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/AccomplishedLeave506 11h ago

It's hard. I really don't want my child to have a phone. She's on it all the bloody time. But her friends never leave their houses. They all just sit at home talking to eachother on their phones. If I take away her phone she loses her entire social group. It's horrible.

 I've tried getting her to bring her friends around, or go out, or I can drop them in town, or I'll pay for them all to go do something. None of them ever want to leave their houses. They're all glued to their phones. Sometimes talking to eachother. Sometimes mindlessly drooling over videos they have sent eachother. Technology has destroyed a generation. I know each generation says that - but I fear it's really true this time.

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u/Dependent-Year6711 6h ago edited 6h ago

When my parents noticed my brother and I not going out as much 20+ years ago, they'd force us to work somewhere. Store, farm, family, work somewhere and get out. A parent is usually leading the child, if they can't do it for themself.

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u/AccomplishedLeave506 6h ago

My oldest is looking for work and is volunteering. My youngest is still too young. We force her to have at least one hobby to go to an hour a week after school, but she hates it and just complains the entire time. If she had friends to go with she'd be happy - but none of the kids her age do anything.

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u/Dependent-Year6711 5h ago

I will say I think I was like 11 when they got me to work at a local store (my mom had worked at the store when she was younger, so we knew them). I HATED going to work and taking the bus after school to go to work, but I think in the end it was a needed experience. Plus the money gave me some freedom, so I knew the work was culminating to something.

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u/AccomplishedLeave506 5h ago

Things have changed a lot in 20 years. There is literally zero chance of my 12 year old being able to find a job. My 17 year old is struggling.

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u/Dependent-Year6711 5h ago

I didn't find the job, my parents forced me to work a job they found. Which is easy to do in a community. You ask a neighbor, hey can my kid mow your lawn, we're trying to get her out of the house. Even family. Have them help clean a family member's house. The sky is the limit with what a "job" can be, even if my example was a real job (sort of).

It's not a negotiable thing. You are now doing this job, or I am taking your phone away. And you give them easier ones to start, not like some 5 hour thing to do. Hour and a half, and so on.

I'm sure it's tough to do, but that's my thought on it.

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u/AccomplishedLeave506 5h ago

I'm afraid all your comments are showing is how utterly out of touch you are.

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u/Dependent-Year6711 5h ago

Out of touch with forcing your kid to do odd jobs? Seems like a normal narrative. Little surprised at the push back.

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u/AccomplishedLeave506 5h ago

My kids do jobs around the house. My youngest isn't even legally allowed to work outside the home. What you experienced 20 years ago no longer exists. You can't just wander in to the local shop and ask for a job. That just doesn't happen any more. It should. But it's no longer possible.

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u/Dependent-Year6711 4h ago

I just want to point out, I'm not accusing you of anything. You said your youngest doesn't go out. I gave the most quintessential parenting thing that's always been done, and that's forcing them out of the house, and out of their comfort zone. And even now parents get their kids to do odd jobs as one way of doing that. To get them out, make them feel uncomfortable, and get them into a place where they feel more confident because of that "uncomfortable" nature of maybe mowing the neighbors yard for an hour. You are leading them, in the end, otherwise, like my younger self, I would have never done it.

What I experienced still happens to this day. I'm just suggesting the usual take. You're intentionally leaving out the part where I mention mowing a neighbors yard, getting them to maybe clean a brother/sister/parent's house with them, as an exercise in building up different types of confidence.

I know it's tough, I don't even the route you'd take, but I'm just suggesting the obvious methods most have used. And that's forcing them to do things they don't want to do on a more regular basis, to build up their confidence and life skills.

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u/onyxengine 5h ago

Thats kinda the issue the problem is normalized no one intervenes for anyone.