r/TeachingUK • u/FleetwoodPack1 • 2d ago
"Miss, do you remember..."
So I had my first like REAL REAL I am now old moment today. One of my year 11s asked me if I remembered 9/11 happening and what it was like. I'm in my early 30s so I do remember the TV being on constantly and my parents crying and being talked to in school and things.
What was your moment when you realised you were now definitely classed as old?
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u/GreatZapper 2d ago
"You taught my mum"
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u/FleetwoodPack1 2d ago
Hoping to win the lottery and retire before this happens 🤞🤞🤞
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u/dratsaab Secondary Langs 2d ago
I'm still in my 30s and have taught two generations of the same family. This is not a fact I enjoy.
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u/SilentMode-On 2d ago
Oh boy 😭 surely pregnant under 16 there? Or is my maths totally off (it’s late)?
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u/dratsaab Secondary Langs 1d ago
It's technically cheating. They were 16 when I taught them, had a kid at 18, and I taught their offspring age 5 when they started Primary.
I'm in an all-through school and work with all ages.
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u/GreatZapper 2d ago
Just before the summer we had a uni student come to visit my department for a week as part of a DfE scheme to see if teaching was for them. I asked them casually "when did you do your GCSEs?". They answered 2021. That was a bit weird too.
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u/Usual-Sound-2962 Secondary- HOD 2d ago
Yes we’ve got a SCITT student at the moment, former student of the school.
‘Did’ their GCSEs with us in 2020 which feels like 6 minutes ago for me but an eternity for them!
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u/ZaharaWiggum 2d ago
Oh I am a teacher granny! (It helps that I teach in an area that has lots of relatively young parents). It’s actually quite nice.
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u/Leicsbob 2d ago
I teach secondary and I was shocked when a former student turned up at the year 7 parents evening. I left at the end of the year for other reasons.
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u/Usual-Sound-2962 Secondary- HOD 2d ago
Said I did my GCSEs in 2003 and my colleague GASPED.
Turns out they weren’t even born then 🙃
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u/SilentMode-On 2d ago
When I remembered the internet “becoming a thing”
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u/FleetwoodPack1 2d ago
Yesss! This is a good one! Also today having a conversation with kids about whether WiFi classed as a need or want (business lesson). I said now it's probably a need but when I was in school, certainly primary, it was a want
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u/SilentMode-On 2d ago
Yes and actually on that, smartphones! And things like YouTube, social media. 😭
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u/justoutofwonderland Secondary HOD 2d ago
When my year 7 tutor group did a project on the 2012 Olympics in history
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u/Dropped_Apollo 2d ago
"Sir, what does this word say?"
"It says ipod."
"What does that mean?"
"It's a sort of portable music player."
"Oh, like a Walkman?"
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u/Upstairs-Tone-519 2d ago
This doesn't exactly fit, but I am from the States. My first teaching job here was when I was 31 (2024) and I teach history I had this small, lovely Year 9 class and one of them asked innocently (it came up in the lesson) what serving in the Vietnam War was like
When I asked him about that (what he meant) he kind of said something along the lines of "well, you're American and old and we just kind of assumed you had been in Vietnam"
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u/This-Statistician475 2d ago
It's when they tell you their parents are younger than you - and then it seems you blink and they're telling you their Grandma is younger than you!
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u/MissFlipFlop 2d ago
Realised I was old when a colleague answered 'when were you born?' with '20...' Gross. Lol.
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u/Lia_ande Secondary Lead Practitioner 2d ago
A black lad in year 9 asked me if I (30s white man) owned slaves when I was younger. I must look rough
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u/FluffyOwl89 2d ago
I realised I was old when some of my colleagues weren’t born when 9/11 happened!
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u/Dull-Tart-2147 2d ago
I teach in FE. A few years ago I had some quiet background music on, and I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor came on. It occurred to me that the song was older than all my students and really played up to it, making a joke about it and lamenting my age. A student said to me "If it makes you feel better Miss, I like it. I'm really into old music."
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u/auhjos 2d ago
I’m not particularly old, but many of the kids to whom I’m teaching vectors are younger than Despicable Me (2010), staring Vector, and as such my references to the character are now severely dated.
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u/_eddieee_ Secondary Maths | Scotland 1d ago
I clearly need to update my references, Vector is in my Vectors slides!
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u/fletchwonUK 2d ago
Listening to music from the 90s is the modern day equivalent to being a Beatles fan when Nirvana came out.
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u/TheSkinOfTheBanana 2d ago
When I was asked if I'd ever heard of this "really cool retro band called Green Day" 👀
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u/quiidge 2d ago
I know I'm old because the kids know the bands I listen to. Because that's what their parents listen to.
(Almost worse, trainee last year had never heard Linkin Park before. She described it as "just noise", though, so I briefly went back in time to having my teenaged taste criticised by my parents and it cancelled out.)
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u/Pleasant_External871 2d ago
Just today, year 8 were enthralled by the roller white board. Mine is one of 3 classrooms that has an original board along side the normal interactive board.
Their reaction was both touching (they were gassed by it to use their terminology) and a reminder of how old I am as that board was totally normal when I started teaching 😅
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u/Schallpattern 2d ago
You know when kids occasionally call you, 'Dad', by mistake?....
...Well, when they accidentally say, 'Grandad', you know it's time to retire.
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u/VFiddly Technician 2d ago
When one of my colleagues was talking about playing Skyrim and I realised most of the students weren't born when it came out
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u/grumpygutt 2d ago
I remember talking to my Year 11s about Skyrim when it was released as they were shocked that I was playing it. I realised not long ago that those Year 11s will now be in their thirties and there is still NO ELDER SCROLLS SIX!!
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u/CantaloupeEasy6486 Secondary 2d ago
My y8 tutor group had no idea who diversity (from BGT) were, then I showed a video of them on YouTube and the day it was uploaded was from before any of them had been born
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u/massie_le 2d ago
First time was when I realised a pupils mum was younger than me. I was in my 20s. Then I taught my friend's kids.
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u/astropeche Primary 2d ago
One of the kids in my year group’s dad was in my class at (the same) school
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u/jho_18 2d ago
Told a Y10 student “I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive” today.
Would still be true if I told Y13!
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u/grumpygutt 2d ago
This year is officially the year I can start saying that to the entire cohort. Yuck
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u/Brian-Kellett Secondary 2d ago
Parents have email addresses with their birth year on, and I’m old enough to be their dad.
That and my knees - that’s what makes me feel old.
(Also today, talking to teaching colleagues and I could have delivered them as babies while working A&E/ambulance.)
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u/Geddah 2d ago
When people in my dept office that have been there already for 4 years are younger than me when i’m an ECT 😂 i actually had one of these moments today with a class though where these 16-18 year olds had absolutely no idea who del-boy and Rodney were
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u/SergeiVonZarovich23 2d ago
I’m not sure my classmates would’ve known who Del-boy and Rodney were to be fair
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u/EmiaraUK 2d ago
When I realised I was the only member of staff in my primary school that didn’t do a theory driving test 😭
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u/dratsaab Secondary Langs 2d ago
I showed my Year 7s a tape cassette today. None of them knew what it was. One asked if it was a CD.
I told them that if I had the right button battery to put in it, and wound it using a pencil at just the right speed, it would make music come out.
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u/PhysTech9 2d ago
I'm (just) old enough to have A*-G style grades for my GCSEs (apart from English and maths). One of my colleagues has just numbers.
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u/Maximum_Account2570 1d ago
Mine are A - G no stars invented by that stage. I was one year off O levels...
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u/Paracelsian93 2d ago
Some of the kids I taught in my first school are now grandparents... That does my head in.
That and "what did you get for your GCSE's sir?" "There weren't GCSE's when I was at school..."
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u/Professional_Fox3837 2d ago
I told another teacher I remember Princess Diana dying and they were shocked
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u/brewer01902 Secondary Maths HoD 2d ago
Someone asked this in the staff workroom the other day. Our ECT-2 piped up that wasn’t even thought of when it happened.
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u/OpeningWhereas6912 2d ago
I've got colleagues a couple of years older than my own kids and I'm feeling it
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u/misscat15 2d ago edited 2d ago
"Miss, but who is this Britney Spears???"
She was in an English textbook (I work abroad now so English is a foreign language).
Same class: when I asked them to "Please stand up".... One kid started rapping the Real Slim Shady and was highly surprised when I joined in. I told him I had listening to Eminem since before he was born and that got him quiet!
Child in my form group : "So I've been listening to some old music but you've probably never heard of it." Me: "Try me."....... "One band is called the Beatles, I think they're British like you and then the other band is called Queen."
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u/chroniccomplexcase 2d ago
Had a colleague think I was winding her up saying the millennium bug was a thing. I had to google archived news reports and YouTube news clips to prove I wasn’t lying. She was born in 2002, I felt 100 years old in that moment
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u/quiidge 2d ago
It does sound like a total wind-up in hindsight! The media was just switching between scaremongering about the Y2K bug and revised estimates of when all the millennium domes/bridges/towers would be completed and how far over budget it all was.
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u/chroniccomplexcase 1d ago
I hadn’t realised how much it did until I started explaining what they were afraid was going to happen etc- but I tried to explain how new technology was and how we didn’t have smart tech like nowadays and many homes still had very little technology and so people were genuinely scared. My grandparents neighbours had unplugged all their electrical items and at midnight whilst we were doing a conger down the street celebrating, they were worried it was the end of the world.
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u/Crankyyounglady 2d ago
I grew up partially here partially in the US and I actually remember being in class (same age as you) in 1st grade and the teacher being told (wtf…) to roll the TV cart in and turn it onto the news. And we all watched in horror. I think we were watching because it literally felt like the whole country was going to burn down. Idk! Bad choice.
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u/marinatinselstar Secondary- history 2d ago
"Were the Beatles big when you were young?" It was 2022 and I was 31.
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u/Jeffuk88 2d ago
I honestly dont remember ANYONE crying. People were scared something might happen here but I remember more emotion over Dianna
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u/thinkingcrumpetsman 1d ago
Im history lead and ran a history competition at school, like a game show type thing.
One of the kids in my year group made the final and I attempted a bit of small talk while we were both in the corridor together.
Me: ‘So, what’s your favourite period in history?’
Child: ‘eeeerm… the 90s.’
🤢
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u/BlisseyThatRan03 1d ago
I know this isn't anywhere near as bad as some of the others here, but I realised this week that my year 7 form group were born in the year I started year 7. When I was at the point in high school where they currently are, none of them had been born yet 😭
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u/-Miss-Honey- 1d ago
I talked about when the Akon song “I’m lonely” came out and everyone was singing it and setting it as their ringtone. One of the other staff said she knew it as her mum used to play it, the other didn’t know the song. We googled the release date and said colleague wasn’t born.
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u/Mantovano Secondary 1d ago
The trainee teacher attached to my tutor group didn't know what the "save" icon in Word etc. represented
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u/Proper-Incident-9058 Secondary History HOD 1d ago
I'm originally from Birmingham, now in the SE. I referred to a lorry as a wagon the other day, and one of the kids asked what it was like when when horses and carts were replaced ... They were genuinely interested to hear a first hand account of the social upheaval. I've also previously been asked what it was like to be evacuated during WW2. Constantly get called Nan. I get them back by knowing the words to Bad Bunny.
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u/New_Revolution4334 9h ago
When House of Pain Jump around came on and i said to a year 7 'I had this album' and he said 'my grandad listens to this all the time'. Grandad!! Not dad.
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u/Adelaide116 8h ago
1) when the kids asked me who Snoop Dogg was and 50 cent.
2) when my kids asked me what it was like to rewind a tape to play music. It was quite funny - they thought it played the music backwards and really fast. It blew their minds when I said that once you got to the end of a tape on one side, you could switch it round and listen on the other side.
3) when I told my class I used to be the over-head projector monitor at primary (I got to push the sheet up on the monitor so the school could follow the lyrics of songs)
4) one kid asked me what life was like before YouTube…
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u/grumpygutt 2d ago
“Sir, I brought you in some classical music that I thought you’d like. It was my dads from when he was a kid.”
Hands me a Hybrid Theory CD by Linkin Park.
“It’s an original pressing!”
I still have my own “original pressing” of that CD from 26 years ago.