DHMS does it get better?

[Anonymous]

At this point in the year, we're considering how to get our 6th grader at DHMS to the finish line. It's as if there's an institutional mentality of hazing the students from the teachers and staff. Passive aggressive emails from the teachers about multiple missing assignments when it turns out there have been a total of 4 assignments over the last month, emails before the end of the term about how parents should know the grade already in a class where nothing is graded online until after the term is over, students receiving wildly bad grades but no outreach to them or the parents unless the student is mature enough to address it in person with their teacher. Reading is a daily class but students are still not able to read at grade level. Emails to the students at 5pm to make sure an assignment given that day is turned in my midnight that same day. Regular errors in grading. Limited outdoor time and weeks at a time with no PE/no exercise all day. iPads on all day. It is rare that a teacher responds to an email from parents. And all the while, the students are being told that this is to prepare them for high school or that they should already be able to do whatever thing the kid is failing at (name the thing: organize a binder, talk to their adult teachers about failing grades, manage their time...). Every kid I have talked to reports being sincerely and fundamentally unhappy. Although I value preparing my child for high school, it feels like the entire school is staffed by that one jerk teacher you had who got off on weeding out students, hazing, and bullying.

Is this just how school is now? For all the talk of school being easier now or more permissive now than when adults were kids, this just all seems like a lot and not anything in line with our family's values. Note, we have tried talking to our student's TA and counselor but we were given verbatim the same response from both, that there are no problems and that they are teaching the students to "advocate." When asked how students were being taught to advocate and how to support our student, the conversation was over on their end.

Is this the new Arlington way?

[Anonymous]

NP, I'd be curious to hear from other DHMS parents.

[Anonymous]

That doesn’t sound like our experience AT ALL. Was this just with one teacher? Maybe your kid got a dud.

[Anonymous]

I think that there are some duds in the sixth grade English and science depts. my current sixth grader has had an experience similar to what you are describing, but my current eighth grader had a much better experience. Though they had a much worse math teacher for sixth and seventh grade, so maybe there are just duds everywhere.
I do think that the school is getting maybe a little too big— I hear stories of fights happening regularly and there is little to nothing done. Lots of bullying. My kids fly under the radar but I would be concerned if I had someone who was likely to get picked on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that there are some duds in the sixth grade English and science depts. my current sixth grader has had an experience similar to what you are describing, but my current eighth grader had a much better experience. Though they had a much worse math teacher for sixth and seventh grade, so maybe there are just duds everywhere.
I do think that the school is getting maybe a little too big— I hear stories of fights happening regularly and there is little to nothing done. Lots of bullying. My kids fly under the radar but I would be concerned if I had someone who was likely to get picked on.

What does “regularly” mean?

[Anonymous]

How many teachers are you seeing this from?

[Anonymous]

We are having a similar experience. I think the technology is fueling the problem as the missing grades/passive aggressive emails/byzantine deadlines were not an issue with our older child. But that doesn’t explain all of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are having a similar experience. I think the technology is fueling the problem as the missing grades/passive aggressive emails/byzantine deadlines were not an issue with our older child. But that doesn’t explain all of it.

PS and students used to go outside at lunch and aren’t allowed now

[Anonymous]

We are at Gunston and have found that email/reaching out to teacher is pretty pointless, they rarely respond. However, they update grade books regularly, more than once a week except for the exploratory. They go outside almost every day for PE.

[Anonymous]

I think your experience is unusual. We love DHMS and so do the dozens of families that we know from the neighborhood and pool. There are a few bad apple teachers but the vast majority of them are great, as is the administration and counseling staff.

Can you take an honest, 30,000-foot view of your child’s school habits and see what might be contributing to the problems s/he is having?

[Anonymous]

We thought the 6th grader teachers were fine, one seemed burnt out. The 7th grade teachers have been amazing this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are at Gunston and have found that email/reaching out to teacher is pretty pointless, they rarely respond. However, they update grade books regularly, more than once a week except for the exploratory. They go outside almost every day for PE.

That is too bad. I found the opposite at Gunston (teachers respond to me usually within the hour I am always shocked). Do you use ParentSquare? We are in immersion though (and it's been immersion teachers) so not sure about the traditional program..

[Anonymous]

Huh.

My kid is at Swanson and no, not like this. Teachers respond, grades posted regularly, a couple teachers my kid has a great relationship with. Not that much time in iPad. I know this because it’s charged once for week and battery is not drained. They can go outside at lunch. They can’t eat out there but can go outside.

Some of your complaints it’s hard to tell if your kid might have some pretty severe executive functioning issues? I don’t think big public is the place for kids that need next level hand holding. They just aren’t built to operate that way.

[Anonymous]

I'm out of state in another district.

I completely recognize the whole "parent and child should be tracking the online grade book" farce.

We have Canvas. I have a kid who usually gets As and Bs who is actually quite smart and should have straight As. A lot of his grade bobbles relate to delayed grading by the teacher.

When I was a kid, parents were not expected to monitor their kid's daily work unless the kid was in severe trouble. This idea that parents can interpret 5 different teachers' personal grading styles ranging from timely to right before the grade is issued is nonsense.

I figure every era has its issues, so I am just training my kid to be his own advocate (basically means, be perfect at turning in assignments and question every grade less than an A like a little grade grubber to make sure there are no errors in the online gradebook). Adding my parental displeasure to the mix isn't going to help the teachers get their job done.

In short, some of this is technology-related stupidity not unique to your school.

[Anonymous]

I have never monitored my kids work or grades daily in APS middle school and was never asked to. The student should do it. Sounds like the message isn’t being delivered the way you’d like, which may be fair, but yes this is what middle school is for. Learning how to track and manage the work and talking to teachers.

We look at the grades at the end of the quarter. We have only emailed a teacher 2x in now 2.5 years and yes did hear back. We also have emailed with counselor who is great.