High schoolers can’t write

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents refuse to raise their own kids.

Newsflash: it isn’t up to parents to provide 100% of the kid’s education.

Public schools teach the basics to the masses. You need private for more than that.

--MCPS teacher

And that’s acceptable?

in ms and hs teachers teach 5-6 classes with at least 30 students each. Some teachers go above and beyond but mist do the absolute minimum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

1. Teachers at private schools make those corrections.

2. It’s probably easier to edit/correct when you actually teach kids what they need to learn starting in K-5…instead of waiting for them to magically learn grammar, writing, etc. in AP classes during the tail end of high school.

#duh

Teachers in private schools have:
- fewer students, and therefore fewer papers to grade
- more dedicated planning time
- autonomy, giving them the chance to emphasize writing in their courses
- more control over curriculum, so they don’t have to deal with a district’s revolving door of initiatives

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The masses these days are poor. It's been nearly 10 yrs since the majority of public school students live in poverty.

IMO, schools should teach the basics to mastery. Until then, your kid shouldn't move on.

Most don’t live in poverty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:AP Lang and AP Lit are the English classes where students are held to higher standards of writing. Unfortunately they don't come until 11th and 12 th grades.

I wish this were true. My kid took AP Lang and the writing assignments that he got A’s on was riddled with grammatical errors and he wasn’t dinged or corrected on it. MCPS does not care to teach grammar or writing structure as a philosophical choice.

This is surprising. This is what we were counting on.

I don’t think it is true. They do grammar all the time in upper ES and MS — they have assignments where they basically have to line edit and find all the grammatical mistakes called something like Caught Ya. My big issue is more with the way they teach writing structure — the writing sounds like a bot wrote it, but that’s what the rubric demands. The bots are using the same rubric I think!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

All of that might take up a lot of time, but it isn’t teaching kids a damn thing about writing.

So it all would seem to be a waste.

Private school teacher here. I’ve spent about 5 hours today (on Labor Day, ironically) commenting on my students’ first essays of the year. Each is taking me about 25 minutes, and I have 60 of them. I’ll get these back by Weds, at which point my students will review my comments and complete a reflection. They will then have the opportunity to revise for a higher grade, taking into account my written comments and their own reflections. We will then begin essay #2.

Are you telling me I’m wasting my time providing all of this feedback? I would have loved the opportunity to go to the pool with my family today.

Back to reading essays, and wasting time apparently…

I was addressing the poster who said she doesn’t have time to give feedback.

Reread. She never wrote that she doesn’t provide feedback. She was simply explaining how much time it takes and how little time she has.

I’m that poster. I left teaching in part because there are too many students who don’t care about learning to read and write well. So spending hours of my life giving feedback to students who don’t care was getting demoralizing. And you can’t just identify the ones that might care and only give feedback to those students. This is all on top of the endless bureaucratic nonsense.

I work in a completely different field now and have endless sympathy for my former colleagues. I always tell my children that if they want to become teachers, they should definitely not become English teachers because of the absolutely crushing workload.

My sympathies, Labor Day paper grader. I see you!

[Anonymous]

You get what you vote for

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

All of that might take up a lot of time, but it isn’t teaching kids a damn thing about writing.

So it all would seem to be a waste.

Private school teacher here. I’ve spent about 5 hours today (on Labor Day, ironically) commenting on my students’ first essays of the year. Each is taking me about 25 minutes, and I have 60 of them. I’ll get these back by Weds, at which point my students will review my comments and complete a reflection. They will then have the opportunity to revise for a higher grade, taking into account my written comments and their own reflections. We will then begin essay #2.

Are you telling me I’m wasting my time providing all of this feedback? I would have loved the opportunity to go to the pool with my family today.

Back to reading essays, and wasting time apparently…

I was addressing the poster who said she doesn’t have time to give feedback.

Reread. She never wrote that she doesn’t provide feedback. She was simply explaining how much time it takes and how little time she has.

I’m that poster. I left teaching in part because there are too many students who don’t care about learning to read and write well. So spending hours of my life giving feedback to students who don’t care was getting demoralizing. And you can’t just identify the ones that might care and only give feedback to those students. This is all on top of the endless bureaucratic nonsense.

I work in a completely different field now and have endless sympathy for my former colleagues. I always tell my children that if they want to become teachers, they should definitely not become English teachers because of the absolutely crushing workload.

My sympathies, Labor Day paper grader. I see you!

And former English teacher, I see you! Thank you for those many hours of grading and for all of your efforts, in general. One day I hope to follow you into another field.

I tell my own children they can’t become English teachers for the same reason. (They wouldn’t want to anyway.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

All of that might take up a lot of time, but it isn’t teaching kids a damn thing about writing.

So it all would seem to be a waste.

Private school teacher here. I’ve spent about 5 hours today (on Labor Day, ironically) commenting on my students’ first essays of the year. Each is taking me about 25 minutes, and I have 60 of them. I’ll get these back by Weds, at which point my students will review my comments and complete a reflection. They will then have the opportunity to revise for a higher grade, taking into account my written comments and their own reflections. We will then begin essay #2.

Are you telling me I’m wasting my time providing all of this feedback? I would have loved the opportunity to go to the pool with my family today.

Back to reading essays, and wasting time apparently…

I was addressing the poster who said she doesn’t have time to give feedback.

Reread. She never wrote that she doesn’t provide feedback. She was simply explaining how much time it takes and how little time she has.

I’m that poster. I left teaching in part because there are too many students who don’t care about learning to read and write well. So spending hours of my life giving feedback to students who don’t care was getting demoralizing. And you can’t just identify the ones that might care and only give feedback to those students. This is all on top of the endless bureaucratic nonsense.

I work in a completely different field now and have endless sympathy for my former colleagues. I always tell my children that if they want to become teachers, they should definitely not become English teachers because of the absolutely crushing workload.

My sympathies, Labor Day paper grader. I see you!

No one was criticizing Labor Day paper grader. She made that up herself.

I also question where she teaches because all the private schools I’m aware of in MD don’t start until after Labor Day. Which school would have started early enough for kids to have already turned in essays?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

1. Teachers at private schools make those corrections.

2. It’s probably easier to edit/correct when you actually teach kids what they need to learn starting in K-5…instead of waiting for them to magically learn grammar, writing, etc. in AP classes during the tail end of high school.

#duh

Teachers in private schools have:
- fewer students, and therefore fewer papers to grade
- more dedicated planning time
- autonomy, giving them the chance to emphasize writing in their courses
- more control over curriculum, so they don’t have to deal with a district’s revolving door of initiatives

Most private schools (especially catholic schools) are overcrowded.

Regardless, my kids went to an mcps elementary that was never crowded. One kid’s class size from K through 5 ranged from 19-23. Is that “crowded”? My other kids were in classes ranging from 20-24. Again: is that crowded?

The only dedicated planning time is when the kids are in specials. Don’t they have specials in mcps? Of course they do. (I’m referring to k-5 for public and k-8 for catholic btw).

I get the autonomy issue. But this entire mcps forum is basically a cry for help: for mcps to improve the curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

All of that might take up a lot of time, but it isn’t teaching kids a damn thing about writing.

So it all would seem to be a waste.

Private school teacher here. I’ve spent about 5 hours today (on Labor Day, ironically) commenting on my students’ first essays of the year. Each is taking me about 25 minutes, and I have 60 of them. I’ll get these back by Weds, at which point my students will review my comments and complete a reflection. They will then have the opportunity to revise for a higher grade, taking into account my written comments and their own reflections. We will then begin essay #2.

Are you telling me I’m wasting my time providing all of this feedback? I would have loved the opportunity to go to the pool with my family today.

Back to reading essays, and wasting time apparently…

I was addressing the poster who said she doesn’t have time to give feedback.

Reread. She never wrote that she doesn’t provide feedback. She was simply explaining how much time it takes and how little time she has.

I’m that poster. I left teaching in part because there are too many students who don’t care about learning to read and write well. So spending hours of my life giving feedback to students who don’t care was getting demoralizing. And you can’t just identify the ones that might care and only give feedback to those students. This is all on top of the endless bureaucratic nonsense.

I work in a completely different field now and have endless sympathy for my former colleagues. I always tell my children that if they want to become teachers, they should definitely not become English teachers because of the absolutely crushing workload.

My sympathies, Labor Day paper grader. I see you!

No one was criticizing Labor Day paper grader. She made that up herself.

I also question where she teaches because all the private schools I’m aware of in MD don’t start until after Labor Day. Which school would have started early enough for kids to have already turned in essays?

Good Counsel, Georgetown Prep, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents refuse to raise their own kids.

Newsflash: it isn’t up to parents to provide 100% of the kid’s education.

Public schools teach the basics to the masses. You need private for more than that.

--MCPS teacher

And that’s acceptable?

in ms and hs teachers teach 5-6 classes with at least 30 students each. Some teachers go above and beyond but mist do the absolute minimum.

MS and HS are too late to lay the foundation for academic skills. Mcps doesn’t equip students for success due to their wacky approach k through 5.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

1. Teachers at private schools make those corrections.

2. It’s probably easier to edit/correct when you actually teach kids what they need to learn starting in K-5…instead of waiting for them to magically learn grammar, writing, etc. in AP classes during the tail end of high school.

#duh

Teachers in private schools have:
- fewer students, and therefore fewer papers to grade
- more dedicated planning time
- autonomy, giving them the chance to emphasize writing in their courses
- more control over curriculum, so they don’t have to deal with a district’s revolving door of initiatives

Most private schools (especially catholic schools) are overcrowded.

Regardless, my kids went to an mcps elementary that was never crowded. One kid’s class size from K through 5 ranged from 19-23. Is that “crowded”? My other kids were in classes ranging from 20-24. Again: is that crowded?

The only dedicated planning time is when the kids are in specials. Don’t they have specials in mcps? Of course they do. (I’m referring to k-5 for public and k-8 for catholic btw).

I get the autonomy issue. But this entire mcps forum is basically a cry for help: for mcps to improve the curriculum.

I vote “most private schools are overcrowded” as the most delusional comment of the thread.

Catholic diocese schools have to take all the kids in the diocese.

But other than them, all private schools can and do limit the number of kids they admit. That’s kinda the point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

All of that might take up a lot of time, but it isn’t teaching kids a damn thing about writing.

So it all would seem to be a waste.

Private school teacher here. I’ve spent about 5 hours today (on Labor Day, ironically) commenting on my students’ first essays of the year. Each is taking me about 25 minutes, and I have 60 of them. I’ll get these back by Weds, at which point my students will review my comments and complete a reflection. They will then have the opportunity to revise for a higher grade, taking into account my written comments and their own reflections. We will then begin essay #2.

Are you telling me I’m wasting my time providing all of this feedback? I would have loved the opportunity to go to the pool with my family today.

Back to reading essays, and wasting time apparently…

I was addressing the poster who said she doesn’t have time to give feedback.

Reread. She never wrote that she doesn’t provide feedback. She was simply explaining how much time it takes and how little time she has.

I’m that poster. I left teaching in part because there are too many students who don’t care about learning to read and write well. So spending hours of my life giving feedback to students who don’t care was getting demoralizing. And you can’t just identify the ones that might care and only give feedback to those students. This is all on top of the endless bureaucratic nonsense.

I work in a completely different field now and have endless sympathy for my former colleagues. I always tell my children that if they want to become teachers, they should definitely not become English teachers because of the absolutely crushing workload.

My sympathies, Labor Day paper grader. I see you!

No one was criticizing Labor Day paper grader. She made that up herself.

I also question where she teaches because all the private schools I’m aware of in MD don’t start until after Labor Day. Which school would have started early enough for kids to have already turned in essays?

Really? Can you tell my principal that? All the teachers and students showed up on 8/23 for the first day of school. We would have loved to know we had an extra week of summer! Wow, the joke is certainly on us!

Yes, my students wrote a diagnostic essay the first week of class. I can’t help them grow as writers if I don’t know where they currently stand.

You can try to one-up me. It isn’t going to work, but you are welcome to try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

All of that might take up a lot of time, but it isn’t teaching kids a damn thing about writing.

So it all would seem to be a waste.

Private school teacher here. I’ve spent about 5 hours today (on Labor Day, ironically) commenting on my students’ first essays of the year. Each is taking me about 25 minutes, and I have 60 of them. I’ll get these back by Weds, at which point my students will review my comments and complete a reflection. They will then have the opportunity to revise for a higher grade, taking into account my written comments and their own reflections. We will then begin essay #2.

Are you telling me I’m wasting my time providing all of this feedback? I would have loved the opportunity to go to the pool with my family today.

Back to reading essays, and wasting time apparently…

I was addressing the poster who said she doesn’t have time to give feedback.

Reread. She never wrote that she doesn’t provide feedback. She was simply explaining how much time it takes and how little time she has.

I’m that poster. I left teaching in part because there are too many students who don’t care about learning to read and write well. So spending hours of my life giving feedback to students who don’t care was getting demoralizing. And you can’t just identify the ones that might care and only give feedback to those students. This is all on top of the endless bureaucratic nonsense.

I work in a completely different field now and have endless sympathy for my former colleagues. I always tell my children that if they want to become teachers, they should definitely not become English teachers because of the absolutely crushing workload.

My sympathies, Labor Day paper grader. I see you!

No one was criticizing Labor Day paper grader. She made that up herself.

I also question where she teaches because all the private schools I’m aware of in MD don’t start until after Labor Day. Which school would have started early enough for kids to have already turned in essays?

Good Counsel, Georgetown Prep, etc.

They’ve been in school for one week. The most you’d be talking about is short response papers to initial readings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who are wondering why teachers don’t correct all of the mistakes and provide detailed feedback, I wonder if you have ever graded a set of papers? Each paper takes the grader a significant amount of time to do what is basically copyediting, and then on top of that, you have to engage the student’s ideas and provide feedback about their logic, structure, argument building, use of supporting/relevant detail from the text, or whatever else the assignment is meant to do. Writing fulsome comments along those lines takes forever as well. So if you expect copyediting and deep, detailed comments about the substance of a paper, and you multiply that by 30 kids per class, you are talking about an infinite number of hours to grade one assignment. On top of that, teachers have to plan classes, grade other kinds of work like in-class quizzes or student presentations or whatever, and then do the rest of their job. That’s after teaching in the classroom for most of the day. It just takes too much time. What would help is if teachers in other disciplines where students submit papers, like social studies or whatever, would also focus on the actual writing and not just the substance. And it would help if students review their papers and at least run them through spellcheck and grammar check.

All of that might take up a lot of time, but it isn’t teaching kids a damn thing about writing.

So it all would seem to be a waste.

Private school teacher here. I’ve spent about 5 hours today (on Labor Day, ironically) commenting on my students’ first essays of the year. Each is taking me about 25 minutes, and I have 60 of them. I’ll get these back by Weds, at which point my students will review my comments and complete a reflection. They will then have the opportunity to revise for a higher grade, taking into account my written comments and their own reflections. We will then begin essay #2.

Are you telling me I’m wasting my time providing all of this feedback? I would have loved the opportunity to go to the pool with my family today.

Back to reading essays, and wasting time apparently…

I was addressing the poster who said she doesn’t have time to give feedback.

Reread. She never wrote that she doesn’t provide feedback. She was simply explaining how much time it takes and how little time she has.

I’m that poster. I left teaching in part because there are too many students who don’t care about learning to read and write well. So spending hours of my life giving feedback to students who don’t care was getting demoralizing. And you can’t just identify the ones that might care and only give feedback to those students. This is all on top of the endless bureaucratic nonsense.

I work in a completely different field now and have endless sympathy for my former colleagues. I always tell my children that if they want to become teachers, they should definitely not become English teachers because of the absolutely crushing workload.

My sympathies, Labor Day paper grader. I see you!

No one was criticizing Labor Day paper grader. She made that up herself.

I also question where she teaches because all the private schools I’m aware of in MD don’t start until after Labor Day. Which school would have started early enough for kids to have already turned in essays?

Do you have a valuable contribution to the substance of this thread, which is the problems in writing education?

Are you one of Those Parents?