A teacher has shared "eye-opening" insights about daily school life, after she spent time shadowing two high school students and wrote about her experience in a blog post that has now gone viral.

In the post, which has been viewed more than 150,000 times, the teacher describes what it's like to attend classes in a typical North American high school, as well as what she would change in her own classes after the experience.

Her identity is kept anonymous throughout the post.

She agreed to shadow a Grade 10 student and a Grade 12 student as part of her new role as a "High School Learning Coach," to get a sense of how to improve classroom teaching.

To properly shadow the students, the teacher was required to attend all of their classes, copy down lecture notes, participate in class activities and take tests.

After her experience, she compiled notes on how she felt during the day as a "student."

She said she came away from the experience with three major takeaways:

1) Students sit all day long and it is exhausting;

2) In a typical setting, students passively listen for about 90 per cent of their classes, with the teachers doing most of the talking;

3) Throughout the course of the day, students are consistently reprimanded, corrected or scolded, which can make them feel like a "nuisance all day long."

She then made a list of things she would immediately change in her own classes, now knowing what it's like to be on the other side of the teacher's desk. Some of the changes include:

  • Making time to have mandatory stretch sessions halfway through a class;
  • Making time for hands-on, activities that require moving around in every single class;
  • Creating "blitzkrieg," fast-paced mini-lessons to mix up the pace of the class;
  • Limiting the amount of time she, as a teacher, speaks;
  • Structuring tests and examinations so that students have the opportunity to ask questions for five minutes before starting the test.

The teacher concludes her post by noting that she came away with a newfound respect for students and the challenges they face during the school day.

"I have a lot more respect and empathy for students after just one day of being one again," she writes. "Teachers work hard, but I now think that conscientious students work harder."