I saw this posted online today:
“If you haven’t taught in a classroom post-COVID, you don’t know what it is like to teach the modern student. The students have changed. Teaching has changed. You have to be in the classroom daily to understand what I mean.”
Well…
That got the brain monkeys stirred up.
At first, there was silence. Then one of them slowly removed his glasses and said, “He’s not wrong.” And that was it. An emergency meeting was called.
Within minutes, they had overturned three chairs, located seventeen years’ worth of classroom memories, and begun an all-out debate over whether students have changed, education has changed, society has changed—or whether all of us simply woke up one morning in some bizarre alternate timeline where asking a student to put their phone away is considered the opening round of contract negotiations.
One monkey brought up attention spans. Another brought up learned helplessness. A third began muttering something about parents. We asked him to sit down. He refused. Then somebody mentioned cell phones. That’s when we lost control of the meeting.
Because teaching today really is different.
You can feel it.
The attention spans are different. The social dynamics are different. The relationship with technology is different. Expectations are different. And things that once seemed like basic classroom routines can now require negotiation, explanation, redirection, documentation, another redirection, and occasionally the diplomatic skills of a United Nations ambassador.
And yet…
You walk into that classroom tomorrow. Because mixed in with all of it are still those moments.
The kid who finally gets it. The one who hangs around after class because they need somebody to listen. The student who acts like they couldn’t possibly care less—and then quietly turns in something that tells you they were listening the entire time.
The laughter.
The breakthroughs.
The little victories nobody outside that classroom will ever see.
That part hasn’t changed.
Which is probably why teachers keep showing up even when the job sometimes feels like trying to educate thirty people while competing against TikTok, AirPods, group chats, sleep deprivation, artificial intelligence, and whatever catastrophic event occurred in the cafeteria ten minutes before your lesson began.
By this point, the brain monkeys had grown unusually quiet.
One finally whispered: “So…we still love teaching?”
Unfortunately, yes.
Long pause.
“Even now?”
Especially now.
Another long pause.
Then one of them stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and wrote:
WE’RE GONNA NEED MORE COFFEE.
The motion passed unanimously.
There’s more waiting at https://xinkblotz.com.
Telling stories, sharing thoughts, and drinking coffee. A blend of fiction, reflection, and whatever’s brewing—one post at a time.
Stories have always traveled best by word of mouth. If one of these finds a place in your heart, I’d be honored if you’d drop a like or share it with someone else.
© 2026 Mariano Velez ~ InkBlotz Press
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