Derrick Ryan Miller

We keep blaming teachers for declining literacy. But have we stopped to consider how dramatically children's lives have changed? We're raising a generation surrounded by 15-second videos, endless scrolling, and constant notifications. Many children spend more time swiping through content than sitting down with a book. Then we expect them to sit for 30 or 60 minutes, read complex passages, make inferences, and demonstrate deep comprehension on standardized tests. Scrolling is a sprint. Reading is a marathon. Children are becoming accustomed to information arriving in short bursts. They skim, swipe, and move on to the next thing. And when something doesn't immediately capture their attention, another video or notification is waiting. But reading requires something different. It takes patience, concentration, imagination, and the ability to stay engaged even when something is challenging. Those abilities develop through practice and experience. So if children are spending less time reading outside of school, why are we surprised when they struggle to sustain their attention while reading? And why is the teacher so often the one held responsible? Consider how many children grow up hearing bedtime stories, watching adults read, visiting libraries, or having conversations about books. Now consider how many spend those same hours in front of screens. Those experiences make a difference long before a child ever takes a reading assessment. Schools can teach children how to read, but they cannot control how children spend the other hours of their lives. And increasingly, we're asking teachers to compensate for cultural changes they had no part in creating. We also need to ask ourselves what we're doing inside schools. When we replace opportunities to read, explore, discuss, and enjoy books with more worksheets, test preparation, and assessments, are we actually helping children become better readers? A child who discovers the joy of reading is far more likely to pick up another book than one who associates reading primarily with answering questions on a test. Literacy develops through experiences, relationships, conversations, curiosity, and practice. It begins long before a standardized test and extends far beyond the classroom.

There used to be a basic understanding that teachers deserved a baseline level of respect. Schools operated under the principle of in loco parentis, meaning “in the place of the parent.” When children were at school, teachers were trusted to set boundaries, correct behavior, and keep order. Respect for adults was assumed. It was not something teachers had to negotiate for every day. Most of us remember getting in trouble at school and worrying a whole lot more about what was going to happen when we got home. Because home and school were usually on the same side. Your parents may have asked what happened. They may have disagreed with a consequence once in a while. But you knew better than to walk through the door acting like the teacher was the problem. You were going to be asked one question first. “What did you do?” That did not mean teachers were always right. It meant adults believed in correcting children without turning every consequence into a courtroom. Too often now, some parents approach schools more like lawyers than partners. Instead of asking, “How do we help my child learn from this?” the first response becomes, “Why did you do this to my child?” Students watch all of it. They learn that expectations can be debated. Consequences can be negotiated. And if they push hard enough, an adult may be the one who has to defend themselves. That is a very different classroom. Yes, classroom management matters. Teachers should continue learning how to build relationships, prevent problems, respond calmly, and create a room where students can learn. But we cannot pretend skill is the whole issue. A teacher can have strong relationships, clear expectations, consistent routines, and still be cursed at for taking up a phone. They can be threatened for enforcing a rule. They can be publicly attacked for holding a boundary. They can even be assaulted for doing the job they were hired to do. That is not a classroom-management problem. That is a cultural problem. Teachers did not create a culture where enforcing expectations is treated as aggression. They did not create a culture where accountability is optional or where a parent’s first instinct is to protect a child from every consequence. But teachers are expected to manage the fallout from it. So when we blame burnout, turnover, and silence on teachers needing “better classroom management,” we miss what is really happening. This is not just about skill. It is about risk. Teachers should not have to worry about personal safety, retaliation, or public backlash for enforcing the expectations their school has put in place. Classroom management did not fail. The social contract did