Grading deadlines and teachers

[Anonymous]

I know teachers are overworked and have hard their planning and grading periods taken away. Why can't MCPS or other districts seem to fix this because it's really hurting learning. If they could just fix this it would really do a lot to help students and teachers.

I don't understand why the district thinks it is okay that some teachers can't find enough time to grade almost anything until right before the quarter ends. Students have no idea what they are doing wrong and therefore they can't ask for help. I'm sure the teachers are stressed out to see so much work piling up. Why can't we do better?

[Anonymous]

Effectively duplicate of https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1249220.page

[Anonymous]

Teachers need a student or co-teacher. That teacher can assist Lead teacher with grading. This way students know how they did. Parents can get their kid necessary tutoring or services if they have timely updates.

[Anonymous]

Here's what you do. Pass back to the kids everyday the work of one of their peers to grade. It makes sense that kids won't want to look tarded in front if their peers thus incentivizing them to be good students. Admin has churned and burned through so many teachers there are not alot left and ones that are are probably pressured to bear the burden.

[Anonymous]

It’s pretty simple. There aren’t enough teachers. Priority is covering the classrooms, which is probably the right decision. But if you have ideas of where to get more teachers in this time period when kids are not interested in studying education and parents steer their kids away from education as a career, I’m sure the districts would love to hear.

[Anonymous]

The teachers are not paid enough. Why can’t the central office take a pay cut and raise teacher salaries? Its ridiculous how little they are paid for the amount of work they do and the energy they need to put up with students and parents. I am not a teacher, but have 4 kids go through mcps and I feel for the teachers. Even the bad ones.

[Anonymous]

Teachers should compile all of their work that still needs to be graded after they work their contracted hours and put them in organized folders and drop them off to their administrators to grade. Then send a cc email to the parents if all your students letting them know that teachers don't have enough hours allowed in their contract to grade so all work that was not graded after your hours were exhausted has been turned in to admin for grading. Give the P and AP contact information. Then enjoy your weekend. If all teachers do this it would get great publicity as to the push for higher wages, burnout based on hours, retaliation, etc. It would basically be a great way to calibrate the level of job sustainability so as not to be working at a job that is systematically dysfunctional, predatory, and retaliatory.

[Anonymous]

If you do that, you won’t be a “team player. Schools really rely on female teachers being people pleasers. I’m turning 50 this year and the beauty of aging is that I don’t care about being a people pleaser. I leave right after school most days and don’t work in the weekends very often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The teachers are not paid enough. Why can’t the central office take a pay cut and raise teacher salaries? Its ridiculous how little they are paid for the amount of work they do and the energy they need to put up with students and parents. I am not a teacher, but have 4 kids go through mcps and I feel for the teachers. Even the bad ones.

Newer teachers are not paid well. Senior teachers are paid decently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's what you do. Pass back to the kids everyday the work of one of their peers to grade. It makes sense that kids won't want to look tarded in front if their peers thus incentivizing them to be good students. Admin has churned and burned through so many teachers there are not alot left and ones that are are probably pressured to bear the burden.

I like this strategy. It improves critical thinking skills.

[Anonymous]

DC has some really organized teachers and I think a few of them are just super stars at managing their time but the others are smart about using different strategies to help themselves.

Use a few autograded Canvas quizzes each quarter.
Assign group projects so you cut down the number of things to grade by 75 or more %.
PP assignments are all 100%s as long as you turn it in and made a decent effort.
Assign oral projects or presentations that are graded in class.


A lot of these things are just good educational strategy anyway. Group projects and presentations build useful skills. The autograded Canvas quizzes are great to check factual knowledge and it's kind of a waste of time for teachers to grade that stuff in this day and age when we have tech to do it.

[Anonymous]

Lastly I noticed a lot of teachers are no longer requiring kids to turn in PP unless kids are absent. They just go around the room and the kids show the teachers the work and they grade during class. Huge time saver. And also immediate negative feedback for the kid if they don't have their assignment ready to show the teacher. Win-win for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's what you do. Pass back to the kids everyday the work of one of their peers to grade. It makes sense that kids won't want to look tarded in front if their peers thus incentivizing them to be good students. Admin has churned and burned through so many teachers there are not alot left and ones that are are probably pressured to bear the burden.

I like this strategy. It improves critical thinking skills.

Kid's math teacher does this for smaller AT quizzes. I like it because you can also ask your peers what you did wrong. The teacher collects, scrambles the quizzes and hands them out to random kids. The kids also can quickly understand what they did wrong because the teacher goes over the answers right away.

[Anonymous]

If men join the profession we are bullied around if we stand up for student and human rights bc we have no protections as we are not female or minority. At least women are treated better aside from all the sexual harassment/ bullying stuff that mcps and UMD are known for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The teachers are not paid enough. Why can’t the central office take a pay cut and raise teacher salaries? Its ridiculous how little they are paid for the amount of work they do and the energy they need to put up with students and parents. I am not a teacher, but have 4 kids go through mcps and I feel for the teachers. Even the bad ones.

Newer teachers are not paid well. Senior teachers are paid decently.

Not for the workload. Senior teacher here. I woke up at 5am today (a Saturday) to grade. I’ll be at it all day.