Churchill English Department

[Anonymous]

In today’s back to school email I noticed that Churchill is getting 6 new English teachers. Why are so many departing? I am sad to see my DD’s 10th grade teacher as one of the departing as my DD thought very highly of her and I was hoping my younger child would also have her.

Does anyone have any insight?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In today’s back to school email I noticed that Churchill is getting 6 new English teachers. Why are so many departing? I am sad to see my DD’s 10th grade teacher as one of the departing as my DD thought very highly of her and I was hoping my younger child would also have her.

Does anyone have any insight?

A lot of teachers are tired badly behaving kids and incompetent admin, so they’re leaving the teaching profession in droves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In today’s back to school email I noticed that Churchill is getting 6 new English teachers. Why are so many departing? I am sad to see my DD’s 10th grade teacher as one of the departing as my DD thought very highly of her and I was hoping my younger child would also have her.

Does anyone have any insight?

A lot of teachers are tired badly behaving kids and incompetent admin, so they’re leaving the teaching profession in droves.

Are you referring to Churchill, or the profession in general? The English department at Churchill seems to have been gutted but the other departments don’t seem as impacted. So I’m wondering if something specifically happened within the department.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In today’s back to school email I noticed that Churchill is getting 6 new English teachers. Why are so many departing? I am sad to see my DD’s 10th grade teacher as one of the departing as my DD thought very highly of her and I was hoping my younger child would also have her.

Does anyone have any insight?

A lot of teachers are tired badly behaving kids and incompetent admin, so they’re leaving the teaching profession in droves.

Are you referring to Churchill, or the profession in general? The English department at Churchill seems to have been gutted but the other departments don’t seem as impacted. So I’m wondering if something specifically happened within the department.

Oh. I was talking about teaching in general.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In today’s back to school email I noticed that Churchill is getting 6 new English teachers. Why are so many departing? I am sad to see my DD’s 10th grade teacher as one of the departing as my DD thought very highly of her and I was hoping my younger child would also have her.

Does anyone have any insight?

A lot of teachers are tired badly behaving parents and incompetent admin, so they’re leaving the teaching profession in droves.

Fixed for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In today’s back to school email I noticed that Churchill is getting 6 new English teachers. Why are so many departing? I am sad to see my DD’s 10th grade teacher as one of the departing as my DD thought very highly of her and I was hoping my younger child would also have her.

Does anyone have any insight?

A lot of teachers are tired badly behaving parents and incompetent admin, so they’re leaving the teaching profession in droves.

Fixed for you.

You didn't fix anything. There are plenty of teachers fed up with student behavior, as quoted in this article on the teacher shortage: https://moco360.media/2023/06/29/mcps-teachers-quitting-amid-substitute-staff-shortages-student-behavior-issues/

Jess Porrovicchio spent the past 15 years of her life as a public school educator, seven of them in Montgomery County. She said this year she made the difficult decision to quit MCPS, citing staffing shortages and student behavior issues as key reasons.

The anonymous 10-year MCPS veteran said she’s grown increasingly concerned about student behavior issues in recent years. In the letter she posted to social media detailing her reasons for quitting, she cited motivation issues and lack of discipline or accountability as key underlying factors behind student misbehavior.

So yeah, as I said, badly behaving students are in fact driving teachers away from the profession.

[Anonymous]

I’m an English teacher (but not at Churchill).

My department has hired 11 new teachers in the past 3 years, far more than any other department in the school.

Discipline is a problem, but it’s also the grading. A stack of essays can take 30 hours to grade and that time isn’t built into our schedules. Basic paragraphs can take 5-6 hours to get through the whole stack. The grading workload isn’t sustainable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m an English teacher (but not at Churchill).

My department has hired 11 new teachers in the past 3 years, far more than any other department in the school.

Discipline is a problem, but it’s also the grading. A stack of essays can take 30 hours to grade and that time isn’t built into our schedules. Basic paragraphs can take 5-6 hours to get through the whole stack. The grading workload isn’t sustainable.

My mom was a high school English teacher and spent hours grading essays. How are things different now? I don't really understand going into a profession like high school English teacher and then complaining about grading essays. Don't be a high school English teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m an English teacher (but not at Churchill).

My department has hired 11 new teachers in the past 3 years, far more than any other department in the school.

Discipline is a problem, but it’s also the grading. A stack of essays can take 30 hours to grade and that time isn’t built I into our schedules. Basic paragraphs can take 5-6 hours to get through the whole stack. The grading workload isn’t sustainable.

I started cutting and pasting them into chat gpt along with the rubric. It is not perfect but if you have good detailed rubric with required evidence chat gpt does a pretty good job at grading and giving feedback with some teacher editing here and there. You can’t do it in on a MCPS device so I bring my personal laptop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m an English teacher (but not at Churchill).

My department has hired 11 new teachers in the past 3 years, far more than any other department in the school.

Discipline is a problem, but it’s also the grading. A stack of essays can take 30 hours to grade and that time isn’t built I into our schedules. Basic paragraphs can take 5-6 hours to get through the whole stack. The grading workload isn’t sustainable.

I started cutting and pasting them into chat gpt along with the rubric. It is not perfect but if you have good detailed rubric with required evidence chat gpt does a pretty good job at grading and giving feedback with some teacher editing here and there. You can’t do it in on a MCPS device so I bring my personal laptop.

Do you also let your students use ChatGPT?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m an English teacher (but not at Churchill).

My department has hired 11 new teachers in the past 3 years, far more than any other department in the school.

Discipline is a problem, but it’s also the grading. A stack of essays can take 30 hours to grade and that time isn’t built into our schedules. Basic paragraphs can take 5-6 hours to get through the whole stack. The grading workload isn’t sustainable.

So why did you become an English teacher? Just curious. I remember my English teachers, they carried around a stack of essays everywhere they went and read them whenever they had a free bit of time. I imagine they took them home and read them in evenings and on weekends too. And back then, kids were expected to write A LOT, and teachers were expected to provide thorough feedback.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In today’s back to school email I noticed that Churchill is getting 6 new English teachers. Why are so many departing? I am sad to see my DD’s 10th grade teacher as one of the departing as my DD thought very highly of her and I was hoping my younger child would also have her.

Does anyone have any insight?

A lot of teachers are tired badly behaving kids and incompetent admin, so they’re leaving the teaching profession in droves.

Although some people would have you believe this, it's not the case in this instance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m an English teacher (but not at Churchill).

My department has hired 11 new teachers in the past 3 years, far more than any other department in the school.

Discipline is a problem, but it’s also the grading. A stack of essays can take 30 hours to grade and that time isn’t built I into our schedules. Basic paragraphs can take 5-6 hours to get through the whole stack. The grading workload isn’t sustainable.

I started cutting and pasting them into chat gpt along with the rubric. It is not perfect but if you have good detailed rubric with required evidence chat gpt does a pretty good job at grading and giving feedback with some teacher editing here and there. You can’t do it in on a MCPS device so I bring my personal laptop.

In other words, you don’t want to actually do your job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m an English teacher (but not at Churchill).

My department has hired 11 new teachers in the past 3 years, far more than any other department in the school.

Discipline is a problem, but it’s also the grading. A stack of essays can take 30 hours to grade and that time isn’t built I into our schedules. Basic paragraphs can take 5-6 hours to get through the whole stack. The grading workload isn’t sustainable.

I started cutting and pasting them into chat gpt along with the rubric. It is not perfect but if you have good detailed rubric with required evidence chat gpt does a pretty good job at grading and giving feedback with some teacher editing here and there. You can’t do it in on a MCPS device so I bring my personal laptop.

In other words, you don’t want to actually do your job.

I am not an English teacher, so I haven’t tested it enough. For my courses which tend to be more technical it works well for short paragraphs. I haven’t tried it for longer things. I did use it for writing a summary paragraph for a 5 page report. I found it ok at summarizing something I my self wrote. I wouldn’t recommend it for creative writing. I also don’t recommend it for any using math. I showed the students all of the wrong math work it puts out. I did mention that I could see it being used as a rough way to get started if a student doesn’t know how to begin a essay, but turning in that work by itself might get only a C or D and most and teachers would recognize the robotic like writing style immediately.

[Anonymous]

One of our very good MS English teachers moved to Churchill for fall.