300 of classroom expenses I was allowed to write off on taxes.

My first year teaching I was encouraged to do everything on the chromebooks, because the district wanted to save on printing costs.

If you have 100+ students, and are limited to 500 pages/month (I could print 500 more, but had to purchase my own paper…), you have to use the laptops.

Also, when parents and students increasingly treat attendance as a suggestion, keeping up with paper assignments is hellish. There were days I showed up with 1/3 or more of my class missing - with online class work, I at least could say “the work is available online.”

The technology is a problem, but it’s a problem that’s arisen because class sizes are out of control and admin has zero idea what is going on in the classroom. It’s a bandage that’s been left on so long the skin is starting to get infected around it.

Also assuming that mental health care even exists in your state…. Oklahoma doesn’t even have providers to get that expensive evaluation from…

I tutor, and I’ve ran into lots of rich boys with disabilities who learn that they can get their parents to pay for their homework to be done for them (or the mom does it herself…). Fired a client because he had too much of a “reading disability” to do the required reading for the paper we were writing - previous tutors would write his papers for him!

The DOJ has had a moratorium on pursuing any Title 9 claims related to gender identity for several years now. The EEOC has not been investigating claims of discrimination related to gender identity in several districts also for several years now.

These are specific items that need to be addressed.

I think many people really don’t like knowing that other people suffer. Much easier to pretend that suffering doesn’t exist by not interacting with it. But once you overcome that hurdle of realizing that suffering exists, then there’s so much joy to be found in being able to actually eliminate some of it.

K-12 STEM stuff is so fun! I’ve got to be a badge counselor a few times and that was a delight.

Do you have a stabby stick, or do you just wear gloves?

Is JustServe alright? The context I learned about it was Mr Beast teaming up with the LDS church, and I wasn’t sure if it was a Mormon thing or not.

One of my favorite things in college was checking out my fraternity chapters website for volunteer sign ups. It was fun to have a menu of opportunities every weekend. It would be nice to just go to an app or something instead of just trying to tune my Facebook algorithm.

Food pantries are great. One of the few good deeds in the world where the impact is something you can very directly see.

I’m just glad the media called it “racist.” Not “controversial” or any other sane washing crap.