What's one classroom rule you swore you'd never have... until you started teaching?

When I first started teaching, I wanted my classroom to feel relaxed.

I imagined students would naturally stay engaged if the lessons were interesting enough, so I avoided making too many rules.

That lasted maybe a week.

After a while, I realized a lot of rules were not really about control. They were about making sure 30 different people could actually learn in the same room.

Assigned seating reduced distractions. Phone restrictions kept students present. Small routines like raising a hand before speaking or waiting until everyone was quiet saved more time than I expected.

I used to think some of my own teachers were just being strict for the sake of it.

Now I understand that a rule can look pointless from the student side and still be doing a lot of quiet work for the classroom.

It reminded me of my own attention after work too. If I tell myself I'll just check bcg for a minute, suddenly that tiny exception becomes a routine.

For teachers or people who work in education, what rule did you dislike at first but later realize was actually necessary?

Submitted July 11, 2026 at 09:07AM by Impressive-Prune6339 https://ift.tt/vKO056w

GroupMark - free Gradescope alternative

I'm a high school Physics teacher. I've been using Gradescope to help mark tests and exams for years, but it has some missing features and is (now) crazy expensive. So I vibe coded an alternative.

GroupMark is a Windows app, rather than a website. No student data leaves the user's device.

The teacher makes a class, and assigns students to the class. They can have email addresses, or can just be names.

Then the workflow for each task is:

• Create a task, and 'upload' a blank copy of the test to be marked.
• Manually highlight answer regions, and assign each one a maximum score. (Or let AI do it for you.) (!)
• Students complete the test as usual on paper. Scan them with a photocopier and upload the pdf to GroupMark.
• GroupMark splits the bulk upload(s) into individual tests.
• Using local handwriting recognition, GroupMark tries to pair students with their own test. Or you can do it manually. (This works really well on my Mac; less well on Windows.)
• The teacher marks the tests, question by question. GroupMark can try to automatically group similar answers, to speed this up (locally). AI can also suggest possible answers and marking schemes. Importantly, the teacher does the marking and can do all this manually, override the suggestions, etc. Again, no student data leaves the device. (!)
• Alternately to all of this, you can also generate and mark multiple choice question bubble sheets, all locally on device. (!)
• Questions can also be tagged, eg with content descriptors, skills, performance standards they address, etc. This can also be manual or done by AI. (!)
• When the test is marked, the teacher can see a detailed breakdown. Average scores for each question, scores by student, scores by tag.
• The teacher can optionally send marked versions of the tests to students, if student emails and a teacher email login have been added.
• Tags can be used on multiple tasks, so you can see how a student is progressing with a particular skill or concept over the year. (!)

Lots of these features (!) are missing from Gradescope - the grouping answers is a paid feature, but all of the AI-assisted features have to be done manually on Gradescope, and Gradescope’s tagging is pretty limited (and manual).

I was originally planning on monetising this but decided that was, frankly, too hard. Schools don't like using untested software. So it's free. You can find GroupMark on the Windows Store.

Let me know if you have any questions, happy to explain my logic or do any troubleshooting.

Submitted July 11, 2026 at 07:45AM by ThePatchedFool https://ift.tt/vcCKrMY

Is AI actually making students worse at sitting with confusion?

Something keeps coming up in conversations about learning and I'm curious if others are seeing it too. When students hit a hard problem now, the instinct is to immediately ask an AI rather than just stewing in the discomfort for a while before figuring it out yourself. That struggle period, even when it feels unproductive, is where a lot of real learning happens. The frustration is kind of the point.

It's not that AI tools are bad in every context. But there's a difference between using one to check your thinking versus using one to skip the part where you have to think at all. A lot of students seem to be landing firmly in the second camp, and it's hard to blame them when the tool is right there.

What bothers me more is that this might be eroding something harder to measure than test scores. The ability to tolerate not knowing something for a few hours and keep working anyway. That capacity matters a lot beyond school.

Curious whether teachers or students here have noticed this shift, and whether anyone has found a way to actually address it in a classroom setting without just banning devices entirely.

Submitted July 10, 2026 at 01:51PM by WickedKing94 https://ift.tt/cUBjEAp

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Submitted March 25, 2019 at 07:25AM by Asclepias_metis https://ift.tt/puxhAKS

How difficult is it to switch into education?

I’ve been unemployed for over a year now with most of my grad-level academic and freelance experience over the past 3 years being in visual media. However, due to my lack of success in finding work in this area, I’m considering switching into education instead.

My BA in History was completed back in 2020 however, and I was seriously considering going into education before COVID happened. And, much of my visual media work has been educational and especially history-based in its content. So, the switch hopefully wouldn’t be as jarring as it might appear for someone with mostly media experience credentials. I genuinely do enjoy teaching others, and I’m also incredibly good with kids and teens, so perhaps I might make a decent teacher after all.

Regardless, how saturated is the education field at the moment when trying to become a history, geography, government, or social studies teacher in today’s job market? I hear it’s surprisingly under-saturated from family in upstate New York, but I’d like to hear from others as well.

Submitted July 10, 2026 at 07:16AM by PajamaChess https://ift.tt/RjScBY9

Insight on Public Elementary School Experience vs. Homeschool

I am seeking to hear people’s experience, opinions, and insight on homeschooling vs. public school for elementary school.

The title says it all, so you don’t need to read the body of this to give advice, but if your interested in our situation so far, this is it:

My kids are 5, turning 6 next month and we have homeschooled them for their first year. Originally, I wanted to homeschool because I felt that my public school experience was full of busy work and, in older grades, significant negative influences. I thought that we could give the kids a better education ourselves at home.. and I think they’re ahead for their age… but my concern is not that they aren’t getting what they need academically right now, it’s more about environment, life experience, and socialization. Im worried that they are missing out on opportunities to make friends and build life skills that come naturally in the public school setting by interacting with many different people, learning from different instructors, meeting the expectations of people that aren’t your parents, etc.

I just want to gain some perspective and hear other peoples opinions and experiences. I want to make the decision that is best for my children, but am having a hard time deciding what that is… so any benefits, negatives, experiences, etc. that you’d like to share could help me get the perspective I need. I am interested in any insight you all can provide.

Thank you!

Submitted July 10, 2026 at 06:27AM by Most-Employer3779 https://ift.tt/yaZUlGg

Who Speaks for Anthropology: An Ethnographic Approach to the Vanderbilt Report

A 2026 commission declared anthropology the single worst case of scholarly deterioration in the humanities. This essay applies basic ethnographic principles to that verdict. In sixty-two years of fieldwork, from Arembepe in Brazil to Madagascar, I have learned that no single consultant speaks for an entire community. No single Lorax speaks for the trees. The same is true of academic disciplines. Before accepting the report’s portrait of anthropology, we should ask who was consulted, and who was not.

Substack, anthropology, Boghossian report, academic freedom, ethnography, Joseph Henrich, humanities scholarship

Submitted July 9, 2026 at 03:07PM by cpkottak101 https://ift.tt/7cRBZC1