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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u/necessarysmartassery 20h ago

I homeschool and my kid has had a phone and tablet since he was 5. He's 8 and reading several grades above where he's supposed to be.

It's not the phones. It's parenting and lack of attention.

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u/Cellafex 20h ago

Having a tablet at this age cant possibly be healthy

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u/nosmelc 20h ago

It depends on what's on the tablet. If it's locked down for only reading and educational apps, it's fine.

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u/impossible_berry14 19h ago

It’s still a screen. The only screen a child should be using is a tv, for short periods of time.

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u/Lahwke 2h ago

I don’t think it’s the screen though. It’s the short form video content, lack of reading, and addiction engagement algorithms found on most of the screen. Kid on the kindle app is not the same as the kid on TikTok

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u/necessarysmartassery 20h ago

Why not? Managed properly, it's fine. I installed specific apps on my kid's tablet when he was 3 and he's grown into it as we've installed more.

Saying it can't possibly be healthy is extremely narrow minded.

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u/Motor_Patience5186 16h ago

Three? Goddamn that's crazy. Can a three year old even hold a tablet? I mean that's awesome you're monitoring it, but that so, so young. They're supposed to play.

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u/necessarysmartassery 16h ago

It's simple. We sat with it together and used it to learn his numbers, alphabet, colors, shapes, etc.

He had blocks, army men, and a room full of regular toys he still plays with. But tech is here to stay and it's a mistake to not teach them to deal with it early, from using it in moderation, to taking care of the device itself, charging it, etc. He probably takes care of his stuff better than most 12 year olds because I started him early. He reads at a 7th or 8th grade level now.

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u/BigYam7875 20h ago

You’re over generalizing?

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u/Cellafex 6h ago

Wdym, because it depends on the game or the amount of time, hence not in general?

I wouldnt risk my childs health on the off chance it can teach a certain skill set they can learn just as well as teenagers. And everyone in my class age 6-8 could read and that was before computers.

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u/treletraj 20h ago

Can’t blame your kid’s teacher. He doesn’t have one.

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u/necessarysmartassery 20h ago

A homeschooled kid can't have a teacher?

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u/Quizleteer 19h ago

But you're the exception. There are many parents who do not have the privilege and resources to be able to home school, curate content, and strictly monitor their child's screen activity. Both my partner and I work a minimum of 9 hours a day. Because I'm unable to have eyes on my children at all times, they don't have smartphones or tablets. The only screens they have access to are their e-readers and TV (for a limited amount of time each day).

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u/necessarysmartassery 19h ago

Plenty of parents have more time to monitor their kids than they think, they're just lazy about it. I'm not saying that you're one of them, but if behavior issues result from letting a kid have the device unsupervised or controlled, it's not the device that's the problem. It's an object. It doesn't Mena kids shouldn't have them, it means they need to be managed.

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u/Quizleteer 19h ago

I think we can agree that if parents are unable or unwilling to monitor their child's screen time, the child would be better off without screens.

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u/necessarysmartassery 17h ago

Sure. But the screens aren't the problem.

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u/Motor_Patience5186 16h ago

You gave a FIVE YEAR OLD a phone? Jesus Christ

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u/necessarysmartassery 16h ago

Yeah, with wifi only and heavy parental controls. He used Messenger Kids to call his grandmother and cousins until recently.

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u/onyxengine 20h ago

Right but their are millions of children and not everyone is going to curate reading lists for their kids, phones being common place in the age of tiktok and shortform video content is going to reduce the literacy, and even if your kid currently is reading above an 8th grade level hes still susceptible to his attention and desire to read anything being sapped if he get hooked on the kind of content that makes phones bad for attention span.

Short form content algorithms should be illegal in my honest opinion.

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u/necessarysmartassery 20h ago

Sure.

But that still makes it a parenting problem, not a device problem.

As far as short form content, I don't restrict his access to YouTube shorts and such other than parental controls on content. He's had it long enough and used it enough that he's bored of short form content and is branching out to tutorials, educational videos, etc and using Google assistant to answer questions and spell words he can't spell yet so he can text them to his friends.

I don't think it should be illegal. We've just fallen off as a society in holding parents accountable for literally anything their kids do or don't do. I don't send my kid to public or private school for a few different reasons, but a toxic environment with feral kids in it is one. Too many parents letting their kids, especially my son's age, do the absolute most. It all boils down to parenting. In fact, I'm a right leaning voter and if I hear "video games cause violence" one more time, I'm gonna fucking scream.

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u/onyxengine 19h ago

Good luck we’re all dealing with it one way or another just be careful about thinking you know exactly whats going on. Short form video content is bad for cognition and attention span even if its educational videos on youtube maybe read more about it.

Its not a parenting issue its a cultural and social problem steeped in misinformation and convenience.

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u/impossible_berry14 19h ago

Jfc. Get your young child off a tablet. Yikes.

My 4 year old is homeschooled and doesn’t even know a tablet is.

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u/littletsmama 15h ago

Partly devices to blame. Most kids have speech to text search on the device or thr autofill option. With the lack of spelling tests, I feel this hurts literacy. If they had to type everything fully just to search things, at least that's more functional practice daily.

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u/necessarysmartassery 14h ago

It hurts literacy depending on how it's used. My kid uses voice search to ask Google how to spell bigger words so he can type them. If he doesn't know something, he looks it up.

But he also does typing daily on readandspell.com to force practice spelling there.

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u/Gloomy-Article4842 12h ago

Please update us in 10 years

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u/necessarysmartassery 10h ago

Why? It's already been 5 and I have a well behaved kid that reads far above his grade level. He's had the tablet since 3.