I haven’t taught a class since the pandemic, but that was my experience at the community college level.

Students went to school for a better life, but the increasing demands of the lives they had were draining them.

So they are very tired, and maybe that is one factor in some of why it is challenging to teach them concepts in a way people will retain. I find it frustrating to repeat myself, but privately they tell me how much they enjoy and appreciate the class and they ask my advice one on one. 6 I think/

Financial precarity. Yes university students have always been living on their last 20 bucks, but the number of students I talk to now who have *multiple* jobs in addition to being fulltime students, some of whom are taking care of family members' survival needs as well as their own, is shocking. 5/

Another factor. When I was teaching middle school, we started seeing the first cohorts who had been under No Child Left Behind rules for their entire school experience, since kindergarten.
It's only gotten worse since then, and Covid didn't help.
High stakes assessment and teaching to the test meant

THIS!!! Holy fuck, half the people in the comments ain't been in an average southern dinner. Even diabetics and heart attack risked people eat fine here. Plus Thanksgiving is a splurge day where all shit goes out the window unless it kills you.

All the people replying, "Her husband is 70 and maybe has diet restrictions!" Y'all, I had a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday with people who were elderly and several people with various diet restrictions. I *promise* you, we worked around it with spices and seasonings and other things.