How realistic are TV and movie representations of high school classes?

Cafe Society
21

I’ve been out of highschool for 6 years so this is a touch out-dated

Varies based on the teacher’s preference. In most it more-or-less was. Often with some grouping, such as 4 columns of 2 desks in 4-5 rows. In one of my English classes the teacher had the desks in a big square facing inwards so he could be in the centre while teaching.

Never seen that happen.

Yup. My math teacher in grades 10 & 11 did that. He’d just lecture all class and then in 5 mins to the end he’d give us an assignment. Pissed me off since the lectures were on agonizingly simple things. And i didn’t want to waste my home time doing assignments i could have got done in class if the teacher didn’t waste all day before telling us what it would be.

Every social studies class i had was like this most of the time as well.

Usually my classes were packed up and ready to leave several minutes before the bell. The teachers usually had such things timed pretty good. In the rare event the teacher had the class interested enough to have not prepared to leave before the bell we did, usually, just get up and leave. Some teachers tried to stop us(“the bell doesn’t dismiss you I dismiss you!”… right) but i just ignored them.

Sort of. They were allowed in the school if they popped into the office first and asked. But no one really cared if they didn’t unless they became a distraction. Really no single teacher/admin has 1500(the size of my HS) faces memorized anyway and they aren’t stopping random kids and asking them if they go to the school.

Edit: after reading some of the replies i figured i should point out I was in a medium-small sized town in Canada. I think things might be a little different in the US and in big cities. And as a follow up, anyone go to a school that had actual security personnel or metal detectors? That always strikes me as very weird when i see shows/movies with that.

22

I currently teach math at a high school in WV. So this is what’s going on at my school right now!
Do you have individual desks set in rows?

I do because it works best for me. We have plenty of teachers who do the circle or semi-circle pattern. We have plenty of rooms with two person tables. The teacher across the hall from me has her desks set up in groups of four (the desk part is touching in the middle), which is great for group work.

Do you have new students come up and introduce themselves if they arrive mid-semester?

I don’t make them do this, because I don’t yet know if they are out-going or shy. I will often say, after the kid sits down, “Everyone, this is … Welcome to our class!” ro whatever. I also find time on their first day in my room to talk to them one on one, let them know who I am, tell them where we are, etc. I try not to ask where they are from at first, because we are right next to two different group homes, and often get kids from there. They usually don’t want that out, at least at first, and many of them are savvy enough to know that they can keep why they are in trouble a secret and not have that baggage.

Are there a lot of classes where the teacher just stands up front and lectures? That kind of chalk ‘n’ talk is pretty unusual in the UK these days.

Totally depends of course. I teach math, so I am often up at my smart board doing practice problems and lecturing, but we also have times where the kids are at the board or they are doing practice on their own, or group assignments. Most of the math classes I’ve been in are like that. When you start talking about what goes on around the whole school it’s different. I know teachers that are still very lecture oriented. I know teachers that are very discussion oriented. We have one history teacher who, unfortunately, teaches everything by watching a movie about it. I know one science teacher who gives the kids a packet of work, and leaves them pretty much on their own to work on it in small groups. It’s just due at the end of the grading period. The science teacher I work with is very project oriented. She does as little of the seat work and lecture time as she can, and gets the kids to the lab stations as much as possible.

Does the class get up and start packing up when the bell rings, even if the teacher’s in mid-sentence? And, if so, does the teacher often plan their lessons so badly that they finish in the middle of a topic?

LOL Totally depends! First off, do the kids have respect for the teacher? I mean, the guy in the room next to me has the kids packed up and standing at the door 10 minutes before the class is over, often slipping out the door if he doesn’t notice them. I make my kids stay in their seats until it’s over, and they are not dismissed if I’m still talking.
I wouldn’t say it’s bad planning to finish in the middle of a topic necessarily. When it does happen to me it’s either because A) we’ve gotten off topic talking about something else or B) the kids have really struggled with whatever we are doing, so it’s taken longer than I anticipated. My kids usually learn early that I like to talk, so they try to get me off subject so I’ll forget to give them homework (we have a math assignment almost every night), but then they learn pretty quick that even if we don’t finish the lesson, they will still be responsible for the assignment so they give up. And really, if I finish teaching, they are allowed to start homework in class, so then they try to get as much time to do it at school as possible!
Our official school policy is supposed to be “teach bell to bell”, with no down time for students. No one has ever been really clear about whether seat-work time is supposed to count, and there are teachers who literally lecture from bell to bell.

Can non-students often wander onto school grounds, like Seth Rogen does to his GF in Pineapple Express, or Oz does in Buffy before he rejoins the school?

At our school there is a gate with a guard shack to get onto the grounds (not that it would be hard to get in – just say you are here for a parent-teacher conference or something). Then you have to be buzzed into the building, so the office knows you are coming in. Then you sign in and get a visitor pass. Now I say all that, but a former student of mine stops in to visit me all the time, and he never gets a visitor’s pass because he says he knows they’d kick him out (he was quite the trouble maker). If he ever gets caught, they’ll just have our officer on duty escort him out. I’ve seen that happen before.

23

My high school doesn’t have a metal detector, but we do have a deputy on duty at all times during the school day. There is a metal detector at the Alternative School in our county (kids go there who have been expelled from regular school).

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This is one of the big problems we are facing at my school right now. All the teachers have these red hall-passes and no student is to be out in the hall without one. Well, often kids steal them and wander, or the wander without them and no one stops them. We have a HUGE skipping problem. Our gym teachers, unfortnately, let any kid who wants to come in the gym in there – the principals have gone into our gym before and counted over 200 kids just doing whatever. No actual class going on, and more than 100 kids that don’t belong.

I don’t know what the answer is, but in a school our size (over 2000 kids), with the problems we have, one almost wants to say no kids allowed in the hall for any reason ever. I’m a “mean teacher” who writes up skippers, but I feel like it’s a losing battle right now.

Oh, and on the subject of pretty young teachers, I’m 33, but not too bad looking. I teach with a lot of 20 something (or older) teachers who are pretty/handsome.

25

Yes

Actually, unlike a lot of posters here, I do remember some teachers would occasionally offer up a brief introduction of someone new, like: Welcome Jane Smith. She comes to us from Bayside High.
But that was about it.

For the most part yes.

Depended on the teacher. They usually had things timed pretty well, so this wasn’t really too big a problem. But there were a few teachers who wouldn’t let you seperate your ass from your seat until they said you could.

When I was in school (mid to late 90s) you could get away with this far easier than you could today. For my job, I occasionally have to drop in at one of the local high schools and you almost always have to check in at the office and get a visitors pass. And I’ve found that unless you’re a family member or there on official business, you’ll have a pretty hard time getting in. They’d probably be pretty leery of letting an older guy smelling of pot like Seth Rogen in to visit his girlfriend (even if she was 18, like in the movie).
Some schools, security is lax enough that you can just pop in and wander around anyway, but inevitably you’ll get stopped and directed back to the office.
Other schools, all the doors are locked from the outside during the day, and they’re designed in such a way that you have to go through the office in order to get in.

26

In my school, we were required to have hall passes to be outside the classroom during class time. We didn’t have hall monitors, but if a teacher or principal caught you without a pass, you were in big trouble.

Some classes had desks, some had tables. Every teacher decided how the classroom was set up. Most of the time, we were in orderly rows. Grade (Primary) School was really the only time the desks were moved around in any different order – though, I did have one teacher who would change the room around just to be funny.

All my classes, with the exception of my vocational class in Jr and Sr years (and one particularly bad history class), had lecture for the majority of the class and little or no time to do any actual work during class. Use of the chalkboard depended on what class it was.

As for the bell to change classes: We weren’t given much time to get to the next class, so when the bell went off, we had to book it to our lockers or to the next classroom so we wouldn’t be late to the next class, which started *immediately *after the second bell. The teacher had to have everything done before the end of class bell rang.

27

I’ve been teaching high school in Southern California for 22 years. While the answers may vary a bit depending on what class I am teaching and/or what room I’m in at the time, generally:

Do you have individual desks set in rows?

Yes. My current classroom for AP Euro, AmGovt/Econ has 7 rows of 5 and 1 row of 4 desks facing a whiteboard.

Do you have new students come up and introduce themselves if they arrive mid-semester?

Generally, no. If they come into my Speech & Debate class, then yes.

Are there a lot of classes where the teacher just stands up front and lectures?

Most of my Social Studies are lecture-based, at least for a healthy percentage of the class time.

Does the class get up and start packing up when the bell rings, even if the teacher’s in mid-sentence? And, if so, does the teacher often plan their lessons so badly that they finish in the middle of a topic?

if friedo bolted for the door at the bell in any of my classes, he’d find himself with a Saturday School at the very least. Conditions vary day to day. Most days we are well finished with my material by the time the bell rings. But there are some days when a good discussion is going on, or a student presentation is being made, or we have a guest presenter, when we will run right up to if not through the bell.

If the topic is a large one, I will often lead up to the bell with a story or puzzle, and leave the class with a cliff-hanger over night, or a problem to be solved. That gets them hooked on the following days stuff early.

Can non-students often wander onto school grounds, like Seth Rogen does to his GF in Pineapple Express, or Oz does in Buffy before he rejoins the school?

If they tried that at my school they’d be spotted and detained immediately. All visitors have to check in at the gate, sign in at the office, get a Visitor’s Pass, and are generally monitored during their visit. About the only ones who get to “wander” are people like the mayor, who comes in to talk to my government classes every year, or my debate kids, who wear lanyards with passes hanging from them while they talk at walls in the quad.

28

Yes, all Milwaukee Public Schools have actual security personnel who, IME, tend to be corrupt and play favorites. Some ride the city buses that have problems with students. Can’t speak for all the schools, but we had metal detector days about once a month and during certain after school activities, like basketball games. This was in middle and high school.

29

My daughter was 23 when she started teaching at the high school she attended as a student.
Oh and BTW she is more than attractive. :cool:

Going back to the 1960s I took typing because the teacher was 24 had huge hoots, and wore tight sweaters and short skirts. :smiley:

30

I’m curious, how is it done in the UK? Because lecture (with discussion mixed in) is pretty standard for almost all of the high school and college classes I’ve ever been in.

31

scifisam2009, could you go through your list in the OP and explain to us what U.K. schools are like that are different from what you think U.S. schools are like?

32

It’s more likely today for the teacher to be standing up and showing a PowerPoint or LMO (what used to be called an opaque projector – it projected your written or typed notes) than a chalkboard, and most chalkboards have been replaced by whiteboards (using markers, not chalk).

Students aren’t supposed to leave class until the teacher dismisses them, bell or no bell, but the reality is that once the bell rings, students start to go to the next class (in some cases, if they don’t leave immediately for your next class, you will be late). They will gather their books and materials and try to leave. The teacher will try to finish before the bell, but since they can’t see the clock (it’s often behind them), they can’t always do it. Students probably won’t leave before being dismissed, but they are putting their books away and getting their backpacks, and most teachers won’t try to continue holding them.

Non-students do need to check in at the office, and many schools have security to keep an eye on anyone entering. When I was in high school, you could wander at will.

33

Another data point here: (Math teacher, South Carolina)

I use either a “U” shaped arrangement, or a “V” shaped arrangement mostly. Sometimes, we move them around for group work, but they go back to the “U” or the “V”. Although I personally wouldn’t care what arrangement they are in, I remember from my days as a substitute teacher that it is infinitely easier for the sub if they are in a specific arrangement with assigned seats, and since my teaching style involves some work at the whiteboard/SmartBoard[sup]®[/sup] the desks can’t easily be in a “grouping” arrangement without some students having their backs to the front. However, I know that our department head (a VERY good teacher) rearranges her desks every day, class to class if need be, for the needs of the day (group, lecture, etc.).

No. New students are often tremendously self-concious at this age; the last thing they want is everyone looking at them while they talk. Instead, I simply welcome them to the class and then work them into the discussions as I can.

All too often this is still the norm for U.S. high school teachers, even in the face of decades of evidence that it is one of the least effective methods of teaching. :rolleyes: I ascribe to a “constructivist” concept of learning, so I try very hard not to lecture, though there are some topics it is simply the most economical way to treat the subject matter. But this does not mean that we don’t end up dealing with math problems on the front whiteboard. It just means that I try to make the students be involved in the learning process, doing the reasoning out, trying things out, etc. But that’s amazingly unusual, even in “good” schools in this country. :frowning:

Students being students, at the start of a semester, they will try this. Usually, I have it stamped out of them by about week 3. :smiley: My room has no clock displayed, which helps (though with the modern mobile telephone, this does not keep them from knowing the time :p). They also know that they cannot leave until I dismiss them (friedo would be facing a write-up the very first time he tried that stunt, along with a call home to his parents!). And I have zero tolerance for students disrespecting either me or their fellow students by “packing up” while someone else is talking.

Having said that, yes, I try to manage my blocks (90 min. long) so that the last activity of the day in each block is close to over by the time the block is ended. Doesn’t always work, students being students. And I will note this: a really good day is a day where we are so busy and involved in learning that the “bell” (we have a tone, not a bell) catches us by surprise, and we have to hastily get our stuff together before they can leave. It is amazing how often this will happen when you involve the students themselves in the learning process. :smiley:

Here at my school, we are a bit lax about this. But eventually the Sherrif’s deputy assigned to the school would see you, or the administration would, and you’d be asked to check in at the front desk. The first day after the seniors are done with their exams, while the other students are still in their last week of school, the seniors LOVE to go to the office to get their “visitor” tag; it’s a confirmation that they are no longer students! :cool:

As with when I was an attorney, I find TV/Hollywood does a lousy job of portraying what I do. But that’s in large part to the simple fact that people forget when watching movies or TV: life is BORING. If you represented what really goes on in a classroom on the big or little screen, no one would watch it! :stuck_out_tongue:
That’s just for a start. :smiley:
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Does the class get up and start packing up when the bell rings, even if the teacher’s in mid-sentence? And, if so, does the teacher often plan their lessons so badly that they finish in the middle of a topic?

LOL Totally depends! First off, do the kids have respect for the teacher? I mean, the guy in the room next to me has the kids packed up and standing at the door 10 minutes before the class is over, often slipping out the door if he doesn’t notice them. I make my kids stay in their seats until it’s over, and they are not dismissed if I’m still talking.
I wouldn’t say it’s bad planning to finish in the middle of a topic necessarily. When it does happen to me it’s either because A) we’ve gotten off topic talking about something else or B) the kids have really struggled with whatever we are doing, so it’s taken longer than I anticipated. My kids usually learn early that I like to talk, so they try to get me off subject so I’ll forget to give them homework (we have a math assignment almost every night), but then they learn pretty quick that even if we don’t finish the lesson, they will still be responsible for the assignment so they give up. And really, if I finish teaching, they are allowed to start homework in class, so then they try to get as much time to do it at school as possible!
Our official school policy is supposed to be “teach bell to bell”, with no down time for students. No one has ever been really clear about whether seat-work time is supposed to count, and there are teachers who literally lecture from bell to bell.

Apparently, you’re my doppelganger, except for the one dirty word in there. (MATH!!!) English for me. Sometimes, teaching up to the bell isn’t because of poor planning, it’s because the students are so involved in a subject/argument/POV that it just spills over.

35

Oz never left high school, although he did have to take a fifth year to graduate. He left college in the episode “Wild at Heart” and returned, briefly, in the episode “A New Moon Rising”. During the latter episode, he visited the campus, collected paperwork to re-enroll, but then circumstances (his inability to control his lycanthropy) forced him to leave again.

36

In real life students seldom (if ever) shower after gym class. So any scene with guys in towels or plots about having to get over the embarrassment of showering with other guys or being locked out of the room naked is a bit dated.

37

Went to highschool in Sacramento CA, graduated within this last decade.

Do you have individual desks set in rows?
Yes usually, some classes would have tables that were shared by 2 or 3 students (Art, Drafting, things like that)

Do you have new students come up and introduce themselves if they arrive mid-semester?

No not really I mean the student would walk in hand the teacher a note or w/e. Teacher would say Hi so and so welcome to the class find a seat.

Are there a lot of classes where the teacher just stands up front and lectures? That kind of chalk ‘n’ talk is pretty unusual in the UK these days.

Yes although most of my classes had lots of participation it wasnt just the teacher talking for an hour.

Does the class get up and start packing up when the bell rings, even if the teacher’s in mid-sentence? And, if so, does the teacher often plan their lessons so badly that they finish in the middle of a topic?

Depends on the teacher. Some teachers would continue to say w/e he was saying as students were leaving and if you missed it it was on you. Some teachers would not allow you to get up or even put your stuff in your bag untill he said it was ok

Can non-students often wander onto school grounds, like Seth Rogen does to his GF in Pineapple Express, or Oz does in Buffy before he rejoins the school?

Yea I mean depending on how you look. My school had hall monitors as well as City police. Teachers had ID and if you look like you don’t belong you might be called on it. Like most things in life though if you do them with confidence no one would say anything.

Yes and no showering at all I don’t even know if the showers worked. We also do not have half hour passing periods

38

Some of the responses from teachers in this thread have bugged me. When I was in High School (graduated 1991) we had 1 or 2 teachers who were the “you don’t leave till I dismiss you type”. :rolleyes: The campus at my high school was very spread out and with certain classes you could find yourself having to go from one end of the campus to the other. Sometimes it was barely enough time to get through the crowds in the time given between classes.

Teachers,if you expect people to show up on time, finish your damn class on time. :slight_smile:

39

I went to five different high schools, including an American one in the UK. (But mostly in Austin, TX in the 1980s.) I also taught middle school in the mid-90s and I now teach college.

Pretty much all of the classes in HS were in rows. Some teachers had tables - science classes, typically.

New student intros… maybe. Rarely in the Hollywood fashion. If the teacher was chill they might point out that someone was new. Personally that’s a lot better than them acting as if your presence was ruining their perfect sense of order.

Lecturing is pretty common. It’s not as bad as it sounds, especially if the teacher is a veteran who knows that the hell he/she’s talking about. I had a government teacher who lectured all the time. But the guy knew his shit and was entertaining as hell, cracked jokes, etc. We all loved his class.

Bell ringing… okay, here’s where I disagree with many posters. It depends on who the current teacher is and where the students are going next. Some teachers are shits about you being in class before the second (final) bell rings. My HS classes had passing periods of about 7 minutes. All of the schools were pretty big (approximately 1,500 students) and some even had two stories. So if you were unfortunate enough to have classes at diametrical ends of the campus, you would have to haul ass at the end of the period. And running in the halls, etc. was a detention-worthy offense.

Some students watch the clock like a hawk and you can tell the bell is about to ring because they have their bag packed, ready to bolt. A teacher who was making an important point would perhaps get the benefit of the doubt and have students listen after the bell… but this would be a problem for both students and other teachers, who would complain.

So: new junior teacher keeping kids after the bell… that would fail in a hurry. Department head/veteran teacher keeping kids after the bell… might get away with it for a while.

Plenty of students in my experience would try to be polite about it, but they’d pick up stuff and say, “I’m sorry, I have a class across campus” and bolt. The other issue is that in my city, we had kids taking buses to other campuses for classes pretty much all day, so if you were late, you might miss the bus to your cosmetology/ROTC/auto shop class. (Granted these were typically between lunch periods, but all of my HSes had three lunch periods.)

Sneaking onto campus? I last visited a HS this January, and as an adult, I had to get a bunch of paperwork filled out, and wear a badge the second I entered the campus. But a lot of comprehensive HSes in America are open-air, multiple-building affairs. I don’t know how impossible it would be to mingle into the crowd between a changing period and not be noticed. Now, if you were older someone (a teacher, hall monitor) might notice you. All HSes have signs posted everywhere that say if you’re a visitor, you must check in at the office immediately.

And yes, we had monitors. Grown men (and sometimes women) would patrol the halls making sure no fights broke out and ushering kids to class. They carried walkie-talkies and usually knew most of the kids. Teachers and administrators also did this. In a regular period between classes, I’d usually hear from two or three adults “hurry to class!” in varying levels of politeness.

I did go to inner-city schools where fighting and skipping courses happened all the time, so MMMV…

Showering after PE? Hell yeah, unless you had it at the end of the day. It’s HS. Nothing more crippling than smelling, or being told you smell. Now granted, most schools only require PE for a year or two. If you play a sport you typically go to that sport at the end of the day or the last period, and of course you then shower at the end of practice/school. Frankly, the idea that there are HS-aged people participating in sweaty PE activity and not showering scares me. Then again, I’m in Texas, where the temperatures are in the 80s-90s year round…

[QUOTE=Covered_In_Bees]
I can pretty confidently say that you fail Internet Messageboard Conversations.

The OP probably isn’t so stupid so as to think the whole U.S. is going to be exactly the same, school to school.

Perhaps he knew there would be differences and wanted to you know, hear our stories of high school with regards to his question?

I have no choice but to strongly suggest you take remedial courses in how to properly converse with people on messageboards. Perhaps with a side of general communications skills.
[/QUOTE]

WTF?

40

(I’ve gone a bit TL;DR on this.)

Do you have individual desks set in rows? My high school was all about working in group tables. The only room with “desks” was the theatre, which had fold-up desk arms for the seats. Tables were in rows, generally, although we often dragged out of the way and set up chairs in circles for literature and social studies classes. Math tables usually had two people on each long side, with the long sides perpendicular to the board. Other classes had two on the broad side and one each on the end, with the broad side parallel to the board. In science classes the tables were pushed together to form long rows of workspace, usually seating 4 in a row, then an aisle, then another four, across the room. One of my history/English block classes did that as well.

Do you have new students come up and introduce themselves if they arrive mid-semester? This was on a class-by-class basis, but often, yes. If the student was going to have a difficult integration, the teacher would sometimes take the tablemates aside and talk to them- or at least, that happened to me once. A moderately-high functioning autistic guy joined my freshman honors English and science classes. The science teacher only mentioned that a new kid was coming. My English teacher, on the other hand, had a quiet conversation with us explaining why we were picked to have the new guy sit with us- she knew we were mature enough to handle him.

Are there a lot of classes where the teacher just stands up front and lectures? That kind of chalk ‘n’ talk is pretty unusual in the UK these days. I never had a class exactly like this, but most of my history classes did have lecture days. Ditto science. Math, depending on the teacher, could get pretty lecture-y, but there was always time to work in groups or on your own.

Does the class get up and start packing up when the bell rings, even if the teacher’s in mid-sentence? And, if so, does the teacher often plan their lessons so badly that they finish in the middle of a topic? We didn’t have bells, but the clocks were highly visible and digital, so if the clock switched over in the middle of the sentence we’d often get up unless the teacher was really holding our attention. It was not so much bad planning as it was the students’ ability to get teachers off-track that caused lessons to just sort of stop in the middle.

**Can non-students often wander onto school grounds, like Seth Rogen does to his GF in Pineapple Express, or Oz does in Buffy before he rejoins the school? ** My school was pretty good about requiring guest passes, although the last time I visited I just went straight to the theatre department and bypassed the main office. But I’m a former student who was a bit of a golden child with administration (I was one of two National Merit Scholars in the district the year I was eligible) and a known theatre nerd, so I’m not really comparable to the Seth Rogen situation, and if they’d caught me without a pass I wouldn’t have gotten in too much trouble. Although we had open air walkways, the administration building is right in the middle of it all. If you snuck in during lunch, you’d be fine- we have open-campus lunch and the breezeways normally had enough people in them to keep you from being noticed. But since there’s two lunch periods, you’d need to know exactly what classrooms or what-have-you were available.

Other notes on real-life vs TV:
Almost no one showered after my PE class.
We had no metal detectors. In middle school, you got checked with a detector wand for any school dance. In high school, nothing.
We had no lockers outside of the four locker rooms- one set for the gym and weight room, one set for the pool- to save on construction costs and reduce risk of guns.
The theatre kids were not wimpy emo geeks- well, not all of them- and most knew how to operate at least 3 power tools unless they were the sort of actor who had to be forced into helping sweep the stage.
Unlike most real life schools I’ve encountered, and instead something like on TV, our productions were usually at least 75% student designed. Costume were often adult designed to allow for more sewing and buying time, but smaller shows had student design. If a set required significant structural elements, we had an adult design it. Only once that I recall was lighting designed by a teacher, and that was due to a student dropping the assignment. Sound was always students. The theater seating isn’t too much like on tv, either: It has a few rows of permanent seating, which also houses the stage management and sound booth (light booth upstairs), but the rest of the seating is rolling wall that expands outward into the cafeteria area.
The pretty people were in charge when it came to ASB and sports, but band, orchestra, choir, theatre, and the vocational clubs frequently won more awards and made it to national competitions.
My school had one or two bomb threats while I was attending, but no gun scares that I recall.