Who Ties Your Shoes?!

An Open Letter Before August

Another school year has come and gone, and as summer begins, teachers everywhere are doing what we always do in May: collapsing dramatically across couches, surviving entirely on caffeine and spite, and attempting to recover from ten straight months of reminding students to put their names on papers that literally have a line that says “Name.” Truly inspiring stuff.

And as I’ve started reflecting on this past year—the victories, the frustrations, the exhaustion, the growth, the chaos—I keep coming back to one phrase I have apparently said approximately 4,000 times since August:

“Who ties your shoes?”

Now, to be fair, I rarely ask that question because a student is literally struggling with shoelaces—I teach high school for goodness sake. It usually comes after I’ve reminded someone for the seventh time to check Canvas, read the assignment directions, look at the calendar, open the document, submit the form, answer the email, charge the Chromebook, or use one of the fourteen resources already available to them before declaring, “Nobody told me.”

And honestly? I think that question has become about something much bigger.

Because somewhere along the way, we seem to have crossed the line between helping students and completely removing their responsibility from the equation. And I don’t say that with anger nearly as much as I say it with genuine concern.

I am watching more and more students struggle with basic ownership over their own lives: checking deadlines, communicating proactively, managing time, solving small problems, handling disappointment, advocating for themselves, or facing the natural consequences of their choices without an adult immediately stepping in to rescue them from discomfort.

That is not independence. That is learned helplessness.

And before anyone gets defensive, let me be clear: I know parents love their children deeply. Of course they do. Most of the parents I work with are good people trying their absolute best. But loving your child and protecting your child are not always the same thing as preparing your child.

I cannot tell you how many times this year I heard some version of:

“I didn’t know.”
“Nobody told me.”
“I forgot.”
“My mom didn’t see the email.”
“Can you reopen it?”
“Can you remind me again?”
“Why wasn’t this communicated?”
“How was I supposed to know?”

Meanwhile, I’m over here posting announcements on Canvas, sending ParentSquare messages, updating calendars, attaching documents, giving verbal reminders in class, posting rehearsal schedules, sending emails, creating handouts, and quite literally paying out of my own pocket to maintain a website that houses everything students and parents could possibly need.

At a certain point, “lack of communication” is not actually the problem anymore.

At a certain point, the problem is that we have created an expectation that someone else will always keep track of life for them.

And listen, I know letting your child struggle is uncomfortable. I know watching them forget an assignment, miss a deadline, bomb a test, lose a privilege, sit out of an event, or face consequences feels awful sometimes. Every good parent wants to protect their child from pain.

But failure is not cruelty.

Disappointment is not trauma.

Consequences are not abuse.

In fact, some of the most important growth that happens during adolescence comes from students learning how to recover from mistakes, adapt, problem solve, self-advocate, and realize the world does not reorganize itself every time they make a poor choice.

That’s not me being harsh. That’s me trying to help prepare them for adulthood.

And no, I’m not pretending my generation had everything figured out. We absolutely did not. But when I was growing up, school was understood to be my job.

That was it. That was the assignment.

Go to school. Do your work. Respect your teachers. Handle your responsibilities.

And if I didn’t? There was going to be an uncomfortable conversation at home with my mom—and spoiler alert—it was not going to end with her demanding to know why the teacher had failed me.

If I disrespected a teacher? Oh, it was OVER over.

My mom didn’t assume every conflict was proof that the adult in the room was incompetent, unfair, malicious, or “targeting” me. Sometimes the conclusion was simply:

“Well… maybe stop acting like a fool.”

And honestly? That mindset taught accountability. It taught resilience. It taught ownership. It taught me that discomfort was survivable and that actions had consequences.

Those are not outdated values. Those are life skills.

Ironically, this is also exactly why I am vehemently against homework.

I know. Gasp. Clutch your pearls.

But hear me out.

If school is a child’s job, then why have we normalized sending them home after seven hours of work only to pile on more? Imagine leaving your job exhausted after a full workday and your boss saying, “Actually, I need you to take all this home tonight too. Also, teach yourself the hard parts without support, and I’ll evaluate your performance tomorrow.”

Adults would lose their minds.

Yet somehow we’ve normalized this for children.

And then we wonder why they’re burned out, anxious, exhausted, frustrated, emotionally volatile, and increasingly disconnected from school altogether.

And the pressure surrounding education now is absolutely unreal for everyone involved.

Students are overwhelmed.
Parents are overwhelmed.
Teachers are overwhelmed.
Schools are overwhelmed.

Kids are expected to absorb enormous amounts of information at lightning speed while juggling sports, activities, jobs, social pressure, mental health struggles, and the general chaos of being a teenager in 2026.

Teachers are expected to differentiate everything, individualize everything, emotionally support everyone, document everything, communicate constantly, raise test scores, manage behaviors, prepare students for state testing, answer emails at all hours, and somehow still be blamed when a student refuses to engage in the process entirely.

And schools? Schools are under enormous pressure tied to funding, testing data, public perception, parent satisfaction, graduation rates, and performance metrics that often reduce human beings to spreadsheets and percentages.

Everybody is exhausted.

And when people are exhausted, accountability becomes the first thing to disappear.

And I think one of the hardest shifts for teachers has been watching authority, accountability, and trust slowly erode in the classroom.

I have heard students say things to teachers in recent years that would have been absolutely unthinkable when I was growing up. Cruel things. Manipulative things. Threatening things.

Things like:
“I can get you fired.”
“Who do you think they’ll believe?”
“My mom’s going to email.”
“You can’t do anything to me.”

And the heartbreaking part?

A lot of the time… they’re not wrong.

Because somewhere along the way, education shifted from a partnership into a customer service model where the loudest complaint often wins, parents are expected to be “satisfied,” administrators are pressured to avoid conflict at all costs, and teachers become the easiest people to sacrifice when things get uncomfortable.

A student can skip assignments, ignore deadlines, refuse help, disrupt class, contribute nothing, and show zero accountability—and somehow the conversation still circles back to: “What could the teacher have done differently?”

Teachers should absolutely be accountable for teaching well. Of course we should.

But pretending teachers control every variable in a child’s life is not accountability.

It’s scapegoating.

I saw a reel on Instagram recently where a guy said something along the lines of:

“Imagine blaming a doctor because the patient refused to take the medicine.

Imagine blaming a personal trainer because the client never showed up to the gym.

Imagine blaming a lawyer because the client ignored every piece of legal advice they were given.

Sounds ridiculous, right?

And yet, in education, that logic gets treated like policy.”

And I swear I screamed, “YES!” at my phone.

Because a student can refuse to study, refuse to participate, refuse to communicate, refuse to use available resources, miss deadlines, skip class, ignore feedback, and put forth little to no effort—and somehow the teacher is still expected to absorb responsibility for the outcome, make arrangements, and get them caught up and passed along.

At some point, we have to acknowledge that learning is a partnership.

Teachers cannot want success more than the student does.

So parents, genuinely, from a teacher who is tired but still cares very deeply:

Please stop doing everything for your children.

Please stop rescuing them from every consequence, every forgotten assignment, every uncomfortable conversation, every hard moment, every disappointed feeling, and every failure.

Forgive me for sounding like Mel Robbins for a moment, but seriously:

LET THEM.

Let them email the teacher themselves.

Let them check the calendar themselves.

Let them keep track of deadlines themselves.

Let them solve problems themselves.

Let them advocate for themselves.

Let them forget things sometimes.

Let them fail sometimes.

Please, for the love of all that is good and holy:

LET. THEM.

And when they do fail sometimes—and they will—you cannot immediately swoop in demanding that teachers erase the consequence, reopen the deadline, excuse the behavior, inflate the grade, or somehow protect your child from the very lesson they needed to learn in the first place.

Because that is the moment that matters.

That uncomfortable moment right there?

That’s where accountability is built.

That’s where resilience is built.

That’s where growth is built.

And I know it’s hard. I really do. Nobody enjoys watching someone they love struggle. But if every difficult moment is removed before a child has to face it, they never develop the confidence that comes from realizing:

“Oh. I messed up… and I survived. I can fix this. I can do better next time.”

That lesson is invaluable.

And despite how frustrated I may sound at moments throughout this post, please know this:

I love my students deeply.

I love their weirdness, their energy, their creativity, their humor, their giant personalities, their ridiculous slang, their emotional chaos, their passion, their awkwardness, and even their occasional inability to locate an assignment that has been posted in the exact same place since August.

I understand that teenagers are still learning who they are. They are navigating pressure that many adults would struggle to handle gracefully. They are trying to figure out identity, friendships, relationships, expectations, failure, success, and the terrifying process of becoming an actual human being while their brains are still developing in real time.

That’s hard.

And honestly? I would never—not for all the money in the world—want to be a high school student today.

When I was bullied or embarrassed as a kid, eventually I got to go home. There was at least some separation from it all.

These kids don’t get that luxury anymore.

Everything is recorded, posted, shared, screenshot, commented on, meme’d, reposted, and circulated at lightning speed. Many of them feel like they have to be “on” at all times because social media has created a world where humiliation can follow them 24 hours a day.

I have watched firsthand the emotional damage that constant digital exposure can do to teenagers, and it breaks my heart sometimes.

So no—this is not me dismissing what students are carrying. I think many of them are overwhelmed in ways adults still don’t fully understand.

Which is exactly why we cannot afford to accidentally teach them helplessness instead of capability.

Because these kids are capable of far more than we sometimes allow them to believe.

So as we head into summer and prepare to do this all again in August, I’m asking parents, students, educators, and honestly even myself to reflect a little.

Are we helping kids become capable… or are we accidentally teaching them that someone else will always step in and manage life for them?

Because someday these students are going to become adults. And adulthood comes with deadlines, consequences, accountability, discomfort, responsibility, failure, conflict, resilience, and problem solving.

Those things are not punishments.

They are part of being human.

And the goal should not be raising children who never struggle.

The goal should be raising human beings who know they are capable of surviving struggle.

So before the emails start flying again, before the missing assignments pile up, before the “nobody told me” conversations begin, before parents start rescuing and teachers start drowning and students start shutting down…

I’m begging all of us to remember:

Growth requires ownership.

Resilience requires discomfort.

Capability requires responsibility.

And sometimes the most loving thing we can do for kids is stop tying their shoes for them.