Flow State

I’m just tired.

Tired of walking into a classroom every day trying to make good lessons, trying to make something that might actually matter — and getting apathy back.

They don’t care about learning. They aren’t curious. I know they’re teenagers. I know I wasn’t perfect either. But I wasn’t this. I didn’t treat school like background noise.

And if a kid truly doesn’t want to learn or go to college, fine — give them a path out. Let them graduate at sixteen and spend two years in trade school. Why force kids who don’t want to be there into classrooms where they drag everyone else down?

Yesterday was report card pick-up day. Seniors rarely bring parents, but when they do, it’s the same scene: the parent’s surprised, the kid promises to “do better,” and everyone nods like something’s been accomplished. I’ve seen it for years. One kid out of dozens ever actually changes. The rest go right back to doing nothing the next day.

Some teachers try pep talks — “You’ll regret not trying harder.” No, they won’t. I’ve never seen it happen. They’ll blame the system, their parents, or anyone else. Never themselves.

That’s the real problem: we’ve built a system where no one is allowed to fail. We push kids forward whether they’ve earned it or not. Teachers are pressured to pass them so the school’s numbers look good. We shield them from consequences, then act shocked when they crumble later.
It’s always someone else’s fault this happened to them.

You see it every day.

I had two guest speakers in class — real people with real stories — and a handful of students still scrolled through their phones or slept. I stop class and call them out. I tell them it’s disrespectful. I ask them to put the phone away or sit up and engage. Sometimes they do — for a minute. Then it starts again.

I write referrals. I log incidents. I contact parents. And nothing happens. Admin shrugs. Phones are allowed, and if a kid’s asleep, I’m told they “might have outside issues.” Write-ups get closed in minutes. No follow-up, no consequence, nothing.

The message is clear: it’s not worth enforcing rules when no one else will back you up.

This generation doesn’t even think it’s rude. It’s not rebellion — they genuinely don’t see it as wrong. They live on their phones, permanently connected to friends and family. The boundary between social time and learning time has vanished.

Until schools ban phones completely — lock them up all day — it’s not going to get better. I’ve even tried incentives: kids earn tokens for locking up their phones that can replace a low grade or earn snacks. You’d be amazed how many have D’s or F’s and still won’t do it. They don’t care enough to trade their screen for a better grade.

Maybe I’m just an old man yelling at clouds, but I don’t think so. The divide in this generation won’t come from wealth. It’ll come from attention — from values. Some will learn to focus and care about something real. The rest will have their lives outsourced to screens, and they’ll never get them back.

We call all this compassion, but it’s really sabotage. We’re raising a generation of learned helplessness.

I still love my AP Government class — the kids who care, who ask questions, who think. They remind me why I started doing this. But the rest? It’s hard not to feel like I’m part of a broken system, propping up a fantasy of “equity” that’s really just avoidance.

Maybe burnout isn’t hating the work. Maybe it’s realizing the work doesn’t mean what it used to — and wondering if it ever will again.