A teacherwho runs her classroom like an “office” — in which her students work in “shifts” and accrue PTO (“paid time off”) on a bi-weekly basis — says she is teaching fundamental skills.
“I am preparing these kids for life,” Leslie Robinson, a high school teacher in Virginia who goes by “Leslie Rob,” tells TODAY.com.
Rob teaches Family and Consumer Sciences (what used to be called “Home Ec”) at Spotsylvania Career and Technical Center. Students at five county high schools take classes at the facility, which “emphasizes essential workplace readiness skills,” according to its website. Rob teaches culinary arts and hospitality to students in grades nine through 12 in surrounding schools, using a unique lesson plan.
“I treat my classroom like it’s an office building,” Rob told the Bored Teachers podcast, in a video posted to TikTok and Instagram.
Rob added, “Each desk simulates a cubicle so each student is like, working in a corporate office — their desk, their office, their business. If they’re listening to music, if they’re on their phone, if they are eating their snacks — that’s your office. As long as your office is clean when you leave, that is your responsibility.”
Students “clock in” and “clock out” of class and are responsible for their productivity, which affects their “job score” and “paycheck,” Rob said on the podcast.
“My kids get paid every two weeks, which means I update my grades every two weeks … They accrue paid time off,” Rob added.
Rob’s PTO system is based on the total grade of all assignments at every two-week grading period. If after two weeks, a student receives an “A” grade, they will have accrued 15 points of PTO; If a student receives a “B,” they’ll earn 10 PTO points, and so forth.
Once kids acquire enough PTO points, they can cash them in to get out of assignments — provided the PTO amount is enough to cover the point value of the assignment.
“If an assignment is worth 40 points and they only have 20, then they can take half the day off,” Rob tells TODAY.com. On their time off, students can read, draw or do another quiet activity.
Students keep track of their PTO in their “wallets.”
“I write it down on a slip of paper — in cursive, because they can’t duplicate my handwriting — and then they have to keep it, just like they keep their dollar bills,” Rob told the podcast. “If you go to a store and you’ve lost your dollars … you can’t pay for something.”
Rob’s students cannot use their PTO on “black-out dates,” she tells TODAY.com, meaning tests, lab activities or important assignments.
Instagram and TikTok commenters largely loved the teaching method. Some, however, called it “indoctrination.”
- “It’s called life.”
- “This is just indoctrination to Corporate America. Gross.”
- “I’m half impressed, half terrified for how she runs this class.”
- “Add in taxes so they can learn that too.”
- “These kids have more freedom, choice and responsibility than any classroom I’ve ever been in. It’s brilliant. She’s treating them like the young adults I assume they are.”
- “Teaching kids in this way is ridiculous to me.”
- “You are showing life skills.”
- “Immediately no. This is fast tracking to an employee mindset and fueling the status quo. There’s creativity in the behavioral process, sure. However, the mindset here is limiting.”
- “I had a teacher more than 20 years ago that did this except he didn’t call it PTO. They were passports and could be used to exempt tests and stuff.”
- “I understand her perspective, but she’s essentially training these kids to be employees rather than employers and entrepreneurs.”
- “So creative and relevant!”
- “This is smart but also kind of sad.”
“Today’s students need a different approach,” Rob tells TODAY.com.
Whereas the possibility of a failing grade or a phone call home might have spurred kids to work hard “back in the day,” says Rob, “Nowadays, it’s, ‘I’ll take a zero — am I still going to pass the class?’ Or, ‘You can call my mom. Actually, I’ll text her right now.’”
Over her 17-year career, Robs has experimented with getting kids interested in learning.
“This was the only thing that seemed to work,” she says, adding that she would “100%” run her classroom like an office, no matter the school subject.
“This was the only thing that seemed to work.”
Leslie rob
In the beginning of the year, Rob shows her students photos of a typical office setting. Kids are allowed to eat at their “cubicles” and, prior to Virginia’s school cell phone ban, listen to music using headphones. Now, music is played on a speaker by vote and only during creative activities.
According to Rob, her administration and colleagues support her teaching style. Rob says she’s received no complaints from families. “Most parents seem to like that it provides real-world application for their child,” she says.
Rob says she loves teaching high schoolers.
“Difficult students aren’t born difficult — that difficulty was born from something. They don’t come in with a chip on their shoulder … ‘just because,’” she says. “While there are some students you just won’t reach, for the majority of mine, that hasn’t been the case.”