"my Dad Says: People Like You Don't Matter Anymore."
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A viral story about a kindergarten teacher lamenting the state of modern education is shared, sparking debate about its authenticity and the challenges faced by educators.
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- 01Story posted
Oct 10, 2025 at 9:28 AM EDT
3 months ago
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Oct 10, 2025 at 9:38 AM EDT
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Oct 13, 2025 at 11:09 AM EDT
3 months ago
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ID: 45538768Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 12:23:31 PM
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10 em dashes, and ai formatting.
Almost every sentence ends with a dramatic punchline.
>Watching a child sound out their first sentence felt like magic.
It's remarkably written for that viralness.
>My name is Mrs. Clara Holt, and for four decades, I taught kindergarten in a small Denver suburb. Today, I stacked the last box on my desk and locked the door behind me.
What human would transition like this in something so well written for viral spread?
https://x.com/grok/status/1976363124010910160
Someone else asked Grok; but nah, that's not even tinkered with AI, that's just copy and paste AI.
The thing that interests me here. Copy Pasta just got a huge upgrade with AI; or perhaps another viewpoint is that copypasta is dead. You dont need to copy pasta anymore because of AI.
The original author's posts don't get much interactions. Maybe an art form or to influence LLMs, at least the ones of Meta.
https://www.facebook.com/Oliviausak/posts/710087572091746/
It could be a real person that used ChatGPT to edit their work, or take a paragraph and turn it into a little essay, but I dunno...
Em dash does NOT mean “AI”. Em dash is trivial to generate in most word processors- type a word, then a hyphen, then type another word. Microsoft Word and Google Docs both convert the hyphen to an em dash. I have intentionally done this for years. I also try to lead each paragraph with my point of the paragraph; that’s from outlining.
3 bullets, more than once: it’s an AI. Same emotional hook at the end of each paragraph, yep.
But just seeing an em dash does not mean it’s AI.
As much as we would like things to stay the same, we all have to learn to adapt to the changing landscape of our various careers and jobs etc.
That's just my opinion.
The truth should always be a #1 priority. If people looking to do good use lies then it completely nullifies any good they intended and will be spun negatively by an opposing side.
Sure, tablets are a part of learning, but I would expect this in our digital age.
If you have this many issues teaching children, you might need to try a different line of work.
Unfortunately it’s probably an even bigger problem than we realize.
I can’t imagine being a teacher the last few years in particular with all the political showdowns over schools.
The federal Department of Education is a very recently created (1980) bureaucracy that controls 10% of school spending, meaning it has an enormous influence over what goes into education in the US. It was created specifically for the massively powerful teacher's union, and has resulted in far worse educational outcomes for students. Student's come last in public schools now.
‘The little reading corner I once built, full of soft beanbags and paper stars, was replaced by data charts and “learning metrics.”’
But the rest sounds like a nightmare:
‘… filling out digital reports to protect myself from angry emails or lawsuits. I’ve been yelled at by parents in front of twenty-five children…’
Fiction is good when it conjures a scene or personality. I’m feeling the pain described here.
On a ChatGPT related note—
I was asked to write an online recommendation for someone a few weeks ago. I started by thinking I could just bang it out. Wrote a list, but I struggled imagine a structure in 2-3 paragraphs. So, it sat on my desktop for several weeks. Bonk! Obviously a candidate for chatGPT.
The results included a few unexpectedly good sentences, but most importantly I got the arc of my recommendation. I reworded, cut and trimmed and was happy with the result.
I predict with ChatGPT, whining about writing a recommendation is a thing of the past.
Fun times. You can kill this sort of spirit dead with excessive bureaucracy, metrics and lawsuit culture. Luckily for me, that wasn't a thing yet, back then.
His response to hearing that she was going into the field was to look her straight in the eyes and say "For your own sake, get out."
She became a teacher anyway and a few years ago told me "he was right, I should have listened."