u/sol-solcito

Not long ago I started my second year as a student teacher (I’m from South America, so the school year starts around mid-March). I was assigned to teach Social Studies to 10th graders in a public high school located in a low-income neighborhood.

So far, it’s been a nightmare. This school has a lot of issues. Honestly, the real question is: what issues don’t they have?

The students are generally far behind what’s expected for their age. During first period, half the class is mentally still asleep. They rarely participate and most days I feel like I’m talking to a wall. They hate following instructions, refuse to work with classmates outside their friend groups, constantly insult each other (sometimes right in front of me), and seem deeply unmotivated. Everything feels like a battle just to get them to do the bare minimum (and sometimes they won’t even do that).

As a young teacher (I’m 23) coming from a much calmer school last year (with its own problems, sure, but nowhere near this level) it honestly feels exhausting to put an enormous amount of effort to move the class inch by inch. And emotionally, it’s starting to wear me down. I don’t feel capable enough, I feel boring, I feel unwanted and unwelcomed the moment I walk into the classroom.

Thankfully, I have an incredibly supportive mentor teacher. She suggested I try teaching 9th grade instead and told me they’re “better” than my current 10th graders. I’m assuming “better” means they come with the exact same problems, only slightly toned down. Still, at this point, that sounds worth trying.

But now I’m carrying this huge fear of ending up in the exact same situation with the 9th graders, so I’m trying to anticipate problems before they happen based on everything I’ve experienced with 10th grade so far:

- They lack basic manners. Most don’t even greet when they walk into the classroom. It feels incredibly disrespectful.

- My school doesn’t have Chromebooks or anything fancy, so we work the old-school way: notebooks, pens, printed worksheets. The problem is they don’t organize anything. Papers end up crumpled in backpacks or completely lost because they refuse to glue worksheets into their notebooks or use folders.

- Even when activities are clearly numbered and labeled, they somehow still don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing.

- I can’t count on them to bring materials or even remember instructions from one day to another. If I tell them to bring supplies for an activity, a good number will still show up empty-handed.

- Everything is a joke to them. One student got caught doing something disrespectful, my mentor teacher made him apologize to me, and I told him I would only accept the apology if he genuinely committed to improving his behavior. He said “yeah”, went back to his seat, and immediately started laughing about it with his friend.

- Academically, the gaps are huge. Many struggle to read, write, follow instructions, summarize information, or even form proper sentences. I feel less like a high school teacher and more like I’m teaching skills they should have learned in elementary.

It’s hard not to feel defeated sometimes but I won’t give up. So now I’m trying to figure out how to prepare myself better before stepping into a 9th grade classroom.

How do you anticipate these problems before they spiral out of control? How do you establish routines, expectations, and basic respect when students seem completely disconnected from school culture altogether?

I’m Peruvian and something I’ve been genuinely curious about is why Peru’s tourism industry still hasn’t fully recovered after the pandemic. I’m Limeña and before 2020 I used to see way more tourists walking around the Historic Center and Miraflores than I do now.

In 2019, Peru received almost 4.4 million international tourists, compared to around 3.8 million in 2025, although the trend has been improving over the last few years. Meanwhile, a lot of other countries in the region seem to have bounced back already, and in some cases have even surpassed their pre-pandemic tourism numbers. Countries like Mexico, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic recovered pretty quickly, while Peru still feels somewhat behind.

I think there are probably several reasons for this, such as political and social instability, insufficient tourist infrastructure, limited flight connectivity, weak international marketing, and a tourism industry that still isn’t very diversified.

It’s honestly frustrating to me because Peru has so much to offer: incredible food, nature, history and some of the most unique cultural experiences in Latin America.

Ciao a tutti! Mi chiamo Andrea e sono peruviana. Studio italiano da più di un anno e penso di avere un livello tra A2 e B1. Faccio lezioni di italiano ogni settimana, però non guardo molti contenuti in italiano sui social.

Sto cercando contenuti completamente in italiano, su qualsiasi argomento. Mi piacciono i video di viaggi, cibo, attualità e politica, vita quotidiana, interviste, commedia, film, serie, musica, etc.

Quali canali YouTube o account TikTok mi consigliereste di seguire?

I’m Peruvian and something I’ve been genuinely curious about is why Peru’s tourism industry still hasn’t fully recovered after the pandemic. I’m from Limeña and before 2020 I used to see way more tourists walking around the Historic Center and Miraflores than I do now.

Meanwhile, a lot of other countries in the region seem to have bounced back already, and in some cases have even surpassed their pre-pandemic tourism numbers. Countries like Mexico, Colombia, and Dominican Republic recovered pretty quickly, while Peru still feels somewhat behind. In 2019, Peru received almost 4.4 million tourists, compared to around 3.8 million in 2025, although the trend has been improving over the last few years.

I think there are probably several reasons for this. One of the biggest ones is likely the political and social instability Peru has experienced in recent years. The protests, road blockades, and unrest around 2022 and 2023 probably affected how safe or stable people perceive the country to be as a travel destination.

I also feel like flight connectivity hasn’t fully recovered yet. International travel became more expensive after the pandemic in general, and Peru is already a relatively far destination for many travelers coming from Europe or North America.

Another factor might be that Peru relies heavily on cultural tourism centered around places like Machu Picchu and Cusco, whereas other countries have more diversified tourism industries.

It’s honestly frustrating to me because Peru has so much to offer: incredible food, nature, history and some of the most unique cultural experiences in Latin America.

For the longest time, the options for foreign cuisines in Lima were pretty limited (excluding chifa, which is very Peruvianized). But over the last decade, a lot of authentic Chinese restaurants have started popping up, especially in the San Borja area, which almost feels like Lima’s new Chinatown.

The most unexpected spot I’ve found is a restaurant serving Lanzhou cuisine from northwestern China. Their beef noodles are amazing. The owners are Hui (Chinese Muslims). It was kind of mind-blowing to see a Chinese woman wearing a hijab and a Chinese man wearing a taqiyah cap.

One of the biggest reasons Spain is one of the most popular destinations for Latin Americans to immigrate to is the possibility of living in a developed country where Spanish is spoken. However, in some regions of Spain there are also co-official local languages.

Catalonia is probably the most famous example of this. Catalan is the main language of instruction at every educational level, and people working public-facing jobs or in healthcare are generally expected to speak it. The issue becomes complicated when many of those workers are Latin Americans who are native Spanish speakers but don't speak any Catalan.

One of the main concers in Catalan politics is how to stop the decline of the Catalan language. Nationalist parties have long pushed for requiring at least basic Catalan proficiency to obtain residency status, although those proposals have mostly failed to move forward.

Latin Americans and Catalans often see the issue very differently. Many Latin Americans feel Catalans should be more accommodating and switch to Spanish, since it's the language they share. Catalans, on the other hand, see this as a violation of their linguistic and cultural rights. Even though the vast majority of them also speak Spanish, they feel they are increasingly unable to use their native language in everyday public situations.

He notado es que muchas chicas españolas suelen tener una voz más grave o más ronca que las mujeres de mi país. También me lo han comentado otras personas latinoamericanas. Lo he observado tanto en persona como en internet e incluso en cantantes (se me ocurre, por ejemplo, Bad Gyal).

Además, varios chicos españoles que he conocido me han dicho que tengo una voz bonita y dulce. Me sorprende un poco porque en mi país nunca me habían halagado la voz y eso me hace pensar que ese tipo de voz quizá sea más común allá que aquí.

¿Hay alguna explicación para esto? Había escuchado una teoría según la cual, en sociedades más igualitarias, las mujeres tienden a tener voces más graves porque no necesitan proyectar una imagen de feminidad. También se dice que una voz más grave transmite autoridad, algo que puede resultar útil para ser tomadas más en serio en entornos tradicionalmente masculinizados, como el trabajo o la academia.

¿Podría tratarse también de una cuestión de hábitos? Diría que en general en España se fuma más que en muchos países latinoamericanos, y quizá eso también influya en el tono de voz.

Aclaro que es una amplísima generalización a partir de mis observaciones y experiencias. Sé que obviamente no aplica a todo el mundo.

This is the last year of my Bachelor’s in Education (Social Studies), and my second year as a student teacher. This year, I was placed in a public school in a low-income neighborhood to teach 10th grade Social Studies, and so far it’s been a nightmare.
The students are generally behind what’s expected for their age, which is unfortunately common in many public schools, but I think that part is manageable. The real problems are elsewhere.

Punctuality: I teach them on Tuesdays and Fridays during first period. Half the class is always 15–20 minutes late, and when they arrive they have no idea what’s going on. Meanwhile, the students who are there on time don’t want to participate because there are so few of them that they feel singled out.

They don’t follow instructions: They refuse to work with classmates outside their friend groups, even when certain groups clearly need to be separated because they’re disruptive together. They simply refuse to move. What am I supposed to do? Physically drag them to another seat? I also ask them to read aloud, and if they don’t want to, they just say “nah”, leaving me standing there like a fool.

Behavior problems: One student called me over to ask a question, and while I was helping him, the friend sitting next to him started insulting him right in front of me (apparently that’s funny to them). When I confronted him, he wouldn’t even look at me while I was speaking. Later, as I started packing my things to leave, that same student began clapping and saying “Yeah, it’s finally over.”

Lack of motivation: Most of the students are not terrible. They can complete activities and behave more or less appropriately, but nothing I do seems to motivate them or make them genuinely interested in learning.

It feels like an enormous effort just to move the class forward inch by inch. Honestly, it feels humiliating. I’m 23 and already starting to hate my profession. I know teaching doesn’t always have to be like this because last year I worked with an amazing group of 10th graders. But this group and this school environment in general have been absolute hell.

I’m 23 years old girl and living in Peru, and I’m about to graduate with a degree in Secondary Education, specializing in Social Studies. I chose this path because I’ve always loved the social sciences (especially history) and I wanted to turn that passion into a career, so teaching felt like the most straightforward way to do that.

But after five years in the program and two years of student teaching, I feel underwhelmed. The degree is roughly split between didactics (how to teach) and disciplinary content (history, geography, economics, civics), and neither side has fully satisfied me intellectually. The pedagogy courses often feel repetitive and overly theoretical, while the disciplinary courses don’t go deep enough. We cover a lot, but rarely with the rigor or depth I was hoping for.

I come from a family of academics (though in different fields) and I’ve always been drawn to that world. I like studying, researching, and thinking critically about ideas. The problem is that now, as I near graduation, I feel like my training hasn’t really prepared me for that path. Compared to people who studied History or other social sciences directly, I feel behind, both in terms of knowledge and research skills.

The practical side is that I’ll graduate and likely start working as a teacher, so I do have some stability ahead of me. In Peru, teaching (especially in the public system) offers a relatively secure career compared to many other fields. But at the same time, I can’t ignore this lingering sense that I didn’t fully pursue what I actually wanted, which was to study History in depth.

I’ve been thinking about starting a second undergraduate degree in History. In Peru, public universities are free, so financially it’s not a huge burden but it is a significant time investment. If I go down that path, I’d graduate around 28. That doesn’t worry me too much on a personal level, but the broader context does. The country feels increasingly unstable (politically and economically) and a lot of young people are either leaving or planning to. It’s hard not to factor that into long-term decisions.

So I feel a bit stuck between two paths: continuing with a stable teaching career that doesn’t fully satisfy me intellectually, or investing some more years into studying what I truly care about, in a context where the future of my country feels uncertain.

I’m 23 years old girl and living in Peru, and I’m about to graduate with a degree in Secondary Education, specializing in Social Studies. I chose this path because I’ve always loved the social sciences (especially history) and I wanted to turn that passion into a career, so teaching felt like the most straightforward way to do that.

But after five years in the program and two years of student teaching, I feel underwhelmed. The degree is roughly split between didactics (how to teach) and disciplinary content (history, geography, economics, civics), and neither side has fully satisfied me intellectually. The pedagogy courses often feel repetitive and overly theoretical, while the disciplinary courses don’t go deep enough. We cover a lot, but rarely with the rigor or depth I was hoping for.

I come from a family of academics (though in different fields) and I’ve always been drawn to that world. I like studying, researching, and thinking critically about ideas. The problem is that now, as I near graduation, I feel like my training hasn’t really prepared me for that path. Compared to people who studied History or other social sciences directly, I feel behind, both in terms of knowledge and research skills.

The practical side is that I’ll graduate and likely start working as a teacher, so I do have some stability ahead of me. In Peru, teaching (especially in the public system) offers a relatively secure career compared to many other fields. But at the same time, I can’t ignore this lingering sense that I didn’t fully pursue what I actually wanted, which was to study History in depth.

I’ve been thinking about starting a second undergraduate degree in History. In Peru, public universities are free, so financially it’s not a huge burden but it is a significant time investment. If I go down that path, I’d graduate around 28. That doesn’t worry me too much on a personal level, but the broader context does. The country feels increasingly unstable (politically and economically) and a lot of young people are either leaving or planning to. It’s hard not to factor that into long-term decisions.

So I feel a bit stuck between two paths: continuing with a stable teaching career that doesn’t fully satisfy me intellectually, or investing some more years into studying what I truly care about, in a context where the future of my country feels uncertain.