Teachers and HS graded assignments

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The MCPS grading policies are unworkable for teachers:

-No way to put “Z’s” in my MCPS even though this is required for missing assignments.
-9 assessments times 150 students is 1,350 basically every two months.
-I barely bother grading practice prep. I have no time to even look at it.
-Separate due dates and deadlines for to keep track of for students with extended time.
-Students who don’t show up for a few weeks are still expected to be offered to do the assignments. How the hell do they expect us to reteach and regrade without use our lunch “break”.

Are you saying that you don’t follow the policies and just screw over your students?

Are you saying that you are unable to think critically? Because that’s a key life skill and no where is this person saying what you are insinuating. Stop going after teachers who are only trying to keep pace with ever changing policies that each school apparently can interpret how they want. Stop being a simpleton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are burned out. I can’t repeat this enough.

High school teachers are in front of 140-150 teenagers each day, dealing with unimaginable behaviors. When their planning period comes, they are now covering classes since we have a shortage of subs. I didn’t even get to eat lunch twice last week.

Planning lessons and grading work doesn’t happen at school anymore. There’s no time. It happens after we cook our family’s dinner. It happens after we put our own kids to bed. It happens all weekend, and sometimes we have to use our own leave to catch up.

It is unfortunate that students have to wait for feedback, or not get any at all. But it is equally unfortunate that we demand that our teachers sacrifice their own families to get work done.

There's no excuse for not letting teachers have a lunch period or taking over their planning periods regularly. No excuse. I don't know how MCPS allows this.

But I'm not sure why you are complaning about after hours work. My parents were teachers and they always were grading at home and on weekends. This is not new. This is how salaried jobs work. Everyone I know who has a salaried job does some amount of work after hours and on weekends no matter what that job is. If you don't want to take work home with you you you should choose a different profession.

🙄 go touch grass. And teachers are leaving. In droves. It’s not your parents’ profession anymore. Get with it.

Are you 10? What kind of teacher writes like this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The MCPS grading policies are unworkable for teachers:

-No way to put “Z’s” in my MCPS even though this is required for missing assignments.
-9 assessments times 150 students is 1,350 basically every two months.
-I barely bother grading practice prep. I have no time to even look at it.
-Separate due dates and deadlines for to keep track of for students with extended time.
-Students who don’t show up for a few weeks are still expected to be offered to do the assignments. How the hell do they expect us to reteach and regrade without use our lunch “break”.

I think most of this is a technology tech that can be solved easily if MCPS would hire competent tech people.

It should be easy to put in different deadlines and due dates for kids with extended time (MCPS should create a way for teachers or even a special ed person to do this once a quarter or semester) or due to absences.
MCPS should clarify that it's okay for teachers to mostly grade PP for completion. Many of DD's teachers do this already but I think it should be clarified. You are right that having to grade PP on top of AT creates a huge burden on teachers.
Some of DD's teachers do autograded quizzes for some of the AT tasks so there's not much for you to grade. MCPS just needs to make it easier to set these up so that the teachers who are less great at tech can use these.

I don't know what to do about the absenteeism. That's a larger problem but you should not have to reteach material to kids who do not have excused absences. I think you're talking about kids skipping school right? Teachers should not have to give up their lunch periods for this in any case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also this

All Tasks/Assessments: All assignments in the All
Tasks/Assessments category should add up to no fewer than nine
assignments, with feedback, each marking period.

Had anyone successfully raised this with a teacher who is violating this? Did you raise it or did your kid? My kid has a teacher who has only graded 4 all tasks and has one left to grade - so five total not the minimum of 9. A low mark in one of those all tasks has significantly brought down their grades even though As for all the others. More all task assignments would provide more opportunity to bring it up.

You should raise it. It's a sensitive issue and a clear violation of policy so I don't think a kid should be involved. I would be nice about it though. They may not have realized or you may be counting incorrectly or they may not be in the system correctly.

[Anonymous]

I try my best to follow MCPS policy but sometimes end up with 8 All Tasks instead of 9. I try to hold reasonably high standards for grades and it is important to have all your ducks in a row as students, parents and administrators are often on the warpath regarding grades. Teachers who give all As and Bs can ignore MCPS policy as no one will complain about them regardless of whether kids are actually learning anything

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are burned out. I can’t repeat this enough.

High school teachers are in front of 140-150 teenagers each day, dealing with unimaginable behaviors. When their planning period comes, they are now covering classes since we have a shortage of subs. I didn’t even get to eat lunch twice last week.

Planning lessons and grading work doesn’t happen at school anymore. There’s no time. It happens after we cook our family’s dinner. It happens after we put our own kids to bed. It happens all weekend, and sometimes we have to use our own leave to catch up.

It is unfortunate that students have to wait for feedback, or not get any at all. But it is equally unfortunate that we demand that our teachers sacrifice their own families to get work done.

There's no excuse for not letting teachers have a lunch period or taking over their planning periods regularly. No excuse. I don't know how MCPS allows this.

But I'm not sure why you are complaning about after hours work. My parents were teachers and they always were grading at home and on weekends. This is not new. This is how salaried jobs work. Everyone I know who has a salaried job does some amount of work after hours and on weekends no matter what that job is. If you don't want to take work home with you you you should choose a different profession.

Teachers are taking your advice. We are leaving in droves. MCPS used to be a place teachers flocked to. Now it has a dreadful reputation, and teachers look elsewhere.

Your parents had it easy compared to today’s teachers. I’ve been at this over 20 years. Teaching 2 decades ago was a BREEZE compared to now. And “taking home work” used to mean 1-2 hours of work a night. Now it means 3 or more, as well as full weekends dedicated to work. I pulled a 70 hour week last week.

Yes, working after hours is part of the job. But now we receive NO (and I repeat: NO) real time at work to get planning and grading done. If a task is essential to our job, we should receive some time to complete it.

[Anonymous]

Don’t compare 20 years ago to now.

Not unusual to have 1/4 to 1/2 of students as IEP, 504 or EML or a combination. Paperwork and meetings are much more frequent. MD state requires SLO’s. Endless online trainings for testing, vague equity initiatives, reporting of abuse. None of it is paid for. We are just expected to fit it in on top of grading, communication to parents who often insist on back and forth communication looking for things to blame us for.
Just to give you a sense of what we are often dealing with, at my high school we just had a student sneak in and spend the night inside the building due to family and mental health issues…

IEP meetings and 504 meetings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are burned out. I can’t repeat this enough.

High school teachers are in front of 140-150 teenagers each day, dealing with unimaginable behaviors. When their planning period comes, they are now covering classes since we have a shortage of subs. I didn’t even get to eat lunch twice last week.

Planning lessons and grading work doesn’t happen at school anymore. There’s no time. It happens after we cook our family’s dinner. It happens after we put our own kids to bed. It happens all weekend, and sometimes we have to use our own leave to catch up.

It is unfortunate that students have to wait for feedback, or not get any at all. But it is equally unfortunate that we demand that our teachers sacrifice their own families to get work done.

There's no excuse for not letting teachers have a lunch period or taking over their planning periods regularly. No excuse. I don't know how MCPS allows this.

But I'm not sure why you are complaning about after hours work. My parents were teachers and they always were grading at home and on weekends. This is not new. This is how salaried jobs work. Everyone I know who has a salaried job does some amount of work after hours and on weekends no matter what that job is. If you don't want to take work home with you you you should choose a different profession.

🙄 go touch grass. And teachers are leaving. In droves. It’s not your parents’ profession anymore. Get with it.

Are you 10? What kind of teacher writes like this?

Who said I was a teacher? Do you show your bias this much in public too?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are burned out. I can’t repeat this enough.

High school teachers are in front of 140-150 teenagers each day, dealing with unimaginable behaviors. When their planning period comes, they are now covering classes since we have a shortage of subs. I didn’t even get to eat lunch twice last week.

Planning lessons and grading work doesn’t happen at school anymore. There’s no time. It happens after we cook our family’s dinner. It happens after we put our own kids to bed. It happens all weekend, and sometimes we have to use our own leave to catch up.

It is unfortunate that students have to wait for feedback, or not get any at all. But it is equally unfortunate that we demand that our teachers sacrifice their own families to get work done.

There's no excuse for not letting teachers have a lunch period or taking over their planning periods regularly. No excuse. I don't know how MCPS allows this.

But I'm not sure why you are complaning about after hours work. My parents were teachers and they always were grading at home and on weekends. This is not new. This is how salaried jobs work. Everyone I know who has a salaried job does some amount of work after hours and on weekends no matter what that job is. If you don't want to take work home with you you you should choose a different profession.

Teachers are taking your advice. We are leaving in droves. MCPS used to be a place teachers flocked to. Now it has a dreadful reputation, and teachers look elsewhere.

Your parents had it easy compared to today’s teachers. I’ve been at this over 20 years. Teaching 2 decades ago was a BREEZE compared to now. And “taking home work” used to mean 1-2 hours of work a night. Now it means 3 or more, as well as full weekends dedicated to work. I pulled a 70 hour week last week.

Yes, working after hours is part of the job. But now we receive NO (and I repeat: NO) real time at work to get planning and grading done. If a task is essential to our job, we should receive some time to complete it.

Parent here. I think the vast majority of teachers are wonderful human beings dedicated to student success and work very hard to give great instruction and support students. I understand the current loads and burn out. Meanwhile, the students these days are also under a lot of stress. The amount of daily work and weekend study for high achieving kids in high school is significant. Extra-curricular involvement is time consuming. The expectation that they have perfect grades to get into college causes a ton of stress. Stress on teens = stressed out parents. Thus the grade freak-out.

[Anonymous]

Students in private schools have this amount of homework on a daily basis. My DS graduated last year and there wasn’t any day including weekends that he didn’t have less than 2 and a half hours of homework. Homework wasn’t done during class. They were only 50 minutes long.

Your kids will have plenty of choice for college if you choose wisely. Stop saying there is limited choice. There are thousands of schools to choose from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are burned out. I can’t repeat this enough.

High school teachers are in front of 140-150 teenagers each day, dealing with unimaginable behaviors. When their planning period comes, they are now covering classes since we have a shortage of subs. I didn’t even get to eat lunch twice last week.

Planning lessons and grading work doesn’t happen at school anymore. There’s no time. It happens after we cook our family’s dinner. It happens after we put our own kids to bed. It happens all weekend, and sometimes we have to use our own leave to catch up.

It is unfortunate that students have to wait for feedback, or not get any at all. But it is equally unfortunate that we demand that our teachers sacrifice their own families to get work done.

There's no excuse for not letting teachers have a lunch period or taking over their planning periods regularly. No excuse. I don't know how MCPS allows this.

But I'm not sure why you are complaning about after hours work. My parents were teachers and they always were grading at home and on weekends. This is not new. This is how salaried jobs work. Everyone I know who has a salaried job does some amount of work after hours and on weekends no matter what that job is. If you don't want to take work home with you you you should choose a different profession.

Teachers are taking your advice. We are leaving in droves. MCPS used to be a place teachers flocked to. Now it has a dreadful reputation, and teachers look elsewhere.

Your parents had it easy compared to today’s teachers. I’ve been at this over 20 years. Teaching 2 decades ago was a BREEZE compared to now. And “taking home work” used to mean 1-2 hours of work a night. Now it means 3 or more, as well as full weekends dedicated to work. I pulled a 70 hour week last week.

Yes, working after hours is part of the job. But now we receive NO (and I repeat: NO) real time at work to get planning and grading done. If a task is essential to our job, we should receive some time to complete it.

My high school magnet kid has at least three hours of homework a night. I guess teachers should have less and just put all the pressure on the young teens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are burned out. I can’t repeat this enough.

High school teachers are in front of 140-150 teenagers each day, dealing with unimaginable behaviors. When their planning period comes, they are now covering classes since we have a shortage of subs. I didn’t even get to eat lunch twice last week.

Planning lessons and grading work doesn’t happen at school anymore. There’s no time. It happens after we cook our family’s dinner. It happens after we put our own kids to bed. It happens all weekend, and sometimes we have to use our own leave to catch up.

It is unfortunate that students have to wait for feedback, or not get any at all. But it is equally unfortunate that we demand that our teachers sacrifice their own families to get work done.

Eat while you cover. Hell, eat in front of your own students.

Nothing matters anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are burned out. I can’t repeat this enough.

High school teachers are in front of 140-150 teenagers each day, dealing with unimaginable behaviors. When their planning period comes, they are now covering classes since we have a shortage of subs. I didn’t even get to eat lunch twice last week.

Planning lessons and grading work doesn’t happen at school anymore. There’s no time. It happens after we cook our family’s dinner. It happens after we put our own kids to bed. It happens all weekend, and sometimes we have to use our own leave to catch up.

It is unfortunate that students have to wait for feedback, or not get any at all. But it is equally unfortunate that we demand that our teachers sacrifice their own families to get work done.

There's no excuse for not letting teachers have a lunch period or taking over their planning periods regularly. No excuse. I don't know how MCPS allows this.

But I'm not sure why you are complaning about after hours work. My parents were teachers and they always were grading at home and on weekends. This is not new. This is how salaried jobs work. Everyone I know who has a salaried job does some amount of work after hours and on weekends no matter what that job is. If you don't want to take work home with you you you should choose a different profession.

Teachers are taking your advice. We are leaving in droves. MCPS used to be a place teachers flocked to. Now it has a dreadful reputation, and teachers look elsewhere.

Your parents had it easy compared to today’s teachers. I’ve been at this over 20 years. Teaching 2 decades ago was a BREEZE compared to now. And “taking home work” used to mean 1-2 hours of work a night. Now it means 3 or more, as well as full weekends dedicated to work. I pulled a 70 hour week last week.

Yes, working after hours is part of the job. But now we receive NO (and I repeat: NO) real time at work to get planning and grading done. If a task is essential to our job, we should receive some time to complete it. [/quote]

Yes this is a nice ideal but not reality for many professions. In fact many professions don’t allocate time for anything. It is up to the person to figure out how to schedule things in. Be in training, self reviews, doing team members, creating presentations, attending meetings, etc. If I could get people to stop double or triple booking me for meetings what a day that would be.

And while I truly truly believe that some things have to change in education the things that boggles the mind is that you all have a union and get tenure. Most corporate employees don’t get either. They have no one to speak up for them and can be fired at will. So I don’t understand why MCEA is not get enormous pressure from teachers to fight for resolution to real problems. Like it’s an expensive union and everyone should be crystal clear on what their agenda is at this point beyond more money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also this

All Tasks/Assessments: All assignments in the All
Tasks/Assessments category should add up to no fewer than nine
assignments, with feedback, each marking period.

Wow, this is definitely not what our experience has been. Particularly egregious is my 10th graders HS French class where they have had 4 all tasks total and only 2 have actually been graded (those were due the 2nd week of school). All of them are also NRT. My kid has no idea if/when the other 2 assignments will be graded (one was submitted over a month ago) or what their grade will be at the end of this marking period.

Also feels really weird to have a MP grade that is almost all based on the first 2 weeks of school!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers are burned out. I can’t repeat this enough.

High school teachers are in front of 140-150 teenagers each day, dealing with unimaginable behaviors. When their planning period comes, they are now covering classes since we have a shortage of subs. I didn’t even get to eat lunch twice last week.

Planning lessons and grading work doesn’t happen at school anymore. There’s no time. It happens after we cook our family’s dinner. It happens after we put our own kids to bed. It happens all weekend, and sometimes we have to use our own leave to catch up.

It is unfortunate that students have to wait for feedback, or not get any at all. But it is equally unfortunate that we demand that our teachers sacrifice their own families to get work done.

There's no excuse for not letting teachers have a lunch period or taking over their planning periods regularly. No excuse. I don't know how MCPS allows this.

But I'm not sure why you are complaning about after hours work. My parents were teachers and they always were grading at home and on weekends. This is not new. This is how salaried jobs work. Everyone I know who has a salaried job does some amount of work after hours and on weekends no matter what that job is. If you don't want to take work home with you you you should choose a different profession.

Teachers are taking your advice. We are leaving in droves. MCPS used to be a place teachers flocked to. Now it has a dreadful reputation, and teachers look elsewhere.

Your parents had it easy compared to today’s teachers. I’ve been at this over 20 years. Teaching 2 decades ago was a BREEZE compared to now. And “taking home work” used to mean 1-2 hours of work a night. Now it means 3 or more, as well as full weekends dedicated to work. I pulled a 70 hour week last week.

Yes, working after hours is part of the job. But now we receive NO (and I repeat: NO) real time at work to get planning and grading done. If a task is essential to our job, we should receive some time to complete it.

My high school magnet kid has at least three hours of homework a night. I guess teachers should have less and just put all the pressure on the young teens.

I’m the PP you’re responding to. I’m curious… how is that your takeaway? All I did was mention that some teachers are working 3+ hours at night, and you suggest we should do less and just pressure our students more. Why would we do that? What did I write that led you to this absurd conclusion?

I know my students are overburdened, as well. I take that into account as I plan. I work HARD, putting more on myself, to make sure my assignments are beneficial. I don’t give busy work. So why would you make a snarky comment suggesting I don’t care about students’ workload or well-being?

Perhaps this was a flippant comment from you. But here’s how it landed: I just put in 14-15 hours of work this weekend. I’m worn out, and Monday is just around the corner. I feel unappreciated and disrespected already, and you just piled more on. And we wonder why strong teachers like me are out the door.