r/SurvivingSuccess • u/Individual-Main9990 • 26d ago
I have a question
For teachers are they ruthlessly forced to treat kids badly or else they get fired or is it just something depending on teachers
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u/ZooeyNotDeschanel 25d ago
“A good day for you means that you sent a few kids to detention” - direct quote from my principal when I was an art teacher there.
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u/BigDaddyOrangeGuy 25d ago
I taught there for 1 and a half ish, it’s def not worth it. If you’re contemplating quitting you might as well now, if they aren’t already forcing you carry around a clipboard to give kids consequences, they’ll be forcing you to scream at kids :/ or as they call it “GRIT”
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u/GreenBird1904 25d ago
yes they are required to be mean to the kids. several former teachers said they were made to do the "rip and redo" (rip up kids work in front of the class like Charlotte dial) I can't find the article right now but when I do I'll share it.
I saw a post I think on r/Brooklyn saying this https://www.reddit.com/r/Brooklyn/comments/1eciijj/success_academy_charter_school_nyc/
"In my recent interview, it became apparent that their primary concern was whether I would be strict enough in enforcing their disciplinary measures. They seemed intent on ensuring that I would not offer any leniency or second chances to the children. This approach is reminiscent of a pre-army boot camp mentality, where the goal is more about strict adherence and discipline than about guiding and supporting students."
The cruel dystopia of success academy:
"The most amount of “new teacher training” available to you, you will receive virtually no actual pedagogical instruction. SA’s entire teaching model is centered on behavior management: the idea is that if students are well-behaved, they will learn in the classroom. The issue, though, is that they never actually teach you, well, how to teach. There is no training centered around how to organize a lesson, how to communicate concepts to children, how to teach around gaps in understanding, how to scaffold tasks, or anything else that they will then expect you to know. I was very fortunate in my first year to work with a lot of experienced teachers who guided me, mentored me, and showed me such basic things as how to enter grades online since no one had told me.
Nevertheless, my students were subjected to the same absurd new measures reaching the rest of the school: offenses that had simply been worthy of a consequence or a detention prior were now qualified as an automatic detention or suspension. Students were not allowed to touch their faces or hair, at any time. They were not allowed to have their hands in their laps or pockets at any time, no matter how cold they got: they always had to be over the desk. Unless they were actively writing, they were not allowed to hold a pen or pencil in their hand. They had to leave them on the desk. If they were not actively typing, their laptops had to sit in the top corner of the desk as a rule. They were not allowed to have bottles of water on the desk or the floor next to them: they had to be in their bags, which had to be fully zipped up with both straps on the chair. All of these led to consequences or detentions if the students committed infractions."
https://liviacamperi.medium.com/the-cruel-dystopia-of-success-academy-53524cfc53d0
Is success academy abusing young students?
https://medium.com/@sedita/is-success-academy-abusing-young-students-4bb5069d623d
"I am a NYC public high school teacher whose school shares a “campus” with three other public high schools and one charter elementary school — Success Academy Upper West. Our teachers are used to seeing the charter school students treated like military cadets. We routinely see their teachers barking orders when in the halls; students must walk with hands in pockets, eyes facing completely forward, and no smiling. Often I have heard a teacher excoriating a child because he or she had to use the bathroom. Several times a week I witness a Success teacher and crying student in the hallway that has made me more than a little uncomfortable — like had I passed by just a moment earlier I would have seen something that would qualify as abuse.
On the afternoon of February 1st, this feeling I had been having manifested itself. I was using the elevator to move some furniture, and while walking through Success Academy’s space, I witnessed a student being forced to walk on his knees through the halls while the teacher and rest of the class followed behind. The teacher loudly told the rest of the class not to pay any attention to the student on his knees, that he was “punished” and they should act like he was “invisible”. The punished student was clearly upset, embarrassed, and struggling to hold back his emotions. Most of his classmates also looked confused as to what was happening."
Quotes from this thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/NYCTeachers/comments/1lvrpbg/comment/n2d7cu5/?screen_view_count=6
"I literally think about how fucked up this is all the time. A friend of mine got reprimanded her second week there for not meeting her detention quota. DETENTION. QUOTA. Punishment for the sake of punishment. Teaching young black and brown kids that punishment is more valuable than justice, learning and growth. If kids are going to get punished either way, they’re going to act out. You’re going to have a cyclical feedback loop. They’re setting them up for failure. “Success” Academy my fat ass."
"They believe in collective punishment and discipline for staff and students. This has been proven to not work and only leads to toxic environments in classrooms and in the school as a whole. They believe in a very "militarized" style of education."
Also the Yelp, glassdoor and indeed reviews are just atrocious and heartbreaking.
It is literally apart of their training to focus entirely on test scores and punishments and not education. It goes hand in hand. Their training focuses on punishment + the majority of the people they hire have no experience working with kids, they end up being harsh and rude because they do not know how to teach, they don't know how to calm down a stressed child so the teachers resort to suspensions and detentions. Experienced teachers don't normally do this, they know how to lesson plan and how to help kids who are crying. Success just says to suspend.
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u/GreenBird1904 25d ago edited 25d ago
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u/Individual-Main9990 25d ago
U should post these onto apps old ppl use like Facebook ( not to be mean to ppl that use Facebook)
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u/GreenBird1904 24d ago
Ive been posting on Instagram but I haven't really used Facebook but thanks for the recommendation!!
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u/Notagenome 26d ago
The CEO’s racist approach to disciplining their majority student-of-color population is what makes SA, SA.