アメリカの教師が「若い世代がおかしい」と口を揃えている理由

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]An Arizona man who's been teaching for more than a decade is quitting his job saying he just [music] can't compete against students who are glued >> And I'm leaving because I'm so stressed out. The students' behavior, their lack of trying, their apathy for school.

[00:00:15]>> They're crying because they're getting blamed for literally any and everything that children are doing. I spend [music] 90% of my day managing kids' emotions, helping to regulate them, managing outbursts and behaviors and tantrums.

[00:00:26][music] If you want something administrators, parents, anybody who's involved in a school you have to act on this or it will all be gone.

[00:00:38]>> My Gen Z students know that they are absolutely cooked when it comes Like immediately giving up after one try.

[00:00:45]>> You just need to be a teacher. I am a freaking teacher. I do my job.

[00:00:49]I I do my job. You know >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> An Arizona man who's been teaching for more than a decade is quitting his job saying he just can't compete against students who are glued to their phones.

[00:01:39]I [music] I want everyone to know how exhausting it is for a school teacher to shoulder all of that because by the way I'm also supposed to be teaching biology [laughter] and helping inspire them into science careers.

[00:01:52]>> What did you do to try to stop students [music] from using their phones?

[00:01:56]Um virtually everything. You mentioned sleep quality. We did for the entire second quarter, we did a sleep study. And at the end of the year, we also did a phone detox challenge where on the students would directly show me their screen time. I would take the kids out on nature walks where phone >> I ultimately decided to leave because I realized I needed an easier job. No matter what I try to do, they just they it won't go through their heads. Called a parent today and I said, "Just to let you know your child has a F in my class because they come in and they don't do anything." And then they start screaming. She hung up. Buddy, why did you struggle on this quiz? What what was hard about it? What was difficult? And they look me dead in my eyes and they say, "I'll be honest, I didn't read the passage."

[00:02:45]What do you mean you didn't read the passage? School districts are trained to run like companies with the numbers and it's it's not it's not the science of education. Today I walked out of my job.

[00:03:02]I did. I have 2 hours left of my school day and I'm leaving because I'm so stressed out. The students' behavior, their lack of trying, their apathy for school, parents that don't give a >> getting so many questions after I had just explained my directions. They got your yellow notebooks, turn to page 14.

[00:03:20]>> [music] >> And the kids just stare. They're crying because they're getting blamed for literally any and everything that children are doing. I spend 90% of my day managing kids' emotions, helping to regulate them, managing outbursts and behaviors and tantrums.

[00:03:34]>> [music] >> I spend so much time managing behavior that sometimes I feel like I'm failing as an educator. I feel like I'm not doing the job that I was hired to do.

[00:03:44]That was a 1-hour rabbit hole that I went down watching these videos and just feeling my heart rate go up and I get DMs and [music] emails from teachers all the time saying, "Do you have any words of wisdom? I've always wanted to be a teacher, but this job is not sustainable. Here's what my administration did. What should I do?"

[00:04:01]"I called [music] home and this was the reaction I got from the parent. What should I do?"

[00:04:05]"I did X, Y, and Z in my class and none of the kids were paying attention. What should I do?" I don't know. I try to give the best advice I can. All of the stopgaps in place to amend this behavior and this cycle are gone.

[00:04:23]And it's being put on the teachers.

[00:04:26]What are you going to do when more and more teachers are added to this ever-growing teacher shortage crisis?

[00:04:35]During COVID, teachers were heroes. You all saw what it was like. "Oh my god, how could you do that? I couldn't do that day after day." Do you want to homeschool?

[00:04:43]Do you want your kids to go to schools that don't have certified teachers?

[00:04:47]>> [music] >> Or do we want to encourage the best and the brightest to get their teaching certification, to get that education to teach [music] your children to the best of their ability? What do you want?

[00:05:00]If you want something administrators, parents, [music] anybody who's involved in a school you have to act on this or it will all be >> [music] >> gone. My Gen Z students know that they are absolutely cooked when it comes to this economy, >> [music] >> this job market. They talk about it all the time. And I think partly being that self-aware of what's going on, whether it's through their parents or social media or whatever it might be, but knowing that the US is heading into dismal times is really where a lot of this lack of motivation to do things is coming from.

[00:05:37]I often hear it in class when we talk about many different things, but the reoccurring underlying issue is they know that the future that they're heading into is not great. And because of that, I can see some of the systemic underlying lack of motivation, which is just unfortunate, but that's where I think we're at.

[00:05:57]>> 300,000 teachers quit last year.

[00:06:01]I got their [music] anonymous confessions. What they revealed will shock you. Here's the teacher confessions.

[00:06:06]>> [music] >> I spend 6 hours on paperwork and 2 hours actually teaching. I'm not allowed to fail students who haven't learned anything. The curriculum is designed by people who have never actually taught.

[00:06:17]I'd home school my own kids if [music] I could afford to quit. We're babysitters with degrees, not educators. Parents know their kids better than I ever [music] will. The system isn't broken, but speaking up means losing my job.

[00:06:29]Even the people inside the system know it's failing [music] your children.

[00:06:32]Comment broken if you've heard teachers complain about the system that they work in. I am so over these students feeling like consequences are beyond them. I'm not understanding how when they do something, they don't understand the consequence for it. And I have never seen the level of disrespect I'm seeing right now in this group of kids this year. Like COVID you COVID is not to blame for that. And honestly, we have sat down in meetings where parents are crying. And who is to blame for this?

[00:06:59]Where are these kids getting this from?

[00:07:01]They're looking for school to be some type of party where they come to school, play around with their friends, and then at the last minute, oh, what can I do to get my grade up? You can listen the first time you can do what somebody asked you to do. No pencils. Where's your materials? I don't got none. First of all, your grammar is wrong. Well, that's your job to give me a pencil.

[00:07:18]Like, the freak? And as soon as you write them up and show them the consequence of their action, oh, it's all hell breaking loose. I'm I'm genuinely over it. Like, I'm I'm at a point where I'm merciless.

[00:07:29]Like, areas where I showed mercy when it shouldn't have been, I'm done with that.

[00:07:34]Seriously. If it's not a kid who's trying, who I genuinely see has been trying and working hard throughout the year, mhm. We don't assign homework cuz we know they're not going to do it. We go through the class work with them so they can get it complete. And yet and still, they still don't get it done. And here come parents at meetings, "Oh, well, I wonder why the teacher didn't call me earlier." Um, why weren't you checking your child's grades earlier and you contact us? It's getting to a point where parents are saying in meetings, "Well, if they have to fail, let them fail." And that's what it's looking like for me, too. Because bending over backwards to help somebody who really does not want to be helped or want something handed to them. No, that is not how life operates. Well, somebody to push them through the system. No, you're going to work for this. Just like the other kids had to work for it. This is my 13th year teaching high school and my [music] 10th year teaching AP Lit, my second year teaching AP Seminar.

[00:08:29]And I've noticed a troubling trend with my students over that period that has progressively gotten worse with a huge spike right after COVID >> [music] >> that I just I can't I can't not talk about it anymore.

[00:08:42]The trend is that teenagers [music] kids in general are significantly less able to critically think >> [music] >> or solve problems on their own without help.

[00:08:55]I've got examples.

[00:08:58]For example, >> [snorts] >> they will type in I've noticed this a lot in AP Seminar. They will type in one long complicated search phrase. And when they don't immediately on the first page of results see exactly what they're looking for, they give up. And they come to me and they instead of saying, "How can I search better or what am I doing wrong?"

[00:09:18]they go immediately to "Well, there's no articles on my topic, so I need to pick a new topic."

[00:09:25]Like immediately giving up after one try of a typing a question into a research database that is so complicated and conditional and convoluted that there's no way >> [music] >> anybody would come up with results for it.

[00:09:39]Another example is [music] I This happens daily, literally daily, in all of my classes, asking a question that is clearly and blatantly addressed [music] in the step-by-step instructions for whatever it is they're doing.

[00:09:56]>> [snorts] >> And then when I point out, "Oh, that's in the instructions," they still follow that up with, "Yeah, but you could just tell me, right?"

[00:10:05]Related to that last example, if I give them an assignment with said step-by-step instructions, like my writing revision assignment that is eight very simple steps, every single time we do it, over 50% of [music] my AP students miss one or more of the steps. This is the literacy crisis that you keep seeing on TikTok and that people are like, "There's no literacy crisis. You just need to be a teacher."

[00:10:33]I am a stinking teacher. I do my job.

[00:10:35]I I do my job. When I say technology is the problem, I mean every student doesn't have an attention span. They don't know like real true work.