Teacher won't email back
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Anonymous
What a hard life! How do you ever survive? |
Anonymous
By ignoring parent emails from annoying parents like you. LOL. |
Anonymous
And that's why Americans are so stupid and uneducated. |
Anonymous
This is why parents hate you. |
Anonymous
I’m the PP who tried to calmly and politely illustrate why teachers can’t hold long conferences between classes. (I am NOT the PP whose response was to ignore parent emails.) As usual, DCUM decided to meet my calm, reasoned response with snark and anger. For the 3 (or so) posters who rudely replied, I recommend a different approach. Try grace and understanding. OP, try grace. The teacher said she’ll get to it. It may not be the top priority right now because she may be putting out tons of other fires. A kind reminder, even if it’s #4, will work. She probably feels guilty that it hasn’t gotten done yet, and she’ll remember the previous attempts. |
Anonymous
This happens a lot and then the teachers will say that the DC should self advocate. But, when they are brave enough to say or ask something, they are passed over. It’s defeating. |
Anonymous
How about suggesting that your child approach a teacher before school or after school? Between classes, your child has to compete for the teacher’s attention. And that’s not the teacher’s fault; it’s simply the nature of the job. One person can only do so much in 5 minutes for 10-12 people with requests. Yes, your child should still self advocate. Part of that is determining how, like coming after school or sending an email teachers can answer at night when they finally have a chance for a breath. I am THRILLED when I receive emails from students. I am less thrilled when parents rob their children of the opportunity to speak for themselves. |
Anonymous
Ha, ha. Go ahead and escalate. The teacher doesn't jump on your command. Your child probably realizes you actually are bothering the teacher. How positive and encouraging do you think the teacher is going to be toward your child when you escalate and keep emailing administrators? Your kid is now mortified and is probably dreading going to that class because you keep threatening to escalate the matter. This is middle school. It doesn't sound like a math or foreign language class so the grades don't matter. Think to yourself how is it everyone else managed to turn in the assignment in a timely manner? First you say you want to make sure your child turned in anything then you say you also need to know not only if it is turned in but if it is the correct assignment, next you are going to want to know if all the answers were correct. Why can't you take this as a learning lesson for your child that these issues don't come up if you turn in things on time. Your child can also learn being willing to talk to teachers is important when they have questions. |
Anonymous
DP. I think most teachers are quite capable of navigating the waters between an aggravating parent and the student. I’ve worked with some dreadful parents in the past, and more often than not their children are wonderful. I’ve had plenty of students apologize to me for a parent’s behavior in the past. I don’t retaliate on srudents. The way I see it, they are dealing with the same pressures I am. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
"All the crazy teachers jumped down on me" Did your child actually expect the teacher to stop what she was doing in class right then...stop instruction, stop everything, so that she would look up the assignment right then? Seriously? "I'll check" means she will check...at some point. Not then. But in the middle of classes. Not between classes. She's actually busy with tasks that are more important. Coach your child to brainstorm when it might make the most sense for your child to ask to meet 1-1 with that teacher. Ask for 5 minutes of her time. The teacher did not "ignore" your child or blow her off. She didn't have time to respond to a non-urgent question, and whenever she asked in class it wasn't at a time that they teacher could check right then. "I'll check" (at some unspecified time in the future) IS a legitimate response. |
Anonymous
Or is amazing and has very different priorities...like, planning great lessons. Helping kids in crisis. She's gonna catch up on late work every other Friday night, if there's time. Maybe. Because it's not as important as 1,000 Other more pressing things |
Anonymous
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Is this a real thread or comedy? Teacher here. I have not laughed this hard in a long time.
So many snarky posters and this includes you, OP. My advice - just give up on this assignment. If it was a YouTube video assignment, it sounds relatively minor. Who cares? Keep moving forward |
Anonymous
I haven’t had this issue with teachers often, but there was one time I requested something from a coach and got no response for a long time. This coach was known for not responding well over email, so after sending a reminder email and still hearing nothing, I cc’d the principal. That finally got a quick reply. I always give people a chance before escalating, but sometimes it’s necessary. In my experience, when reaching out to teachers, it helps to be very clear about what I need and by when. I also keep an email trail, just like I would in any work-related situation, so there’s documentation. But I always try to approach it with kindness because teachers are people too. The goal is to avoid sounding confrontational or making things awkward for your child. One major issue I’ve had is with the Student Information System (SIS). Some teachers update it daily, others weekly, and some only at the end of the quarter. It’s really annoying because there’s no standard, and the school administration hasn’t enforced one. Parents are left in the dark, not knowing when or if the system will be updated. I’ve had multiple meetings with senior administration about this because while SIS is available for parents to check on their child’s progress daily, there’s often a huge delay in seeing what’s been turned in late or not at all. This is made worse by FCPS’s late turn-in and test retake policies. I really think administration should address this and set a standard for how frequently SIS should be updated, so parents know what to expect. |
Anonymous
I understand you might not think this particular assignment is important, but the current environment for college admissions is incredibly competitive. It’s not just about one assignment—it’s about maintaining the kind of grades necessary to even have a shot at schools these days. For example, in Virginia, you need above a 4.0 GPA just to be competitive at in-state schools like UVA and Virginia Tech, which is crazy. I think part of the issue is that colleges, especially Ivy League schools, haven’t made an effort to expand their acceptance rates. Personally, I believe their rates should be over 50%, and they could do that by expanding campuses and using online courses to reach a larger student pool. Technology has opened up so many opportunities for scalable education, and at a minimum, in-state schools should be leading the way in making higher education more accessible. There should be a mandate that schools must expand their capacity and maintain a 50% acceptance rate, or they risk losing state funding. The pressure on students would be far less intense if we saw more of an effort to expand these opportunities. |