High school teacher rant

[Anonymous]

If we sense that a teacher is biased towards my DC in grading then can we talk to the principal of the school? The entire three quarters we gave benefit of doubt to the teacher, thinking that may be DC’s writing skills need to be brushed, though we know DC is excellent in writing. But the last assignment was well revised and evaluated by external sources so that the teacher has no scope of giving low grade. But it happened. DC got a D grade. This is highly affecting the GPA. How much role of a parent comes here? Can i write to the teacher that help DC to write better?

[Anonymous]

Curious if this is JMHS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If we sense that a teacher is biased towards my DC in grading then can we talk to the principal of the school? The entire three quarters we gave benefit of doubt to the teacher, thinking that may be DC’s writing skills need to be brushed, though we know DC is excellent in writing. But the last assignment was well revised and evaluated by external sources so that the teacher has no scope of giving low grade. But it happened. DC got a D grade. This is highly affecting the GPA. How much role of a parent comes here? Can i write to the teacher that help DC to write better?

I believe you meant to say, "biased against." "Biased toward," means the teacher would give your a child a better grade than he deserves.

If AI is the external review source, this may be an issue.

[Anonymous]

Do you have a rubric for what is being evaluated in the writing? Something could be very well written but completely miss the point of an assignment.

[Anonymous]

English teacher there.

You say the paper was evaluated by external sources. You don’t mean AI, do you? I repeatedly ask my students not to do that (even Grammarly) since the program will make changes that negatively impact the score. For example, we’ve been working on a particular type of quote embedding and Grammarly alters each example.

If there’s a rubric, start there. I suspect the writing doesn’t match the requirements.

Please don’t assume the teacher has bad intentions. Our jobs are hard enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:English teacher there.

You say the paper was evaluated by external sources. You don’t mean AI, do you? I repeatedly ask my students not to do that (even Grammarly) since the program will make changes that negatively impact the score. For example, we’ve been working on a particular type of quote embedding and Grammarly alters each example.

If there’s a rubric, start there. I suspect the writing doesn’t match the requirements.

Please don’t assume the teacher has bad intentions. Our jobs are hard enough.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:English teacher there.

You say the paper was evaluated by external sources. You don’t mean AI, do you? I repeatedly ask my students not to do that (even Grammarly) since the program will make changes that negatively impact the score. For example, we’ve been working on a particular type of quote embedding and Grammarly alters each example.

If there’s a rubric, start there. I suspect the writing doesn’t match the requirements.

Please don’t assume the teacher has bad intentions. Our jobs are hard enough.

This!

Well-written doesn't mean it meets the requirements.

If the prompt requires a persuasive response regarding Heathcliff's motives, yet the student writes a character analysis of Heathcliff, that doesn't meet the requirements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Curious if this is JMHS?

Wondering the same.
The Lang teachers are tough graders there.

[Anonymous]

So more than one external source? Does it sound too AIish?

Did you actually see your child write this essay? Can you go into google docs and look at time stamp? The teacher is sensing something is off.

Or while the writing might be what you would consider good writing or an external source might, there might be a very specific format. Is it fit an AP English language class. There is a specific rubric for each type of essay.

[Anonymous]

Has your child asked the teacher to go over the assignment so that DC understands where it fell short? That’s the first step. If f you’re still confused after that (and your “external source” was not AI but someone knowledgeable about both the writing process and the assignment requirements) then you could request a meeting with the teacher.

I’ve disagreed with grading many times over the years (and I’m a reliable “external source”) but I’ve never accused a teacher of bias and their explanations to my kid, and me on one occasion, have always been appropriate. And FWIW since it’s come up, my kids attend(ed) JMHS.

[Anonymous]

OP here. The teacher has not even graded DC and others kids assignments yet. By external sources I meant an English teacher, AI was after checking with couple of teachers. I wasn’t checking DC’s homework until now as I wanted to do my homework first to take the next step. I didn’t find any major concerns and DC got a D grade. DC was super frustrated. Is it normal to have a conference with the teacher to talk about how to do better in th class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. The teacher has not even graded DC and others kids assignments yet. By external sources I meant an English teacher, AI was after checking with couple of teachers. I wasn’t checking DC’s homework until now as I wanted to do my homework first to take the next step. I didn’t find any major concerns and DC got a D grade. DC was super frustrated. Is it normal to have a conference with the teacher to talk about how to do better in th class?

It's late in the year to do that but understandable if other assignments have not been graded and you were not aware of the issue. Worthwhile to have the meeting, but as other posters have said - please go in with an open mind and assume good intent and work from there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. The teacher has not even graded DC and others kids assignments yet. By external sources I meant an English teacher, AI was after checking with couple of teachers. I wasn’t checking DC’s homework until now as I wanted to do my homework first to take the next step. I didn’t find any major concerns and DC got a D grade. DC was super frustrated. Is it normal to have a conference with the teacher to talk about how to do better in th class?

There are nine basic grammar mistakes or typos in this paragraph.

The second sentence makes no sense, given the rest of the paragraph.

There is no lead or topic sentence. There is no persuasive support. This is a collection of seven sentences that read like a succession of thoughts.

[Anonymous]

We had this issue with an English teacher. She clearly had bias against male students who were more jock or macho. We ran all the work through chatghpt and even had my colleague who has an advance degree in English review my child's work and no one could understand why it was being failed. We switched out of the class after complaining to the principal and it was acknowledged that the teacher was a problem but since they had been here for years nothing could be done to get rid of them or tell them to grade more fairly. We also almost filed a foia to get all the class grades because from talking with other parents this particular teacher was failing a lot of students and there was no way the curve is distributed properly. Furthermore from talking to other fcps teacher there is a lot of pressure if giving an f to a student because the teacher will need to remediate and would be reprimanded for so many fs however this teacher has gotten away with it for years and there is something behind the scenes going on with the teacher and the administration, we suspect because the teacher is of some type of dei marginalized group as observed by pride flags and social media of their same sex partner. Since fcps is quite liberal and now fully teacher unionized we decided to just pursue switching classes and magically the grade went from fs to as because the problem was the teacher. We also didn't want to spend time in litigation and drag our child through all that so at the end of the day it would be better to switch out. There are websites like rate my teacher and word of mouth of which teachers to avoid however the schools don't reveal which teachers will be in which classes when you register the year before so you have to keep a close eye on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had this issue with an English teacher. She clearly had bias against male students who were more jock or macho. We ran all the work through chatghpt and even had my colleague who has an advance degree in English review my child's work and no one could understand why it was being failed. We switched out of the class after complaining to the principal and it was acknowledged that the teacher was a problem but since they had been here for years nothing could be done to get rid of them or tell them to grade more fairly. We also almost filed a foia to get all the class grades because from talking with other parents this particular teacher was failing a lot of students and there was no way the curve is distributed properly. Furthermore from talking to other fcps teacher there is a lot of pressure if giving an f to a student because the teacher will need to remediate and would be reprimanded for so many fs however this teacher has gotten away with it for years and there is something behind the scenes going on with the teacher and the administration, we suspect because the teacher is of some type of dei marginalized group as observed by pride flags and social media of their same sex partner. Since fcps is quite liberal and now fully teacher unionized we decided to just pursue switching classes and magically the grade went from fs to as because the problem was the teacher. We also didn't want to spend time in litigation and drag our child through all that so at the end of the day it would be better to switch out. There are websites like rate my teacher and word of mouth of which teachers to avoid however the schools don't reveal which teachers will be in which classes when you register the year before so you have to keep a close eye on it.

Sorry for all the poor grammar and runs lol I think someone will say see your kid learned poor English skills from you. I am late to a meeting and wanted to get this off my chest and make the point there may be nothing you can do as it's the teacher how it's probably too late to do anything, it would be best to switch earlier in the year. You could pursue making up the class over the summer but it's demotivating as you would need to fail the class and it's not fair to students to have to try hard and get a d where they could just stop going to class get an f and make it up over the summer. I really feel for students in this situation and parents unfortunately have to watch closely early on. I was surprised.