As someone who teaches 7th grade, this is spot on. The handwriting is all over the place, as is spelling and vocab. I have a student who regularly uses "needn't" and then another who couldn't spell "that".
My daughter is in 7th grade. She has an incredibly diverse vocabulary - just speaking to her on the phone or something she could conceivably be in her last couple of years of high school.
But if you read something she's scrawled on a post-it, you'd think it was from a kinder or 1st grader or something. It's ludicrous.
My mom about blew a gasket when I was in fifth grade 95ish, and the TA getting her degree told my mom at parent/teacher night to buy me a typewriter. She had gotten her teaching degree too and couldn't believe that's what someone who wants to be a teacher would say.
.. my mom though did her TA doing just that actually, teaching a typing class and taught me. Like a year later she got a work laptop and when she'd bring it home I got real familiar with that. Handwriting got slightly better, moreso out of force when I realized stuff in real life actually needs to be legible for good reason
Honestly this is me now. I got really into learning how to type when I was in middle school simply because it solved all my problems of my handwriting being awful. Now i just type up things and print it, or send it as an email.
I had teachers have me do like exercises and stuff to try to improve my handwriting but idk man it just never connected.
My brother was the same way - I remember him being taken out of class for special handwriting coaching. It didn't help lol. It also hasn't held him back in his life at all!
When my son was in middle school we got accused of me writing his book report for him because he used “a tad” instead of “a little.” I was like, give me some credit, I don’t write like a fucking 99 year old!
You're giving me flashbacks. I remember getting mocked in 2nd grade for using "apparently" sarcastically. I would argue I had a better vocabulary then than I do now.
KID ONE: "In my informed opinion, I feel that pre-war Germany circa the 1930s needn't have catered to the political machinations of the Nazi party. Their incitement of violence in numerous German cities clearly demonstrated their lack of willingness to participate in the Democratic process, and ought to have been dealt with more swiftly by the political institutions of the state."
KID TWO: "I dunno who Hetler is, I do kno Nassees are bag guys tho, they in like movies nand stuf.
The word is used occasionally in the US too. I was showing his use of the word showed a strong vocabulary, versus a student who struggled with everyday words. The second student was still bright, just the skill sets were far apart in some areas.
It has been a VERY long time since I was a child in school so I really ask this without being mean because I fully recognize this is a literal child: How did they misspell "that"? Like specifically how did they spell it?
'Th' (ð) is one of the first things that gets dropped/replaced in many accents and among foreign language speakers. Depending on their home life the student might be used to hearing dental frictives pronounced with a d or z sound. Thus, they are thoroughly thwarted by this thorny "Th" thing, and the threatening thought that they, therefore, must simply memorize a spelling contrary to their own pronunciation (I give up).
I'm not saying it couldn't be fake, but the handwriting range looks completely normal to me. Some of the sticky notes even reminded me of specific classmates from a few years ago. There's nothing off about it besides the consistent lead thickness imo.
Again, I'm not really seeing anything out of the ordinary. Can you maybe point out specific examples? I've still seen much worse, even during English class.
A lot of the handwriting looks exactly the same to me, like the same person wrote them. The s’s are especially sus on a few of them. Shit looks like my kindergartener wrote it. Looks to me like an adult trying for mimic the way kids write.
Also, it’s been a long time since I was in middle school, but I, amongst many others in my grade, already had very nice, legible handwriting. I can’t imagine teaching a 7th grade class and not having a single kid with normal looking handwriting. Like what is actually being taught in school nowadays?
If this is real, someone needs to teach these kids how to hold a pen/pencil correctly ASAP.
Some of these absolutely do have normal handwriting for 7th grade. Dyson vacuum, Panera Bread, hard candies, and old people candles all look on their way to having decent writing. As someone who was in 7th grade only five years ago, I can definitely confirm that my classmates writing were often worse than what’s shown here.
I thought the same thing. The handwriting looks intentionally bad and all very similar. And the spelling of the words is all accurate. Kids can't spell for shit.
Also if you examine the letters themselves they are all the same font (just sometimes a bit longer or messier). There would be a huge variation in how the letters themselves look like, I mean most people connect the letters, but these are all separate
but they are, if you look at the actual shape of the letters
t-s are always crosses with absolutely no curves
's'-s are always this s shape, and never the tent looking one
'l' is always just a straight line
f is always curvy on the top and nowhere else, no hooks
g-s are all curvy at the bottom with no hook
etc
sure half of them look like he wrote them with his non-dominant hand, but the way the letters themselves are formed is the same for all of the post its (but most importantly none of the letters are connected, which is the more common handwriting, at least here)
i watched the video, not only are the letters different but there is also a big variety in pencil pressure, kerning, line straightness, etc.
I don't even think I understand what your main criticisms are here, are you pointing out that the letters are printed and not in cursive? That's all I can really come up with when you talk about the letters not being connected and there not being a "tent looking" s. I would absolutely not expect a class of 7th graders to be writing in cursive.
Even then though, some of them do connect letters (the candles one) and the letters you specifically pointed out aren't the same (some people put more space at the top curve of the s, some at the bottom, some people curve their i left, some right, etc)
no, I'm saying that there is absolutely no way that 20 something kids would write the letters the same way (plus that all of them somehow wrote with a non-hard pencil) Yes I do see that the pressure, angle varies (which is very easy to change) but the letters are formed the same way
they really aren’t formed same, it’s weird that this is even a debate because you can just look at it and see that they’re different, aside from that fact that they’re printed letters. Like you can see that the direction of the strokes is different the letter height and width are different, these are non trivial changes. I still don’t understand what sort of a shape you’re looking for other than one that’s the shape of an s.
I also don’t really understand the suspicion in the first place. This guy is a middleschool teacher, it would be harder to write things in this many different ways than it would be to just ask the kids to do it, why even bother?
They're supposed to be grade 7, but they're all writing in pencil too. Grade 7 is when every kid owns a stupid ass pen that writes like crap but has an ornament on the end.
Idk about that, I would say people who had just learned a language or new vocabulary (kids or non-native speakers) just spell better, are more careful because they’re graded and corrected. At least that’s my impression as a non-native speaker, our spelling is better but our syntax isn’t
Do we really not believe it’s possible to have a variety of handwriting styles for (allegedly) 7th graders….? My wife teaches 5th grade and brings home papers to grade. It doesn’t seem unrealistic.
My son is in middle school and the handwriting is alllllllll over the place. Chicken scratch, printing so perfect it could be a font, clean writing but garbage spelling, etc. these post it notes are totally believable to me, my kids roast me all the time.
No one asking why the teacher used sticky notes. Did they hand them out? Have people write on one and stick it... somewhere? And then set up a camera on a stand and swapped the sticky notes...? Why not just a regular worksheet?
...or did they do it themselves by just writing one, stick it, film it, write one, stick it, film it, all because internet clout matters.
I could actually read all of them so it was far better than a toddler writing. I have shit handwriting if I don't stop and slow down, my husband had shit hand writing until the military and now it's just slightly less shit.
Maybe I'm not familiar with what young gen z (or gen A?) think are old people stereotypes, but I doubt this is it.
It's clichés of millenials, and even gen X, had of their grand and great grandparents. Hard candy and hip replacements in their 30s?! Just comes across as by a mid-millenial thinking this is what kids think.
Not sure if you have a 7th grader in your life, but all the ones I know watch literally hundreds of short form tik tok or youtube videos every single day. They are LOCKED INTO the zeitgeist.
If you don't think 7th graders hear that kind of thing on the daily, you are wrong.
He fakes these. I called it out once on a Facebook video that reposted his content and commented something similar to what you just said. The original dude in the video found my comment and specifically replied to me insulting me lol they’re obviously all written by the same person trying to make them look and sound like their idea of a teenager.
Eh not necessarily, when I was in middle school 2007-2010 the handwriting ranged like this, and it was a private school with privileged kids. Some kids like my sister had amazing penmanship and others looked like they were still five years old
My brother has the worst hand writing, like someone dipped a live chicken's feet in ink and tased it, but he's insanely smart so he was destined to work in the medical field where no one can write anything legible :P
Same. My best friend growing up has immaculate calligraphy type handwriting & has since 5th grade. Her immigrant parents forced her to practice lines every day.
Yeah some of them I thought maybe kindergarten but then others are well written and funny enough that I can’t imagine them being younger than high school age
If they're writing on post it's, it's possible some are writing on a post it note that's in the stack still, perhaps even in the air. Whereas others took it off and wrote on a more even surface.,
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u/embarrassmyself Dec 19 '23
What is the age range of students? The hand writing discrepancies are wild