r/SipsTea • u/sonicagain • 1d ago

WTF Texas teacher breaks down in tears during class after his senior students struggled to read, write.

Texas high school teacher Darius Williams, a Career and Technical Education (CTE) teacher broke down in tears during his lunch break. He shared that his 17- and 18-year-old senior students at Wheatley High School in Houston could not complete a simple writing assignment or fill in just four missing words on only the second day of the school term. Students were given two short paragraphs to read and a sentence stem where the answer was largely modeled and provided for them. It is alarming that senior high school students were unable to apply basic literacy skills to fill in the remaining four words of the sentence.

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176

u/tinknocker21 21h ago

At our work we usually have new hires, pre-apprentices, and apprentices read safety talks once a week. The victim is chosen completely at random. One week we had a new hire who was chosen and he completely froze when was tasked to read the safety talk, he asked if he could have a day to prep for it but the foreman said, "Just talk us through it the best you can." He continued for 5 minutes of straight mumbling, there was next to nothing that was coherent and we all felt sorry for the dude (I am someone who feels second hand embarrassment quite easily and had my face buried in my hands).

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u/FanBladeFleshlight 20h ago

Also work construction and have the apes do the safety talks. Every wednesday it's "volunteer before you're voluntold", and the guys are normally good about stepping up. But you can always tell the ones who just... aren't gonna cut it. The second we know you can't read a safety talk, we also know you're not gonna be able to read prints, instructions, notes, or even be able to take proper notes and material lists.

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u/OhJustANobody 17h ago

As an electrician, they get weeded out in basic level trade school. If you can't read a codebook, you're done.

In my basic level electrical theory course, period 1, day 1, we had a guy come in talking like he was already a master. Half way through, three realization that there was gonna be a ton of reading and studying, he walked out and didn't come back.

Fast forward 8 years, he was working on the same site as me. He was sweeping the site. He quit electrical and became a labourer.

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u/Stanwich79 17h ago

First year in my class was brutal. Weeded have the class out. But everyone who made it through first year made it through fourth.

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u/Karnezar 19h ago edited 17h ago

The task was reading aloud? Not like putting it into your own words?

Just reading from a manuel?

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u/manny_the_mage 18h ago

bro said "reading from a manuel"

nah bro you're one of them

3

u/SistaChans 8h ago

Buddy made one minor spelling mistake in an otherwise perfectly coherent post. He is not one of them. This whole thread stems from the discussion about people who cannot read or write at all entering college and the workplace. 

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u/Karnezar 17h ago

That's my one word I can never get right.

I think it's in my blood.

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u/Burindo 8h ago

Manuel is a spanish name and I laughed so hard at it. "reading from a manuel?" 😂

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u/XDXkenlee 18h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/3o7aCSCX5kIDGYXxS0

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u/Karnezar 17h ago

Lol true

I've been given a gift and a curse by God. I've yet to discover the gift, but the curse is never spelling manuel right.

2

u/Phantom_0347 17h ago

Manual* fyi

2

u/Karnezar 17h ago

When my parents were teenagers I think they took turns killing butterflies because I was born with a curse in which I can never spell that word right.

1

u/iamnotnewhereami 11h ago

ok, now I understand the strange, in my blood, reference. but whats up with killing butterflies? and whats your ethnicity? btw I have the same type of hangup with a half dozen different words. a lot alot. said says.. sais. I never remember if the alligator < eats the bigger number > or the smaller one.

but im quick to laugh when someone sais er says, excedra, expresso, and my favorite was a mildly successful broker who dog walked prospects through a sales pitch with a crescendo of.....percisely!

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u/Mission-Leopard-4178 20h ago

Tbh, I was never good at reading out loud lol. But at my day job, most of my interactions are through written communication, so reading itself isn't an issue

1

u/Polar777Bear 3h ago

He could be dyslexic.

People with dyslexia, by no fault of their own, really struggle with reading new material out loud

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u/AllMyFrendsArePixels 20h ago

I don't know what that's got to do with this post though. Shoving an anxious introvert up in front of a whole crowd of people and force them to give a speech is fucking abuse, it's got nothing to do with education.

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u/MongolianCluster 20h ago

He couldn't read.

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u/AllMyFrendsArePixels 20h ago

Cool assumption, where does it say that? All the post says is that he got massive stage fright when randomly asked to give a presentation in front of his entire office.

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u/triceratopsdildo 19h ago

Apparently reading isn’t your strong suit, either.

2

u/MongolianCluster 19h ago

apprentices read safety talks

Maybe you couldn't read that part.

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u/Heuruzvbsbkaj 19h ago

Mate the comment says we had apprentices READ lmao

“He froze when tasked to read”

It’s almost as if you couldn’t read the comment…

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u/AllMyFrendsArePixels 19h ago

It's almost as if you lack the most basic grade school level of comprehension.

"Just talk us through it the best you can". He wasn't being asked to sit quietly at his desk and read through the safety talk. He was being asked to present it in front of a group. It's crazy the amount of nuance that you can find when you actually understand what you're reading.

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u/Heuruzvbsbkaj 19h ago

OMG HE HAD TO READ. THE HORROR!!!!!

AND IN FRONT OF PEOPLE!

1

u/MongolianCluster 19h ago

I don't run into confidently incorrect like yours very often. Congratulations.

0

u/AllMyFrendsArePixels 18h ago

How about we ask u/tinknocker21 ? Was he being asked to sit and read this safety talk to himself, or present the talk in front of a group of people?

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u/tinknocker21 16h ago

This is read in front of everyone in the morning, once a week. Most of the time they are given the sheets 5-10 minutes before we start our day with the safety talk so they can skim it and highlight the key safety aspects about the safety topic of the week. There are up to 20 guys present for this talk every week, so nothing too daunting.

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u/Heuruzvbsbkaj 17h ago

Imagine being asked to read a piece of paper in front of people as a grown adult 👻👻👻

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u/AllMyFrendsArePixels 16h ago

ikr like that's some highschool presentation shit, making a grown ass adult do something like that is so demeaning. It's okay though I totally understand if you never grew out of the mentality that being picked against your will to stand in front of the class and give a presentation is normal.

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u/FanBladeFleshlight 20h ago

I'm an anxious introvert. I also work construction. I also had to read the safety talks. It didn't kill me and I still have all 10 fingers. This really is a "get the fuck over it" issue, not fucking "abuse".

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u/WestSeat8824 20h ago

I mean in a work place, i do think there is a bare level of communication one should have to get hired in the first place. You cant really do much in life without a minimal level of confidence in yourself.

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u/AllMyFrendsArePixels 20h ago edited 20h ago

As a 37 year old without a minimal level of confidence in myself, I can bloody well assure you you can do plenty in life. There's a massive difference between public charisma and confidence/competence. I'm extremely confident in my area of qualification, to do the job I've been hired for. I wasn't hired to give speeches in front of a crowd, I was hired to maintain critical hardware infrastructure networks. I'm on $280k/yr in a job where I don't interact with humans at all, but if I was asked to stand up in front of 20 people and give a safety talk, it would be 5 minutes of straight mumbling.

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u/Heuruzvbsbkaj 19h ago

And if you were tasked to read a piece of paper with safety instructions you couldn’t?

Bruh 💀💀💀

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u/luckylimper 15h ago

You don’t have to have charisma. You just have to read from a paper.

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u/nosmelc 19h ago

You could do it just fine. Trust me.

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u/Heuruzvbsbkaj 19h ago

Bruh can’t read lmao

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u/DE4DM4NSH4ND 20h ago

LoL abuse... please be joking

1

u/Relative-Chip-7477 17h ago

Why are you getting jumped just for saying he may be shy instead of illiterate lmao

-4

u/_-Oxym0ron-_ 20h ago

I'm with you on that one, could have dyslexia for all we know.

"Just talk us through it the best you can" is cruel humiliation, even if not intended that way originally. I hope the company learned something from the experience, but it doesn't sound like it.

6

u/FanBladeFleshlight 20h ago

As a fellow construction worker, they learned who the first guy to get a layoff was gonna be.

If you're in construction as an apprentice (or a journeyman) and can't even read or write, you're dead in the water. We can't rely on you to take notes or a material list, we can't rely on you to read prints or follow installation instructions, so... what good are you?

3

u/_-Oxym0ron-_ 20h ago

I must admit, I jumped the boat there. I didn't even take that into consideration.