A plea to HS teachers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s two teachers. Not one. I only elaborated about one. My kid has contacted the counselor to no avail. I’m trying to decide if we as parents should get involved and go to the principal.

The two you mean likely aren’t reading your posts. If if they did, not sure why that would motivate them when your direct appeals didn’t.

The rest of us don’t need a DCUM thread to get things graded. When it takes me longer than two weeks, it’s likely a complex assessment or something else extenuating is going on. In both cases, neither you writing anonymously here or an email to me directly is going to get the assessment graded faster.

[Anonymous]

The USA has some of the worst teachers among wealthy nations, because of the way it portrays education, and the very low standards of every educational college. Don't be surprised, OP. The people who go in for teaching are unfortunately often bottom of the barrel graduates. Makes it really hard for the few excellent teachers to change perceptions about education!

[Anonymous]

Not just in DC...is it old school to think that prior graded tests be returned to study for quarterlies, midterms, finals? That's how I studied. Wish my kid knew his weaker concepts in Alg 2!

[Anonymous]

But... class size doesn't matter!! Or, so we've been told. If you teach 160 students and have 160 essays to grade, along with planning, emails, meeting with students, paperwork..., it'll take some time to grade. Everyone has to prioritize something in order to make it work. Teachers are human. Yes, some are lazy (as is true in all professions), but many are working long hours and trying hard to help kids in a system set up for them to fail.

[Anonymous]

I tell my students that work turned in on time will be graded on time, passed back the next block (I teach math, so no essays, thankfully). Late work will be graded when I have a free afternoon...at some point before the end of the quarter. I still get parent complaints.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I tell my students that work turned in on time will be graded on time, passed back the next block (I teach math, so no essays, thankfully). Late work will be graded when I have a free afternoon...at some point before the end of the quarter. I still get parent complaints.

Your approach is completely fair. I'm sorry you get complaints. I'm complaining about drastically different behavior and haven't approached the teacher personally yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s two teachers. Not one. I only elaborated about one. My kid has contacted the counselor to no avail. I’m trying to decide if we as parents should get involved and go to the principal.

The two you mean likely aren’t reading your posts. If if they did, not sure why that would motivate them when your direct appeals didn’t.

The rest of us don’t need a DCUM thread to get things graded. When it takes me longer than two weeks, it’s likely a complex assessment or something else extenuating is going on. In both cases, neither you writing anonymously here or an email to me directly is going to get the assessment graded faster.

+1 I'm not a teacher. Posts like this are absolutely pointless. You have an issue, you contact the school. I tell my kids that if teachers aren't responsive, the kid needs to include me and their advisors on the emails. The vast majority of teachers are great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure many HS teachers are reading here. You might be better off contacting your school principal.

There are plenty of us on here. And 99% of us do our grading, promptly and accurately.

This isn't a plea to "HS teachers" it's to ONE problem teacher. This should be addressed with the administrator, not with this website of random people, who also could be teachers, but the vast majority of us DO our grading and feedback and such promptly.

Note that in a year where she had at minimum 8 teachers, there is ONE teacher you are pointing out. That is 12% OF HER YEAR. or 88% that did their jobs well.

Lengthy delays in grading are the norm in every MS and HS my kids have been in in MCPS. It's not just one teacher, it's usually 2-3 each semester. It's a major source of teen stress.

I hope you are not a teacher. You seem very angry. Angry teachers are also a major source of teen stress.

[Anonymous]

25-30% is what my 2 kids experienced. NP here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The USA has some of the worst teachers among wealthy nations, because of the way it portrays education, and the very low standards of every educational college. Don't be surprised, OP. The people who go in for teaching are unfortunately often bottom of the barrel graduates. Makes it really hard for the few excellent teachers to change perceptions about education!

Please go f** yourself.

PP's statement about "worst teachers" doesn't seem to be borne out by data. What is true is that the US has some of the lowest standards for teacher training, and they are being actively reduced in many states due to a lack of teachers. However this actually seems to be driving highly academically qualified people who are already teachers (and there are a lot of them) to leave the profession and it makes highly qualified potential applicants much less likely to apply to teacher training programs. MAny teacher organizations are actually pushing teacher training programs to raise their standards.

Our experience as parents in DCPS has been that teacher quality has been extremely uneven. Higher standards might help to remedy that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The USA has some of the worst teachers among wealthy nations, because of the way it portrays education, and the very low standards of every educational college. Don't be surprised, OP. The people who go in for teaching are unfortunately often bottom of the barrel graduates. Makes it really hard for the few excellent teachers to change perceptions about education!

Please go f** yourself.

We have raely encountered teachers with degrees in the subject area they are teaching; instead, they all seembto be education majors. As a result we have encountered several teachers, particularly in math and science, who have taught major concepts incorrectly. Most teachers do not have degrees from high quality institutions. i am not sure that is reflective of being “bottom if the barrel”, given how expensive top 20 schools are. I would not want to take on debt for 4 years at an Ivy at 60-70k a year if my return was a teacher’s salary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s two teachers. Not one. I only elaborated about one. My kid has contacted the counselor to no avail. I’m trying to decide if we as parents should get involved and go to the principal.

It might be more effective than posting here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure many HS teachers are reading here. You might be better off contacting your school principal.

There are plenty of us on here. And 99% of us do our grading, promptly and accurately.

This isn't a plea to "HS teachers" it's to ONE problem teacher. This should be addressed with the administrator, not with this website of random people, who also could be teachers, but the vast majority of us DO our grading and feedback and such promptly.

Note that in a year where she had at minimum 8 teachers, there is ONE teacher you are pointing out. That is 12% OF HER YEAR. or 88% that did their jobs well.

If 99 percent of you are grading on time, my son "won" the lottery. Most weren't quite as bad as the teacher described, but in 4 years, my son had 4 English teachers fail to grade promptly.

When writing isn't graded in a timely way, there is little opportunity for learning the craft.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I tell my students that work turned in on time will be graded on time, passed back the next block (I teach math, so no essays, thankfully). Late work will be graded when I have a free afternoon...at some point before the end of the quarter. I still get parent complaints.

That seems fair. And yeah, we complain a lot (but I wouldnt have complained about you.)

It is the essay grading that disappoints me. The only way a person learns to write is by rewriting. And rewriting. With quality feedback on drafts. What my son learned from the casual late grading (and essentially completion grades) is that any old crap will be good enough.

[Anonymous]

A couple things. First, I’m a counselor. We have no teeth. We can advocate for our student and beg the teacher to return week, but we often get nowhere. I then contact the department chair or the AP who supervises the teacher’s department, but I can tell you I don’t get nearly as good results as parents do when THEY complain. And even then, the chronic non-graders barely seem to suffer any repercussions. That said, I can’t stand the teacher bashing. In my experience, the vast majority are smart, hard-working and can do a job that most of us couldn’t—all for a moderate salary in an expensive region where we don’t seem to respect teachers and don’t give them much in the way of meaningful continuing education. Instead, we keep giving them new requirements for how they should log phone calls or change up grade reporting systems overnight or make them learn new curricula every 5 minutes. So yes, in short, contact your principal. Then take five minutes to send that same principal a nice note about the other teachers who DID do their job. Copy the teacher on that one. And please don’t contact anyone until you’ve gotten the teacher to respond. Drives me crazy on behalf of teachers when parents go straight to an administrator.