My Reddit Experience

After special guest Bret Willet visited our class last week, I began digging into the world of Reddit, specifically in Teaching and Education. I followed 3 subreddits: r/Teaching, r/Teachers, and r/Education. I saw different types on content on each subreddit page.

Overall, I noticed that a lot of posts included venting. I quickly became tired of the venting posts on all 3 subreddit pages. Teachers, overall, are not happy right now. The pandemic is taking a toll on everyone and teachers are venting and asking for advice with distance learning.

Additionally, I noticed that many posts were unanswered. About 1/4 of the posts that I opened received 0 comments, half received 1-3 comments, and 1/4 received 4+ comments. The posts that seemed most genuine or dire seemed to receive more comments than venting posts. All of the subreddits included "chat" options, which seemed similar to the Twitter chats that Bret discussed, although the Reddit chats are not scheduled and can occur at any time.

r/Teaching - 74k members

I enjoyed one particular post that highlighted the benefits of remote teaching. A teacher explained that her students were frequently using the chat option in her Zoom calls to communicate privately with her. She said that this was helping her build relationships with her students and may be attributed to the fact that many young people are more comfortable "chatting" than emailing or even speaking in person.

I read a post shared by a teacher who is experiencing an uncomfortable student interaction. The student frequently messages the teacher saying "I love you" or that the student admires the teacher's specific body parts. I was impressed by the answered provided by the Reddit community. They validated this teacher's feelings and offered advice for mitigating interaction with this student.

r/Teachers - 190k members

I noticed many posts about work/life balance on this subreddit. I think this is a common challenge for teachers because we want to deliver the best education possible for our students but we work in a very egaltarian environment, without much opportunity for upward mobility. The possibility of a pay raise motivates many workers to put more time and effort into their jobs, but public school teachers do not recieve merit pay. A theme of commentary on these posts was work efficiency and personal choice. Some educators are more efficient than others; an educator who boasts 8 hours of extra work is not necessarily a better teacher. Similarly, two educators may choose to be involved in different amounts of extracurricular activities or spend differing amounts time in the school building. This is OK! A teacher forcing oneself to spend many extra hours in the school building supervising extracurriculars, miserable while doing so, may not be making the best career choices.

r/Education - 118k members

This subreddit was interesting for me because it included posts from many different types of users. For example, a student posted a wondering about the benefits of finishing high school vs. earning a GED. Many useful comments were produced in this conversation. A user posted about the need for Finance classes in schools. A teacher asked for resources that would help students understand the importance of responsible social media use.