High schoolers can’t write

[Anonymous]

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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.

Most of the people posting are trolls.

It’s common to assign an essay early on, to get a feel for how the students’ writing is at the beginning of the year. With IA, it makes sense to have students write something in class at the beginning. The topic doesn’t have to be in response to reading they did.

I wish people on this website would act less like amateur sleuths and more like intelligent people who can engage with the substance of the topic.

[Anonymous]

Publics are a great service for poor, overwhelmed or confused families. Families of means are private or homeschool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

You started school on a Friday?

Dp. My kids started school on Friday 8/23. We’re in VA though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

Most of the people posting are trolls.

It’s common to assign an essay early on, to get a feel for how the students’ writing is at the beginning of the year. With IA, it makes sense to have students write something in class at the beginning. The topic doesn’t have to be in response to reading they did.

I wish people on this website would act less like amateur sleuths and more like intelligent people who can engage with the substance of the topic.

Teacher PP here. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Most of the people posting are trolls.

It’s common to assign an essay early on, to get a feel for how the students’ writing is at the beginning of the year. With IA, it makes sense to have students write something in class at the beginning. The topic doesn’t have to be in response to reading they did.

I wish people on this website would act less like amateur sleuths and more like intelligent people who can engage with the substance of the topic.

Teacher PP here. Thank you!

Or maybe a private school teacher could get back to work and stop posting on the MCPS forum?

[Anonymous]

so where does one bring their middle schooler/high schooler for writing help? any after school programs?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Are students even assigned to read entire books in ES and MS? My neighbor told me her kids have never been expected to read an entire book, only excerpts. WTH? Why?

I don’t think your neighbor knows what she’s talking about. In elementary school they may read excerpts, but kids definitely read whole books in middle school language classes.

While individual teachers might assign whole books, assigning excerpts from books is a common problem across MCPS in MS and HS.

They are now required to teach at least one novel study per quarter in secondary English classes in MCPS.

Our school does 2/quarter -- one whole-class novel and one in book circles that varies by reading level.

Oh boy! One novel study! How ever will the kids handle all of that.

By secondary do you mean MS or HS?

Both.

The fact that they’re only required to teach one book per quarter is utterly pathetic.

I don’t see the problem with one anchor text a quarter. So you teach The Odyssey as an anchor text. You throw in related texts, such as Atwood poetry or nonfiction about the ancient city of Troy. Students do related research to find criticism, and then write their own.

Easily enough content for a quarter.

that’s not how it was described. it was described as one book per quarter.

PP who said one book per quarter minimum. That is the minimum full-length books. It was said in response to someone who said kids read 2 books/year, which should not be happening.

The one book/quarter minimum is indeed the anchor text with other texts added on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:so where does one bring their middle schooler/high schooler for writing help? any after school programs?

Private school or homeschool. Publics think writing, grammar and organization are racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are students even assigned to read entire books in ES and MS? My neighbor told me her kids have never been expected to read an entire book, only excerpts. WTH? Why?

I don’t think your neighbor knows what she’s talking about. In elementary school they may read excerpts, but kids definitely read whole books in middle school language classes.

While individual teachers might assign whole books, assigning excerpts from books is a common problem across MCPS in MS and HS.

They are now required to teach at least one novel study per quarter in secondary English classes in MCPS.

Our school does 2/quarter -- one whole-class novel and one in book circles that varies by reading level.

Oh boy! One novel study! How ever will the kids handle all of that.

By secondary do you mean MS or HS?

Both.

The fact that they’re only required to teach one book per quarter is utterly pathetic.

I don’t see the problem with one anchor text a quarter. So you teach The Odyssey as an anchor text. You throw in related texts, such as Atwood poetry or nonfiction about the ancient city of Troy. Students do related research to find criticism, and then write their own.

Easily enough content for a quarter.

that’s not how it was described. it was described as one book per quarter.

PP who said one book per quarter minimum. That is the minimum full-length books. It was said in response to someone who said kids read 2 books/year, which should not be happening.

The one book/quarter minimum is indeed the anchor text with other texts added on.

We've never had four books a quarter. Last year, freshman year, it was two books, excerpts and a movie for one quarter, which was absurd.

In MS, it was 1-2 books a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:so where does one bring their middle schooler/high schooler for writing help? any after school programs?

Can you work with them? We worked on and reviewed all assignments in MS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Most of the people posting are trolls.

You are a troll and not in MCPS if you don't realize the curriculum is a problem.

[Anonymous]

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.

People aren’t asking for detailed feedback. They are asking for ANY feedback.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:so where does one bring their middle schooler/high schooler for writing help? any after school programs?

OP here. I'd like to know too.

[Anonymous]

Haven’t read the whole thread and I agree that writing skills in general are getting worse and worse. However, I regularly edit writing produced by highly educated people at work, and let me tell you, lots of older people can’t write, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:so where does one bring their middle schooler/high schooler for writing help? any after school programs?

Can you work with them? We worked on and reviewed all assignments in MS.

Some parents value a qualified teacher working with their kid. I would never be so arrogant as to think I can replace that.