This is on point. I'm Megna Chocrabardi. Chelsea Clark is a middle school teacher in Florida.

I have been a teacher in Fort Myers-Thorda for the last four years and the amount of change

I have seen in these four years has been absolutely insane. When I first started teaching,

I felt safe, I felt valuable. I felt like I could do all of my responsibilities in the classroom

and be successful. I felt like my kids by and large for the most part were provided for and healthy and happy.

Unfortunately, Chelsea says that's changed in a big way.

I've broken up at least ten fights this year and I've been sexually harassed by students.

I've been over to help another student and look at something on his Chromebook and another student step behind me and hummed me.

And our administration is struggling so hard to keep up with all these behavior issues that kids will say and do things like this and then they just don't get punished.

Chelsea's experience isn't unique. When the pandemic hit and schools shut down, 50 million American children lost their primary place of learning and socialization.

Half of those kids wouldn't be allowed to return to their school buildings for more than a year.

That's a year of growth, academic, social and emotional, lost.

A reminder that the COVID pandemic caused the greatest disruption in the history of American education.

And when students were finally allowed to reenter their school buildings, they brought new behavioral challenges with them.

Austin Rife says he's even noticed a change in the two and three year olds he works with at a Columbus, Ohio daycare.

I'm seeing a lot of these children just being delayed in their ability to take simple direction like let's sit, let's not climb on things, let's not run in the room.

We talk about in my center, just it seems like COVID really put a hindrance on being able to work with children to handle being told no being told, you know, listen, I know you really want to go play with these toys, but we need to come and sit and work on this activity.

However, the pandemic is not uniquely responsible for changes in classroom behavior.

As with many aspects of American life, the pandemic magnified challenges that were already there, but hidden arise in disruptive behavior was already taking place prior to 2020.

It's one of the reasons why Amber Blevins recently left her job in Illinois. She'd been a teacher for 20 years.

There is no doubt in my mind that tying funding for schools to test scores and daily attendance has created environments and school systems where almost any bad behavior is tolerated.

And there are no ramifications for low achievement, disrespect, disregard for rules and parents seem to to support that because they seem to think that public school teachers are picking on their children if they try to hold them accountable for their actions.

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