mouthporn.net
#school – @the-beacons-of-minas-tirith on Tumblr
Avatar

Stronger Than You

@the-beacons-of-minas-tirith

Lauren • She/Her • Autistic & ADHD
Bi & Ace Spectrums • INFP
Intersectional Feminist
•••
Perpetual Oddball of Sarcasm and Misery with a Reading List of Cosmic Proportions
I’m a fan of Saga, The Walking Dead, The Hunger Games, The Lunar Chronicles, Outlander, Timeless, Game of Thrones (sometimes), Twilight (occasionally), Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend Of Korra, and a bunch of other stuff. Carrie White and Bree Tanner deserved better.
Currently reading: Voyager by Diana Gabaldon
•••
Every community is welcome, but I won’t tolerate intolerance. Black Lives Matter, Queer Lives Matter, & Black Queer Lives Matter. Free Palestine. I Stand With Ukraine. (MAPs, TERFs/radfems and other bigots can screw off thanks!) Blank blogs get blocked.
•••
Feel free to send me a friendly message! Also check out my TWD blog, @spaghetti-tuesday-on-wednesday
•••
(I would like to politely point out that I am an adult, and thus I post/discuss mature topics on my blog. If you are uncomfortable or upset with any particular topic, imagery or language, please let me know and I will tag my posts to the best of my ability. Stay safe!)
•••
Avatar

I told my students they're allowed to be creative and don't have to be factual when writing about themselves in German because I keep getting questions like "what if I don't have roommates or what if I don't have hobbies" and I'm like guys just make something up! Have fun! I won't fact check you!

So now I am grading homework where a student is claiming to be from North Korea and his hobby is tax fraud

I fully believe that as long as it's grammatically correct, coherent and answering the question students should be able to write whatever the hell they want. I don't care about their actual hobbies and the names of their siblings.

One of my students is writing about a ghost he "interviewed". The ghost is called Walter and died in 1865 . The ghost has ghost friends.

This is making grading homework significantly more fun.

Avatar
Avatar
kaijuno
Avatar
weaselle

wherever this is y'all should just start saying random words like they were slang. Every time they ban some of your made up words, make up a few more. Let them ban ten words at once and come in using ten more the very next day. Really make a game out of driving them nuts

Just walk around saying shit like "That's so blizzy. I dig the dharma. Get sippy with it, homeswizzle."

Literally make the slang you want be "insert random word" so that any random word can be the term and you pick it up from context. "Holy shine-button, that flicks bee-butts my grizbaby. Very dealt of you." Make them ban the entire dictionary.

I hope somebody from there saw this and is doing it. My whole family excels in this kind of rebellion, btw.

I spent one single year in a private high school, and they had a dress code, and the dress code said t-shirts must be a solid color and have a pocket.

Now i didn't mind solid color t-shirts, but i hated how the shirts with a pocket looked. So after failing to get away with wearing pocketless shirts... I borrowed a sewing machine and made a solid colored t-shirt with a pocket over the belly button like a silly little kangaroo. Facing the principle the next day, i pointed out that the student handbook clearly stated that all t-shirts must have a pocket. I asked him if my shirt had a pocket. I asked him to show me where the rules detailed the location on the shirt that a pocket must be. It was a private school so they simply suspended me for a day (which went on my record) and when i got back the student handbooks had all been reprinted with a sentence added to it specifying that t-shirts must have a breast pocket on the left side of the chest. Being the cause of a whole new student handbook edition gained me a small amount of notoriety, but i was so low on the social totem pole at that school that it didn't do much for me.

The next Monday, i showed up with a t-shirt entirely covered in pockets, front and back. In the principle's office again, I asked him if my shirt had a pocket on the left side of the chest. I asked him to show me where the rules said there must only be one pocket. I was suspended for a day and the next day there was ANOTHER student handbook reprint, and the school threatened to bill my parents the cost of reprinting all the student handbooks if they didn't get me in line. My parents basically laughed at them but asked me to not make them have to fight my school as they were already short on time and money. So i gave up on that and began amusing myself finding neck ties that met the letter of the dress code but pissed off the administration.

I could tell you a couple more things i've done, but i'd rather tell you what my brother did.

To promote recreational reading in The Youth, my younger brother's public high school instituted a 25 minute "free reading period" in the day. Every student had to spend that time reading. You could read anything, you could even read a magazine, but you had to be reading.

My brother thought the whole thing was a stupid way for the school to spend their time, and especially stupid to be applied to him. Our whole family reads excessively -- when i was in high school i was reading, on average, one entire book every day. My brother was more well adjusted than i, so i'd guess he was only reading 3 or four books a week, tho, while i was reading a lot of fiction with a little philosophy and history, he was reading a lot of, like, theoretical physics.

ANYway, he was like, this is stupid for many reasons, i'm going to sit quietly and use this time to catch up on some of my homework. But the teacher he had during that time period didn't like that and made a big deal out of insisting he actually spend the time reading. He was sent to the principles office, where he explained that he did not need extra reading time, cited studies that indicated the "free reading" time would accomplish nothing and was a waste of time for both the administration and the student body, and ended with a reminder that what he WANTED to do was sit quietly and do school work, which any school should be happy about.

The principle said he understood my brother's position, but that he couldn't make exceptions for a single student. As per the instructions to the whole school, it didn't matter what he read, it could even be unpublished writing, but he had to be reading. My brother, already veteran gamer both on a computer and around a table, immediately saw an exploit and seized this mistake (gods, my family really can be the worst lmao).

He asked the principle to put in writing the rules as stated AND that he would not make an exception for a single student. The principle, not understanding the kind of people we are, gave it to him in writing. At which point his fate was sealed.

So the next day my brother came in with a packet of paper he had printed at home. When the time came for "free reading" he took out his packet and began reading. When the teacher came over to make sure he was reading, she was enraged to discover he had a packet of about 25 pages completely full of the repeated letter "a".

"I'm reading it tho" was his response. "This meets the definition of reading" "No it's just a letter, you can't be reading it unless it's words."

The next day he showed up with pages completely filled with "words words words words." He was sent to the principles office "See, those are words," my brother said, "so i must be reading."

"no that's not reading, there's not a single sentence on these pages" The principle must have been stupid, anyone who ever met someone from our family could have seen what would happen the next day, when he showed up with pages full of "These are words in a sentence." over and over

He was again sent to the principles office. The principle discovered that, like a man with a monkey's paw, he could not define reading in a way that met the rules as stated but would prevent my brother's shenanigans. He tried to insist my brother read from a recognized publisher, but my brother pointed out that this was not the rules as given to the rest of the student body, and the principle could not make an exception for a single student. The principle tried to tell him that he was making an exception for him anyway, and my brother told him that unless he was given an exemption from "free reading" time entirely, he would not recognize any rules that violated the written agreement they had. The principle implied my brother would face consequences for this behavior, and my brother implied he would talk to the local paper about being repeatedly harassed for *checked actual notes* following the rules he had been given, all in an effort to prevent my brother from sitting quietly and doing actual schoolwork.

My brother returned to class shortly thereafter with a note from the principle explaining to the teacher that my brother was exempt from "free reading"

anyway, the moral of this story is, when a rule is ridiculous, you can often find a way to make the authority figures look ridiculous for trying to enforce it.

so again, i hope these kids just start using any and all words in a way that sounds like slang. Start using school-related words as slang "what's up, my exponent? You ready to get absolutely conjugated this weekend? it's gonna be sooo decimal!" Let them ban THAT. Make them pull their hair out trying to avoid admitting the rule they want to make is "don't be cooler than we can understand"

Avatar

"kids don't pay attention in class anymore Because Of Phone" is so funny as an argument. students haven't paid attention in class since school was invented. my parents' generation were in there making flipbooks out of the corners of their notebooks and doodling random shit instead of taking notes. and they didn't have phones.

also pro-'banning phones from school altogether' people are like "well instead of being on their phones during recess, they can do creative things to pass the time!!" okay well when my classmates did creative things to pass the time instead of being on their phones, they found a random earring on the ground and pierced a guy's ear with a needle right there so he could wear it. do you want that.

one time during recess one of my classmates poured some suspicious powder onto his desk and snorted it all. is that creative enough for you. he did it instead of being on his phone.

Avatar
hiveswap

At my school someone yelled "look what i can do!" And ran headfirst into a two layer glass door, shattering it completely. The teacher said he won't report that he did that and will say that it was an accident to not embarass him. He did that instead of being on the phone too

Avatar
Avatar
kroseteaches

Today, on this fateful day in sex ed, I have to teach 25 9th graders how to put condoms on wooden dicks without losing my composure. Wish me luck lmao

Now to find a way to discreetly transport this entire drawer to the other side of the building...

Today went well overall. Lots of great conversations took place alongside some... very silly ones lmao.

Here are some highlights from this morning’s lesson:

Me: *removes the wooden dicks from my bag and slaps them on the table*

Students collectively: o_O

That one student: nice

Me: *demonstrating how to put on a condom*

Also me: *puts it on wrong the first time, even though I practiced twice beforehand* So everyone, here we see what not to do. Let’s try that again

Me: *finished demonstration, holding a sheathed wooden dick* so what questions do we have about condoms before I unleash you all to practice on the models?

Student: *raises hand* yeah, I’m wondering how you’re feeling about your life choices up until this point?

Me: o-o

Student 1: *raises hand* miss, why are the condoms so... slimy?

Me: thats lubricant, it helps get rid of friction that might cause discomfort during intercourse.

Student 2: *raises hand* can you use lube on a slip and slide?

Me: *genuinely considering the possibility*

*during a conversation about excuses people have heard for not wearing condoms*

Student 1: I had a guy tell me he was too big to fit in a condom

Me: *opens a condom, puts entire forearm inside and pulls it up to my elbow* here’s why that’s not true

Student 2: I once saw a video of somebody that put an entire watermelon in a condom before, so unless that dude’s got a watermelon shlong, that’s cap.

Me: *slowly losing composure behind my mask* you have the right idea, but let’s refrain from using the word ‘shlong’ in class, please.

Me: what are some ideas of things we can say to people who try to pressure you into having unprotected sex?

Student 1: tell them you don’t want their penis cooties!!

Student 2: penis cooties? Pretty sure that’s just herpes

Me, internally: like... you’re not wrong

Me: alright everyone, time to return the wooden models up front. Remove the condoms by firmly grasping the base of the model and sliding it off. Don’t forget to throw it away please!

Student 1: FIRMLY GRASP IT

Student 2: idk if I can return it now, miss. I’ve become attached to mine(the wooden dick)

Student 3: yeah, most men are

Me: *trying to keep a straight face*

Student 1: miss, why are the wooden dicks so shiny when you take the condom off

Me: oh, that’s just the lubricant from the condom.

Student 2: so you know you put the condom on right if your dick is shiny after?

Student 3: yeah! If your dick is shiny, you’re doing it right

Me: *trying to keep my composure pt. 36716159* uh, yeah that’s not necessarily the case. You see, these models are wooden. Penises are not.

Student 3: then why is it called morning wood?

Me: *internally self destructs*

Me: *casually wiping off the lube from wooden dicks w/ a paper towel before returning them to my bag* so what questions do we have about the use of contraception?

Student: miss can you please not make eye contact with us while you do that?

Today’s Most Tumblr Post of the Day goes to @krosecreates if only for the educational value:

Ok but the slip and slide is next level

lube slip n slide sounds like a trip to the ER after

Avatar

People make a lot of good "thank god I'm not a kid anymore" posts about like school bullies or homework or puberty. But actually my #1 top of the "thank god I'm not a kid anymore" list is the fact that I can leave the event when I want to.

Any event I'm at! I can say "okay well I'm tired I'm going home goodbye." Could not do that shit as a kid. If you're a kid it's like yeah you will sit here at your brother's soccer game in the cold for the next 1.5 hours. You will sit here at your sibling's football practice. You will stay at this BBQ until the whole family is done with the BBQ. You are stuck at the mall until mom finds the pants she needs. You are stuck at the grocery store. No we don't know how long. You are stuck at band practice. It's running late but you're not allowed to leave. You are stuck at the party that the adults said you're leaving soon but they keep talking to these 2 people who showed up late. What the Fuck.

And that shit is on top of having homework.

Avatar

nothing has made me feel like an ancient grumpy crone more than the “using chatgpt for school is fine actually” sentiment among youths

if you use chatgpt to write your english assignments that is bad. you should not do that

this has been accelerated by watching my roommate who teaches freshmen composition slowly become ben_affleck_smoking.jpg as he has to fail multiple students every semester for using chatgpt

like. this is bad and this person should feel bad lol this completely misses the point of writing assignments. the point is the production, not the end product

critical thinking is a genuinely important life skill, whether or not you pursue higher education. fascism relies on anti-intellectualism!

AND IT’S TERRIBLE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. what are we doing here

Avatar
mini-wrants

Whenever our class would harass our teachers about why we have to learn X thing —why do I need to take precalc, why do I need to take an English class —it’s because you’re not just learning the material, you’re learning how to think.

Avatar

That’s actually incredibly sad.

Avatar
bombideer

Every generation has been more tech literate than the one preceding it, but we seem to have finally hit a turning point where the kids are getting worse. Not dumber, just worse. And it isn't entirely their fault...

At some point circa 2000-2010, tech literacy peaked among schoolchildren as computers and operating systems were getting refined, but were just annoying and rough enough that in order to use them properly you had to really understand *how* to use a computer. You had to troubleshoot.

But then those rough edges got smoothed out. At some point, applications became apps. The majority of kids whose families couldn't afford their own laptops found accessibility in the cheaper, more streamlined Chromebooks - computers which trade out the robust operating systems of a PC/Mac for being a glorified web browser machine to save costs. Slowly, in the name of accessibility and sales, quality of life improvements overtook the entire process of using a computer, and, by extension, how students interact with the internet. The skills to search slowly became less necessary as everything consolidated to a handful of websites. Google started shifting from showing specific query-driven results to using incomprehensible algorithms to show you what they think you want to see. To a gross extension of this comes ChatGPT and AI.

And so these are the tools they learn with, and thus the reason to really hone one's skills in using those tools died out as everything starts to kinda be done for you. When I was a kid in that era, if I wanted to play a game over the Internet with a friend, we had to do some extensive research on how to connect in real-time to sync up our games and get it to work. Now, though? It Just Works™

If you want to do research on a given topic, you could spend time trolling through articles and looking up citation formats for a paper. Now, you just ask the magic technology prompt to clean it up for you. It's easy, it's convenient for everybody, but the real trick is that it means you're disincentivized from ever really going beyond that and figuring out how all of the pieces come together.

Accessibility is a *good* thing, for the record; the more people who can use a tool, the better off we all are as a whole, after all. The key lesson however is in how the tools are taught. Computer classes, typing classes, and general Internet safety lectures have been getting phased out from curriculum while predatory data gathering has skyrocketed. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I know a solution, but I am wanting to note that while these kids seem doomed, it's not entirely their own fault. If anything, blame capitalism for dumbing everything down to the lowest common consumer.

/rant

Avatar

Looking back it was so funny how high school teachers would pull the "you won't be able to get away with stuff like this in college, your professors expect you to be serious" or any hint that college is a Deeply Serious place.

One year in college I took a summer class on The Canterbury Tales because the super rad professor from my "Saints, Whores, and Warriors: Women of Medieval Europe" class was teaching it and convinced me that learning all the dirty jokes in Chaucer would be a rad way to spend the summer (she was correct).

Anyway, the university assigned us a modular classroom, or a trailer, and she was pissed. It was summer semester, you really couldn't find one classroom on this whole campus for 15 freaks reading Chaucer? Really? So she decided to move the class to the little 1890s house on the other side of campus where the English department was and we could enjoy the nice former living room/dining room for the summer.

She leads us on our trek across campus, not really paying attention to us. We file inside and get seats around the table as she is unpacking her bag and getting set up. Finally she turns around to see all 15 of us eating one of these

"What the...fuck? How? Where did you all get popsicles?" Total bewilderment.

Someone explained that the GRE test prep people where handing them out to students. Her reaction was "well this is unacceptable." And she went and demanded one of her own and we all enjoyed a frozen treat as we discussed the finer point of the Knight's Tale in middle English.

Not to be confused with the time a kid showed up like 20? 30? minutes late for a different English class with the excuse "sorry, there is a bouncy castle outside and I lost track of time" to which the professor responded "There is a bounce house?! Class dismissed." and just fucking left.

Summer classes have a real wild energy because no one is on campus and also the actual classes last longer.

My “biology for non majors” summer class, or hey kids this fulfills a credit requirement to graduate, class was 3 hours per lecture (twice a week) plus the weekly lab.

One week we got maybe 90 minutes into a class and the professor let out this long groan “this just keeps going doesn’t it? My god, I’m so bored! Are you bored? Don’t answer. Everyone go take a 30 minute break” they were a good teacher and the class was super interesting but also they were correct. That class also had a quiz that was a biology crossword puzzle, we were allowed to work on it in groups.

Or my American History through fiction class (or let’s learn labor history through novels) when the professor showed up first day in full costume as a mine worker and proceeded to tell his story of life in a mining town.

Avatar

School: Teaches you something for a week with historical background, context, effects, and outcomes.

One TikToker: Tells you it's fake while doing a bad contour.

Some of y'all: SCHOOL LIED?!

Some of y'all dunked on anti-vaxxers for "doing their own research", but you're perfectly happy to parrot some laughably ahistoric pap from a dubiously sourced book that you got filtered through three layers of social media influencers.

Avatar

"But helping poor people should be voluntary."

And even when it is, people still have a problem with it.

Avatar
ladypolitik

I went back and did some digging, because it occured to me that I didn't know the date reference of this story and, sadly, there are way too many stories about school lunch debt that they're easy to mix up.

This particular story was from July 2019 (I reblogged it Sept 2022).

There was a relevant update within a week of the scandal: public outrage was swift, the embarrassed school board redacted the outrageous allusions to indebted students ending up in foster care, and it accepted the CEO's $20k donation.

It doesnt change the fact that the very concept of "school lunch debt" is disturbing and inhumane (and there are still stories about children...with lunch debt...). And clearly, the district changed it's tone because it didn't like the bad PR. But figured it was helpful to have more info and context.

Here are some of the relevant sources; each offer bits of info unique to each specific source:

Remember: Public outrage can and does solve problems.

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.
mouthporn.net