The Saucy Millennial is an elementary school teacher who goes by @thesaucymillennial on TikTok, and she first went viral for discussing how we need to hold kids in elementary school accountable for their bad behaviors because if we don’t, they just grow up to be out of control middle schoolers and high schoolers.
She also says that teachers are quitting left and right because of a lack of consequences in school when kids do something terrible.
“If we had clearer and better consequences that would deter bad behavior, I might feel better about my job,” she explained in her video.
I’m sure this is not the first time you have heard a teacher say something along these lines, and the Saucy Millennial feels that parents are largely to blame for these bad kids.
In her experience, the bad behaviors begin at home, yet many parents defend their children instead of disciplining them.
She does acknowledge that there are many rules and laws in place that prevent school administration from removing kids from classrooms when they are disruptive and that, in many parts of the country, suspension is not even allowed anymore, nor is taking recess away from misbehaving kids.
Although this can be true, the Saucy Millennial points out that a lot of administrators either ignore teachers when they request help or support, or they don’t do enough. Sometimes, they even send kids back to class with snacks, rewarding their bad behavior.
“The truth is that we have teachers at all levels quitting the job because of kids’ behavior,” she added. “And because of the adults in those kids’ lives that can’t get their [act] together.”
“I know that we expect schools to do too much. I’ll be the first one to tell you that this profession makes it feel like part of the job requirement is to be a martyr…but if we do not solve this thing, it won’t matter what we teach.”
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“If we do not take care of the social and emotional well-being of these children, it doesn’t matter what we do. So, I do think that schools have to figure out a happy medium. If you can’t suspend them, we’ve got to figure out something else. If we have parents that fight us on consequences, we’ve got to figure out something else.”
She believes that schools should make a list of the most frequent bad behaviors that come up and assign punishments to fit them instead of letting kids get away with everything and that administrators should be more imaginative in how this can work.
Some ideas she suggests include having kids miss out on end-of-the-year parties or lunchtime for bad behavior or requesting that repeat offenders have their parents come to sit with them for some time in school during the day. She suspects this might just shame kids into doing better.
Not only does she see the solution as teaching kids they can’t act a certain way, but in also holding parents of these kids accountable, as this simply isn’t done.
What do you think about what she has to say?