It’s nothing new for parents to lament their kid’s ever-growing list of school requirements. From piles of homework to getting graded for school supplies, the pressures seem to be not only racking up over time, but spreading to younger and younger grades. And it’s not just parents who have noticed the shift. In a video that continues to spark vital conversation, longtime kindergarten teacher Ms. Kelli, of the TikTok account @the_wondermint, reflected on how different it is for students at even the most introductory level: Kindergarten. The “trickle-down” effect of academic pressure We all know how intense the pressure is for high schoolers looking to get into college. Two or three decades ago, SAT tutoring and prep courses were a luxury for wealthy families. Now they’re viewed as essential. But what’s taking parents, and teachers, off guard is how the elevated standards are trickling down to little kids who are barely out of diapers. In her viral message, Kelli begins, “So I just gotta ask, as a 20-year kindergarten teacher myself, remember when we went to kindergarten that we just had to be potty trained and not eat the glue?” Comparing that to the long list of requirements nowadays, the educator says she feels sorry for families going through it. “My heart breaks when I see all these videos of what do you need to do to prepare your child for kindergarten, and things your child must know before going to kindergarten, and these lists of things that parents need to be working on.” One teacher agreed in a recent Reddit thread: “When I first taught Kindergarten in Wisconsin in 2009 the standard was to count to thirty. By 2012, the standard had changed to one hundred.” Another parent chimed in: “Our kindergarten has them count to 100. Know 40 sight words by the end of kindergarten. Begin teaching reading and phonics … they learned to write their names within the first two weeks and are expected to do that and the date on every assignment. Each week they make a letter book for a different letter but they expected them to go into kindergarten knowing all their letters. They have a math packet every week for take home. … I mean I love it, he’s learning a lot but he does get quite a bit of work. Two packets due a week. So we do a page a night from each so it’s done by Thursday night.” (Remember, these kids are about five years old. They can barely eat spaghetti without drenching themselves in pasta sauce, and we’re expecting them to sit down and do worksheets!) Another added, “My son’s school routinely takes away recess. They do it if they don’t get enough school work finished during the day, or if the class misbehaves too much, or one single child can get it taken away. It’s also at the end of the day, so the kids are slaving away learning for six hours before maybe getting a break.” It’s not just the parents who are noticing, either. A study out of the University of Virginia in 2016 found that kindergarten standards and curriculums at the time were far more similar to first grade curriculums from the previous decade. And the standards have only gotten higher since. Redefining what “success” looks like for a five-year-old Kelli says she’s had enough. She argues that, “Human development hasn’t changed. What a five or six-year-old child is physically, mentally and developmentally able to do hasn’t changed, in all these years.” Still, the standards have changed. And kids are paying the price. So she encourages fellow teachers and parents to not force the educational aspect. “The learning will come. The development will come, the ABCs, the one, two, threes, writing, all of it, it will come … Curriculum, it will happen. The learning, it will happen,” she says. @the_wondermint Little bit of a plea and PSA for the day… let them be kids! #teachersontiktok #teachertok #teachersoftiktok #iteachk #kindergarten #ilovekindergarten #iloveteaching #foryoupage #teacherforyoupage #fypage #teacherfyp #playbasedlearning #seethewonderkeepitfresh #handsonlearning #reggioemilia #letthemexplore #parentsontiktok #parentsoftiktok #kindergartenparents #kinderprep #backtoschool ♬ original sound – The Classrooms of Ms. Kelli Let the kids be kids Instead of placing more pressure, Kelli suggests a gentler, simpler approach. “Let them play, let them socialize with each other. Let them learn to be away from their mommy and daddy and be sad for a little bit and be comforted. Let them find friendships that are gonna make them laugh so hard that their bellies ache and tell stories that go home. Let them create something that they never thought they could. Let them do an art project where they turn a box into a robot and they’re so excited to show their parents!” Kelli’s video seemed to really resonate with parents and teachers alike, who have definitely felt like certain aspects of childhood have been sacrificed in the name of “productivity.” Especially when it comes to homework. The comments couldn’t agree more “Yes! My son struggled in Kindergarten last year and even had homework! I could not believe what all he had to know. Teacher said he had a hard time paying attention… yeah he is 5!” one mom shared. “Finally someone said it,” added another. “The curriculum is insane for elementary school kiddos. They have absolutely lost their childhood.” One person noted that “the kindergarten report card used to be things like skipping, walking on a balance beam, the hardest thing was counting to 100.” As for whether or not a more academic-focused approach to kindergarten is, in fact, less beneficial to kids— a 2019 study in the American Educational Research Journal did find that it led to improvements, both academic and interpersonal, in the long run. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we need to load them up with a ton of work for after school. Another study reported that elementary school students, on average, are assigned three times the recommended amount of homework. This is why Kelli created a follow-up video sharing why she doesn’t assign homework to her own students. @the_wondermint Replying to @Drea_keevs Controversial but yet it shouldn’t be… 5 year olds should not be doing homework! Talk as a family, snuggle and read, enjoy their favorite sport activity, have a dance party! Their days are filled inside school, make the time outside of school good for their hearts and souls! tteachersontiktoktteachertoktteachersoftiktokiiteachkkkindergarteniilovekindergarteniiloveteachingfforyoupagetteacherforyoupageffypagetteacherfyppplaybasedlearningsseethewonderkeepitfreshhhandsonlearningrreggioemilialletthemexploreparentsontiktok #parentsoftiktok #parentingtips #homework #homeworkhelp ♬ original sound – The Classrooms of Ms. Kelli “We are covering what we’re covering in the five or six hours with these little babies, and if we can’t cover that in that time, we’re definitely not gonna get the best out of them at 5, 6 o’clock at night when they’re tired and they should be enjoying time with their family,” she said. She does, however, advocate trying to instill a “love of reading,” if you can count that as homework. But even then, that assignment looks more like snuggling in bed, cozying up with a book, and having their parents read it to them. Point being: of course school is meant to help set up students for success. But if it robs them of their precious, formative, and oh-so-temporary childhood, then is it really worth it? This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.The post ‘Let them play’: Longtime teacher says today’s kindergarten standards are out of control appeared first on Upworthy.

“There are no mistakes, only happy accidents,” Bob Ross assured us. In the case of over a dozen popular songs, mistakes didn’t just turn out to be happy accidents, but ultimately became iconic moments in music. Musician and teacher David Hartley compiled 15 examples of mistakes in well-known songs that you can’t unhear once you know about them. Most will be familiar to pop music fans, who may or may not know that they were actually unintentional. Hartley’s video goes into the details of these 15 song elements that weren’t supposed to be there: 1. The alarm clock ringing in The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’ Hartley shares that The Beatles had an alarm clock placed on the piano to keep track of time in the studio. It just happened to go off while they were recording the bars that separate the two sections of the song, and the ringing couldn’t be removed afterward. It fit perfectly with the “Woke up, fell out of bed” lyrics, however, so it seemed intentional. 2. Elvis Presley laughing while singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight” While performing his hit “Are You Lonesome Tonight” live in Las Vegas in 1969, Elvis saw a bald man in the audience lose his toupee. The singer spontaneously changed the line “Do you gaze at your doorstep and wish I was there?” to “Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair?” He laughed at his own hilarity and kept chuckling through the rest of the song. The recording made it onto one of his live albums. 3. The ‘I know, I know, I know, I know…’ section of ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ “In 1971, Bill Withers was recording his debut album, which included the song ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,'” says Hartley. “When he got to the bridge section in the middle, he realized that he hadn’t written any lyrics, so he just repeated ‘I know’ 26 times.” Other musicians encouraged him to keep it, and the song became a huge hit. 4. The phone ringing at the end of David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ “Unfortunately, right by the side of the piano, there was a toilet, and in that toilet was a public phone,” explained sound engineer Ken Scott. “Someone got a wrong number and called in halfway through that great take, and we had to stop it, and Ronaldo was cursing and swearing about it.” They didn’t realize until they put the whole song together that the ring and Ronaldo’s voice had made it in. 5. That one-off piano chord that kicks off Elton John’s ‘Bennie and the Jets’ When Elton sat down to record the song, he played the opening chord on its own on a whim. Producer Gus Dudgeon thought it sounded like something a pianist would do warming up for a live performance, so they decided to make the song sound like a live performance, even though it wasn’t, adding in crowd sound recordings. 6. Two unintentional sounds in the segue into Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ Pink Floyd did something unusual in between songs on the album Wish You Were Here. In the segue into the title track, they inserted radio sounds that were actually recorded while the band was scrolling through stations in lead guitarist David Gilmour’s car. “We can hear a brief section from Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony and an extract from a radio play that to this day nobody knows what it is,” says Hartley. A cough from Gilmour also slipped in, which resulted in an urban legend that the recording prompted him to quit smoking. (He has said he was never a smoker.) 7. Steely Dan’s drummer’s uncharacteristic mistake with the sticks that fit the song perfectly Steely Dan is apparently known for being meticulous about their recordings, so the fact that an unintentional click of drummer Steve Gadd’s drumsticks made it into the studio recording of “Aja” is quite remarkable. The timing of the click made it sound seamless, though, so why redo it? 8. A bad piano chord in the intro to ‘Roxanne’ and the laughter that followed “The timing and the way it resolves to the G minor chord that they’re playing makes it sound like it was intentional,” says Hartley. “But as Sting explains, it happened by pure accident.” There was an open piano next to him and he leaned on it to rest and accidentally played that chord, which made him laugh. 9. The gated reverb drum sound that was accidentally created on Peter Gabriel’s song, ‘Intruder’ Hartley says the iconic ’80s drum sound, where the drumbeat sounds big and echoey and then cuts off abruptly, was created accidentally by Steve Lillywhite, Hugh Padgham, and Phil Collins when recording “Intruder.” Phil Collins ended up showcasing the gated reverb drum in “In the Air Tonight” the following year. 10. Two different lyrics sung at the same time in The Who’s ‘Eminence’ “For the first line of the first chorus, Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry sing something slightly different,” Hartley shares. “One of them sings ‘behind an eminence front’ and the other sings ‘it’s an eminence front,’ meaning they are one syllable out from each other.” The mistake was initially left in the recording, but was corrected years later. 11. Billy Joel fumbling a lyric and laughing in ‘You’re Only Human’ People familiar with the song may remember when Joel seems to stutter, “S-s-sometimes that’s all it takes” and then laughs. That was a genuine stumbling mistake, but it fit so well with the song’s theme and other lines (like “it’s alright, you’re supposed to make mistakes”) he was convinced to leave it in. 12. Perfectionist Prince allowing a track recording oopsie to remain During the recording of the song “Forever in My Life,” the tape was misaligned by one bar while recording the final track, which made the backing vocal preempt the lead vocal. Prince ultimately liked the effect, so he left it that way. 13. The ‘Where do we go now’ lyrics at the end of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ “It was suggested that at the end of the song, after the guitar solo, they add a breakdown to finish the song,” Hartley explains. “But when it came to recording, lead singer Axel Rose didn’t have any lyrics, and he didn’t know where the song would end up. So the line, ‘Where do we go now?’ is a genuine question to his bandmates.” 14. Christina Aguilera’s ‘Don’t look at me’ line in ‘Beautiful’ Hartley shares that the recording of “Beautiful” was actually just supposed to be a demo vocal, and you can hear various imperfections in it if you listen closely with headphones. And the spoken line, “Don’t look at me,” was a real instruction to her friend just before she started singing. 15. The extra ‘My life is brilliant’ at the beginning of James Blunt’s ‘You’re Beautiful’ Blunt simply came in too early with the opening lyric, so he ended up repeating the line. They could have easily taken it out, but decided to leave it. Mistakes or happy accidents, it’s fun to see how unintentional oopsies can turn into iconic moments when you decide to roll with it. You can follow David Hartley on YouTube for more interesting music content. The post 15 pop song ‘oopsies’ that were kept in recordings, turning mistakes into iconic moments appeared first on Upworthy.

Have kids, they said. It’ll be great, they said. Well, one dad may have a bone to pick with those mysterious “they,” in that colloquial saying. A man running the Instagram account Havea_676, posted a video that has parents on the internet not only laughing at his tender moment turned embarrassing, but also sharing their own savage kid moments. The dad was having a sweet moment with his daughter, asking her about her day and what she was excited about for the next day, before tucking her into bed. Things appeared to be going well, and his daughter, who is off camera, can be heard answering all of the questions. But at some point during the father-daughter moment, the little girl was over the many questions the man was asking. A little girl reading to her dad. Photo credit: Canva “Daddy, can you please stop with your questions? I’m trying to sleep, and also your breath stinks,” the little girl reveals. Yikes. Dad didn’t have much to say after that bombshell. He simply readjusts so his mouth isn’t pointing in her direction and says, “goodnight, I love you.” There went that sweet moment being caught on video, but after uploading the unexpected roast session, the dad was joined by fellow parents, commiserating. So what seemed like a sad parenting fail, was actually a great bonding moment for parents. “Kids are brutally honest with no filter. I was helping my daughter button her shirt one morning, and I asked her if she brushed her teeth. She said yes… then there was an awkward pause before she frowned and said ‘did you? Cuz it don’t smell like it’ Needless to say I don’t help the lil heffa get dressed for school anymore lol,” one mom says. “Kids know how to cut deep with one slice!! Haha,” someone else writes. “I came home yesterday and asked my daughter if she missed me…She said NO with her whole chest,” another commenter reveals. View this post on Instagram “That was so honest for her to say that, and I love the way dad handled the situation. Their bond will live forever,” a commenter wrote. “Well at least you know she’ll be honest at school…she sounds like an amazing little girl,” another added. Kids are just brutally honest until they get a bit older to realize there are gentler ways to deliver news. Hopefully, unless they skip that stage and become some rather challenging adults to deal with. But if this dad learned one thing from his lengthy conversation, it’s to brush your teeth before goodnight chats so you don’t melt your kid’s face off. This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated. The post Dad records a touching ‘goodnight’ moment with his daughter. But then she smelled his breath. appeared first on Upworthy.

The thing about Gen X being in our 40s and 50s now is that we were never supposed to get “old.” Like, we’re the cool, aloof grunge generation of young tech geniuses. Most of the giants that everyone uses every day—Google, Amazon, YouTube—came from Gen X. Our generation is both “Friends” and “The Office.” We are, like, relevant, dammit. And also, our backs hurt, we need reading glasses, our kids are in college and how in the name of Jennifer Aniston‘s skincare regimen did we get here? It’s weird to reach the stage when there’s no doubt that you aren’t young anymore. Not that Gen X is old (50 is the new 30, you know) but we’re definitely not young. And it seems like every day there’s something new that comes along to shove that fact right in our faces. When did hair start growing out of that spot? Why do I suddenly hate driving at night? Why is this restaurant so loud? Does that skin on my arm look…crepey? As they so often do, Penn and Kim Holderness from The Holderness Family have captured the Gen X existential crisis in a video that has us both nodding a long and laughing out loud. Salt-n-Pepa in the waiting room at the doctor’s office? Uh, no. That’s a line we are not ready to cross yet. Nirvana being played on the Classic Rock station? Nope, not prepared for that, either. Watch: Hoo boy, the denial is real, isn’t it? We grew up on “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, for goodness sake, and it’s starting to feel like we made a wrong choice a chapter or two back and suddenly landed our entire generation in a time warp. This isn’t real, is it? Thirty years ago was the 1970s. That’s just a Gen X fact. So what if we’ve lived long enough for our high school fashions to go out of style and then back into style and then back out of style again? Seriously, though, we can either lament our age and stage in life or we can laugh about it, and people are grateful to the Holdernesses for assisting with the latter. Gen X fans are also thrilled to see their own experiences being validated, because at this point, we’ve all had that moment in the grocery store or the waiting room when one of our jams came on and we immediately went into a panic. A woman shopping at a grocery store. Photo credit: Canva Fellow Gen Xers commiserate in the comments: “They were playing The Cure in the grocery store and I almost started crying. I mean, how ‘alternative’ can you be if you’re being played in Krogers? You guys are great! Thanks for making us laugh.” “When I turn on the classic rock station I expect the Doors or CCR not Soundgarden or Nirvana.” “I couldn’t believe it when I heard Bohemian Rhapsody being played in Walmart. That was edgy in my day.” “I know!!! Bon Jovi at the grocery store!!! That was my clue in!!” “That horrifying feeling when I realized that when I play Nevermind for my kids now in 2024, I’m playing them 33-year-old music, but when my dad played the Let It Be for me in 1984, it was only 14-year-old music.” “The first time I heard my jams on the oldies station I cried. I’m not old! I just have to take a picture of something to blow it up so I can see it better with my readers but everyone does that. Early dinners? Hey I’m hungry by 5 why wait.” “Long live Gen Xers! We have to be strong!! We can get through this together!! #NKOTBmeetsAARP“ Hang in there, Gen X. We didn’t build up all that resilience and attitude in our youth just to fall apart at this point. Let’s own this stage like we invented it and make it as cool as we are. You can find more from the Holderness Family on their Facebook page, their podcast and their website, theholdernessfamily.com. This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated. The post Gen X is trying to come to grips with getting ‘old.’ It’s not going well. appeared first on Upworthy.

Being a teacher isn’t easy. Teaching middle school students is especially not easy. Teaching middle school students who spent several of their formative years going through a global pandemic in the age of smartphones, social media and a youth mental health crisis is downright heroic. If you haven’t spent time in a middle school classroom lately, you may not fully grasp the intensity of it on every level, from the awkwardness to the body odor to the delightful hilarity that tweens bring to the table. When you connect with your students, it can be incredibly rewarding, and when you don’t…well, we all read “Lord of the Flies,” right? Skilled teachers bring out the best in young people, and that can be done in many different ways. In fact, this new generation of students requires out-of-the-box thinking and new ideas to keep them engaged in the learning process. Teacher Amy Allen makes middle school fun For Amy Allen, it’s all about making her middle school classroom a fun, welcoming place to learn and by bonding with her students. For Allen, fun and welcoming comes before anything else. “I love teaching middle schoolers because they are awkward, and I’m awkward, so we get along,” Allen tells Upworthy. She plays games with students, gets rambunctious with them and creates opportunities for them to expend some of that intense pre-and-early-teen energy in healthy ways. For instance, she shared a video of a game of “grudgeball,” an active trivia game that makes reviewing for a quiz or test fun and competitive, and you can see how high-energy her classroom is: @_queenoftheclassroom If this looks like fun to you, pick up my grudgeball template (? in bio) #qotc #grudgeball #10outof10recommend @Amy Allen @Amy Allen @Amy Allen ♬ original sound – Amy Allen “I think for teachers, we always want to create moments for our students that are beyond the standard reading, writing, memorizing, quiz, ‘traditional learning,'” Allen says. “Games are a great way to incorporate fun in the classroom.” Allen clearly enjoyed the game as much as her students—”I love the chaos!” she says— and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Fun keeps teachers sane, too. Allen shares tons of classroom and teacher content on her TikTok page, where she’s accrued 15,000 followers and more than a million likes. Most of them admire her as a dedicated educator. Most of them. Then a troll showed up in the comments Recently, one person took issue with Allen’s silly and raucous classroom behavior and commented, “your a teacher act like it.” (Not my typo—that’s exactly what the person wrote, only with no period.) Allen, never one to shy away from public criticism on her social media, addressed the comment in another video in the most perfect way possible—by acting exactly like a teacher. Watch as she eviscerates the anonymous commenter’s poor spelling, grammar, and punctuation. @_queenoftheclassroom Replying to @كل الكلبات تريد مني Come see me if you have any further questions. #qotc #iteachmiddleschool #weDEFINITELYdonthavefuninhere @Amy Allen @Amy Allen @Amy Allen #Inverted ♬ original sound – Amy Allen There are two solid ways to handle a rude comment without making things worse—you can ignore it or you can craft a response that makes the person look like a fool without being cruel or rude yourself. Allen’s grammar lesson response was A+ work, right down to the “Come see me if you have any further questions” caption. Teacher-mode, activated. Free lesson: Don’t mess with Ms. Allen In fact, the person apparently went back and deleted their comment after the comeback video went viral, which makes it all the more hilarious. Allen’s video currently has more than 4 million views on TikTok and over 18 million views on YouTube. “What’s funny is I left my correction on the board accidentally, and the next day, students asked me what that was all about,” Allen says. “When I explained it, they thought it was cool because ‘why would anyone go after Ms. Allen’? At that point, the video had maybe 10,000 views. I never imagined the video would go viral.” Two days later, as the video was creeping toward a million views, she upped the stakes. “Some of my students are my ultimate hype people, and they were tracking it harder than I was,” she says. “I made a ‘deal’ with my fifth period if it reached 1 million during their class, they could sit wherever they wanted the entire week. “During lunch, I checked, and it reached 1 million. So when they came back from recess, I announced it, and it was like I was a rockstar. They screamed and cheered for me. It was an incredible moment for me.” The comments showed lots of love Allen’s followers, and many more people beyond that, loved her response: “You’re an amazing teacher. (Did I do it right???)” “Well, I appreciate you acting like a teacher… love it…” “I love this clap-back! Look at you “acting” like a teacher!” The irony, of course, is that Allen was acting like a teacher in her grudgeball video—an engaged teacher with engaged students who are actively participating in the learning process. Just because it doesn’t look like serious study doesn’t mean it’s not learning, and for some kids, this kind of activity might be far more effective at helping them remember things they’ve learned (in this case, vocabulary words) than less energetic ways of reviewing. Allen has her thumb on the pulse of her students and goes out of her way to meet them where they are. Last year, for instance, she created a “mental health day” for her students. “I could tell they were getting burnt out from all the state tests, regular homework, and personal life extracurricular activities that many of my students participate in,” she says. “We went to my school library for ‘fireside reading,’ solved a murder mystery, built blanket forts, watched the World Cup, colored, and completed sudokus. Is it part of the curriculum? No. Is it worth spending one class period doing something mentally rewarding for students? Absolutely.” @_queenoftheclassroom Up Next: We decide to form a band with our first single “Rub some dirt on my boots”. #staytuned #qotc #parentdiscipline #teacherhumor #CapCut ♬ 打字声 – 成都潜在人工智能科技有限公司 Why ‘fun’ in the classroom is serious business Teaching middle school requires a lot of different skills, but perhaps the most important one is to connect with students, partly because it’s far easier to teach someone who actually wants to be in your classroom and partly because effective teaching is about so much more than just academics. A teacher might be the most caring, stable, trustworthy adult in some students’ lives. What looks like silly fun and games in a classroom can actually help students feel safe and welcomed and valued, knowing that a teacher cares enough to try to make learning as enjoyable as possible. Plus, shared laughter in a classroom helps build a community of engaged learners, which is exactly what a classroom should be. Keep up the awesome work, Ms. Allen, both in the classroom and in the comment section. You can follow Amy Allen on TikTok and YouTube. This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated. The post Someone criticized this teacher’s out-of-the-box lessons. Her comeback was an A+. appeared first on Upworthy.