- Especially in a four hour class
where you have nothing prepared,
you go to some dark places.
(animated screaming)
(fast drum music)
- Yo, I'm CT.
I was a fourth and fifth grade teacher
for two years in the Los Angeles Unified School District
and you are?
- I am Dan.
I was an adjunct professor at an art school.
- I am Samantha June.
I teach Special Ed. And now also substitute teaching,
Pre-K through 12.
- And my name is Tselane and I'm a science teacher.
- And today we are gonna
play some "Never have I ever"
regarding teacher experiences.
- Never have I ever taught without a lesson plan.
- Ooh, flying without a net.
- Free-stylin' it, whilen.
- Whew - Totally!
(laughing)
It's exhilarating!
- And some times those are like
- Really fun, yeah! - Those are the best days.
- Especially at a four hour class where you
have nothing prepared, you go to some dark places.
(laughing)
- You start talking about German Expressionism--
- Whoa!
- And then you end with like "Okay, so, but 9/11 wasn't..."
- Never have I ever had a romantic relationship
with a teacher at my school.
In fact, I have not, but I do know that I could get it.
- I have not but I've wanted to.
Judged parenting skills.
I have. - Yeah!
- Abso-beep-lutely. - Oh yeah.
- Oh my god, yeah.
- What are they doing?
- Do homework with your children.
Talk to them about what's happening in class.
Go over those assignments with them and
make sure they do their homework.
- Read with them.
- Read with--Hello, like, right?
- Everyone is just trying their best.
- Right, but then you also wonder to yourself like
what elaborate emotional house of cards
have you constructed within this student
that makes them behave the way they do?
- And obviously, like parenting is so hard.
Just like the parents are probably judging us as teachers.
We're most definitely going to judge them as parents.
- A misplaced idealism in things
that either aren't important, or that are evil.
- Yeah.
- It's terrifying.
- Gossiped to other teachers about a student.
- I wouldn't say gossiped.
- That's a strong word.
- Like vented.
- Absolutely.
- And they all vented about the same students.
- Right.
- It's not good. - 'cause we want to get to
the bottom of it.
- You know?
- We want to figure out why you do what you do.
- Oh, you experience this too?
What can you do? - So what can we do
to support, yeah.
- Yes.
- It is, like if a student's is making you feel bad,
I'm sure their making all the other teachers feel bad,
I found for sure.
- Yeah.
- Have you ever forgotten a students name?
- Absolutely. - Oh yeah.
- Unfortunately it's usually the ones who are
really well behaved that you forget.
- Especially at the beginning of the school year
and they're all like nine years old.
They all kinda look the same.
Same haircuts, same clothes, a Nike T-shirt.
They're all named David, do you know what I mean?
- Yeah, everybody's a David.
- Gone to class hungover.
- Once
- I have not.
I don't have like mild hangovers.
I either have, I am fine the next day,
or I am scream vomiting.
(laughing)
- It was a bad situation.
I was in a rough spot in my life.
It was not pretty and I'm not proud of it,
but I made myself get up and go to work
so that's good right?
- Never have I ever cried at work.
- All the time.
Crying right now.
- No, wait, no, I'm sorry, yes.
Yes I've cried at work. Of course I've cried at work.
- For me, it was a little girl
and she happened to be black and she was mixed
and she came up to me and told me I want
to be like you when I grow up.
You look just like me.
My hair is naturally curly
and she's like your hair is just like mine,
and I want to be just like you when I grow up
and like the tears just came out,
I couldn't help myself.
- Have you ever had students find you on social media?
- There it is.
Yes and it so weird. - Yes.
- Block you, I'm sorry.
- Immediately.
- No, I haven't.
- It's too much.
- It's risky and weird and nah.
- Once I leave campus, I am not.
- I don't really post anything on social media
that gives any sort of detail about
what my internal life is.
- That's why I feel like a lot of teachers
don't necessarily want to live in the
same district where they work,
because they don't wanna run into students,
they don't want to run into parents,
they just wanna keep it very separate.
- Had a class watch a movie
because you didn't feel like teaching.
- Absolutely.
- Yeah, but I was also teaching film classes
so it was completely fine.
- Seems like an excuse to me.
- I just do what the teachers tell me to do
and I have had teachers that give me lesson plans
and also tell me to just let them watch a movie.
- At the end of the year,
when we're doing like five million things
and I don't have a teachers assistant,
oh, we're watching movies.
- Yeah, I mean it was also yeah, but I can't do it today.
- Just one day on a Friday.
- Yeah.
- Had a favorite student.
Abso-beep-lutely, yes - Yeah
And they know who they are.
- They know who they are.
You know who you are.
- Absolutely, yes. - Oh my God, yes.
Oh God, I have so many. - Every year.
- Yeah I had a kid come up to me
and talk to me for thirty minutes
after class about super 8 millimeter films,
like, you're my favorite.
(laughing)
- Nerds.
- Not so well behaved students become my
favorite students. - I was gonna say that.
Yeah, yeah, the trouble makers sometimes are the favorite.
- Never have I ever caught a student cheating,
I mean of course I have.
- Definitely, yes, caught students doing
sneaky, naughty things.
- It's rampant, it's--
- Rampant.
- Been bullied by students.
No.
- Yeah! - (beep) tried it.
- Those kids are brutal.
- I don't know if I can necessarily call it bullying,
or just complete disrespect.
I don't know what it is about the phones
and high schoolers, but they're so attached--
- So attached.
- He just became very rude
and straight up just said to my face "No"
and then he left the room.
- And you have to not show any fear
just like, beady eyes, just be like "What?" you know?
You can't let 'em know,
- Graded assignments without really checking them.
That was once, that was a one timer.
- It looked good.
- Nobody had a discrepancy,
so I think I was pretty on point.
- I actually have not.
If I have one job, it's to do that.
- Listen, if they even turned in a piece of paper
with writing on it, just say it's good.
- Yep.
- I'm just like, okay.
- I think we got, okay, yeah it's definitely a B+
you know what I mean?
- Failed a student on purpose.
No, I would never do that. - No.
- No, I've never had a vendetta.
- No, especially if you don't like a kid,
you're like, go on, you passed, get out of here.
- If you did that then--
- What's the point of even--
- Yeah. - That's weird.
We already have enough going on in life.
Never have I ever run into a student outside of school.
- I have. - Yes.
- I have. - For sure.
- Just a passing thing.
Like I was walking in a direction,
they were walking towards me and the were just like "Hi!"
and I'm like "Hey!" and then I look at their parent
and then we just keep walking,
so it's like "Hey, I know your kid."
- Right.
- I don't know you.
- How well's my child?
I'm like, it's nice to see you.
- It's something that makes me happy,
but I also you know, wanna keep moving on.
- Never have I ever had a crush on a parent.
- I have not. - I have not,
but I know a parent that had a crush on me.
- I taught college age kids though,
so I didn't really have much contact with their parents.
- That would've been weird.
- I had to block them on social media.
- Not fun.
- It was not cute.
- Solid no.
- Yeesh.
- That was fun playing never have I ever.
- Yes.
- If there's one big take away, teachers are people.
We have emotions just like you,
we cry just like you, we laugh just like you.
- We obviously are human
and we make mistakes
and we do things that we shouldn't.
- Yeah, everyone's just tryin' to get along,
everyone's trying to get by.
- But at the end of the day, we love your kids.
- Yes.
- And we work really hard at what we do.
- You're not on your own. We'll be there.
(upbeat music)