Teachers not providing feedback IS a serious problem

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach HS science and saw about 90 students today. I asked how many wanted to be a teacher and not a single hand went up. I asked them why not and they just started laughing because they know what the job requires, but they continue to joke around and hold side conversations, play on phones, watch cartoons on laptops they are "using to see the notes better", etc. I had multiple students write passes to the bathroom today only to be gone for 20 minutes, out of a 90 min period. I don't have time to write emails to parents about behavior that, despite parents speaking with their students, does not change. I actually had a student today take a phone back off of my desk after I confiscated it while my back was turned. I'm one of the teachers kids say they really want to get for my subject. I still get incredible levels of disrespect every day.

This made me so sad to read. I am so sorry for you. Thank you for continuing to teach despite what you have to endure because you ARE making a difference in many of these kids lives, I assure you. Hugs.

[Anonymous]

7 million working age men aren't working at all in America. There is a dearth of workers in many fields because of the discrepancy in pay from one job to another. Everyone just wants to be a youtube star. https://nypost.com/2022/11/02/disturbing-rise-of-the-nilfs-men-not-in-the-labor-force/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I normally skip over all the FCPS/teacher bashing posts here, but the one post about teachers not providing feedback really got me thinking.

If the new norm is that teachers just put a score in the grade book and it’s on the student to come talk to the teachers to understand why they got that score, we have a serious problem. I can’t imagine not getting an essay back that I wrote without any feedback on how to improve my writing. Let alone a math test…

This is a core function to learning in my opinion and not something that can just be done away with or on a request only basis.

Teachers say this is because they are overworked and have too many students. The lack of teachers at the moment probably isn’t making this any easier. And with all the mud being thrown in their face on a daily basis, I can’t imagine anyone would want to go into teaching. So now we have a retention and recruiting problem…

At some point someone needs to throw up the red flag on a national level and turn this ship around. And by that I mean addressing the real issues and not these BS “CRT” and “GET THE PORN OUT OF SCHOOLS” distractions. The real issues i see are:

1. Retention- (fix this by better pay, benefits)
2. Recruiting- this is a nationwide issue. Perhaps full ride scholarships for teachers like the military does with ROTC. No one wants to go into student debt to get treated like a subhuman
3. Morale- give the teachers their dignity back. They are professionals and should be treated as such. No, Karen, just because you have children in school does not mean the teachers work for you or you should be able to dictate how they run their classroom. They are public servants - like police or judges. Treat them with respect.
4. State Testing- just get rid of it already. It takes away from the students learning and puts pressure on teachers to only teach towards the test (this is what happens when you tie teacher raises and school funding to test scores). Let’s be honest- rich people care about it because the high test scores affect their property value. We don’t need to be making decisions about public education to benefit some rich people and their property values

I’m sure there are a lot of other problems, but this really jumped out to me. Just my thoughts. And this isn’t just high school- my middle schooler also hasn’t received feedback on assignments all year

I agree with you on most points but as a former high school English teacher who left the profession because I was working 60-80 hours a week and still never done:

I absolutely support teachers not writing in margins of papers. Seriously. For the vast majority of students it is a complete waste of time. I’d spend hours and hours writing detailed feedback…let’s say, 10 mins per student x 120 students = 20 hours of work. 20 hours! And I got 5 hours is planning time per week to plan all of my lessons, not even counting grading. So it was never done, and I was always feeling inadequate and a failure and stressed.

Of those 120 students, fewer than 10 would actually read the comments, and maybe 5 per assignment might ask for the chance to re-write something. The rest just looked for a grade and threw out the paper…or at best maybe skimmed comments looking for praise and ignored everything else.

I might have at most 5-10% of students who acted upon suggestions even when I gave time to do revisions and rewriting in class.

So, of those 20 hours…only 1 hour actually had any impact on student achievement. I literally gave up that many hours every week that I could have spent with my friends, family, fitness, and my own goals and joys…all
Of which I neglected because I was constantly grading papers.

Now, if I were to go back (and if I could turn back time and get back those literally YEARS of my life I lost trying to earn gold stars for being a great English teacher) I would give just a grade and would conference with students in class who asked. Each student could get 5-10 mins and 3 actionable tips for improvement. All in the school day. They’d be able to revise. Win/win.

Virginia state law says secondary teachers are to have 20:1 students per teacher. English is just a lot more writing and time. But fcps gets away with not doing this somehow. All classes are not equal and English should have smaller classes than the other core classes

20:1 is in a classroom. Teachers teach multiple sections

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:7 million working age men aren't working at all in America. There is a dearth of workers in many fields because of the discrepancy in pay from one job to another. Everyone just wants to be a youtube star. https://nypost.com/2022/11/02/disturbing-rise-of-the-nilfs-men-not-in-the-labor-force/

The article focuses on men age 55-64. I doubt they want to be youtube stars. That's the age where blue collar workers who haven't risen out of hands on work can no longer keep up physically. It's also the age where a layoff is likely permanent for non-executives because no one wants to hire a 62 year old worker.

[Anonymous]

According to the latest monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "work rates" for American men in October 2019 stood very close to their 1939 levels, as reported in the 1940 U.S. Census. Despite some improvement since the end of the Great Recession, Great Depression-style work rates are still characteristic today for the American male, both for those of "prime working age" (defined as ages 25 to 54) and for the broader 20 to 64 group.

I think the range is from 25-54 that was measured. There are quite a few articles on this. Here is another one.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/education-and-men-without-work

I am not sure how this contributes to teachers working directly since it is a female dominated profession, but I think there is general malaise in working after COVID across many disciplines. People are more out of control and workers have to deal with more issues and more restrictions on what they do. Increase in video footage that could be taken out of context. There are more gun threats. More requirements to get kids up to speed academically. Teachers might have their own kids that need more help. There are now a lot of jobs available. All this affects the job market for teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to the latest monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "work rates" for American men in October 2019 stood very close to their 1939 levels, as reported in the 1940 U.S. Census. Despite some improvement since the end of the Great Recession, Great Depression-style work rates are still characteristic today for the American male, both for those of "prime working age" (defined as ages 25 to 54) and for the broader 20 to 64 group.

I think the range is from 25-54 that was measured. There are quite a few articles on this. Here is another one.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/education-and-men-without-work

I am not sure how this contributes to teachers working directly since it is a female dominated profession, but I think there is general malaise in working after COVID across many disciplines. People are more out of control and workers have to deal with more issues and more restrictions on what they do. Increase in video footage that could be taken out of context. There are more gun threats. More requirements to get kids up to speed academically. Teachers might have their own kids that need more help. There are now a lot of jobs available. All this affects the job market for teachers.

All very true!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach HS science and saw about 90 students today. I asked how many wanted to be a teacher and not a single hand went up. I asked them why not and they just started laughing because they know what the job requires, but they continue to joke around and hold side conversations, play on phones, watch cartoons on laptops they are "using to see the notes better", etc. I had multiple students write passes to the bathroom today only to be gone for 20 minutes, out of a 90 min period. I don't have time to write emails to parents about behavior that, despite parents speaking with their students, does not change. I actually had a student today take a phone back off of my desk after I confiscated it while my back was turned. I'm one of the teachers kids say they really want to get for my subject. I still get incredible levels of disrespect every day.

This made me so sad to read. I am so sorry for you. Thank you for continuing to teach despite what you have to endure because you ARE making a difference in many of these kids lives, I assure you. Hugs.

I am sorry too-this is not ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach HS science and saw about 90 students today. I asked how many wanted to be a teacher and not a single hand went up. I asked them why not and they just started laughing because they know what the job requires, but they continue to joke around and hold side conversations, play on phones, watch cartoons on laptops they are "using to see the notes better", etc. I had multiple students write passes to the bathroom today only to be gone for 20 minutes, out of a 90 min period. I don't have time to write emails to parents about behavior that, despite parents speaking with their students, does not change. I actually had a student today take a phone back off of my desk after I confiscated it while my back was turned. I'm one of the teachers kids say they really want to get for my subject. I still get incredible levels of disrespect every day.

This made me so sad to read. I am so sorry for you. Thank you for continuing to teach despite what you have to endure because you ARE making a difference in many of these kids lives, I assure you. Hugs.

I am sorry too-this is not ok.

I just want to back up everything they said. I teach English and I would say I am well liked and seen as a good teacher to have among the kids generally but they just do not respect anyone. Not eachother and not us. I had a student go in my work bag recently and take a whole pack of gum. Actually multiple colleagues had small stuff like this taken. When we confront the kid they just say “it’s not a big deal it’s like $3.” They’re kinda like little boomers honestly … everyone else’s feelings don’t matter, they’re going to do what they want. I came home and cried a few weeks ago to my husband about what has happened when I used to love this job so much. I don’t think most adults can even imagine what it’s really like in a high school these days , even for the good teachers who the kids generally enjoy and admire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach HS science and saw about 90 students today. I asked how many wanted to be a teacher and not a single hand went up. I asked them why not and they just started laughing because they know what the job requires, but they continue to joke around and hold side conversations, play on phones, watch cartoons on laptops they are "using to see the notes better", etc. I had multiple students write passes to the bathroom today only to be gone for 20 minutes, out of a 90 min period. I don't have time to write emails to parents about behavior that, despite parents speaking with their students, does not change. I actually had a student today take a phone back off of my desk after I confiscated it while my back was turned. I'm one of the teachers kids say they really want to get for my subject. I still get incredible levels of disrespect every day.

This made me so sad to read. I am so sorry for you. Thank you for continuing to teach despite what you have to endure because you ARE making a difference in many of these kids lives, I assure you. Hugs.

I am sorry too-this is not ok.

I just want to back up everything they said. I teach English and I would say I am well liked and seen as a good teacher to have among the kids generally but they just do not respect anyone. Not eachother and not us. I had a student go in my work bag recently and take a whole pack of gum. Actually multiple colleagues had small stuff like this taken. When we confront the kid they just say “it’s not a big deal it’s like $3.” They’re kinda like little boomers honestly … everyone else’s feelings don’t matter, they’re going to do what they want. I came home and cried a few weeks ago to my husband about what has happened when I used to love this job so much. I don’t think most adults can even imagine what it’s really like in a high school these days , even for the good teachers who the kids generally enjoy and admire.

Yup...it's sad. And the disrespect is at every level-elementary, middle, and high school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach HS science and saw about 90 students today. I asked how many wanted to be a teacher and not a single hand went up. I asked them why not and they just started laughing because they know what the job requires, but they continue to joke around and hold side conversations, play on phones, watch cartoons on laptops they are "using to see the notes better", etc. I had multiple students write passes to the bathroom today only to be gone for 20 minutes, out of a 90 min period. I don't have time to write emails to parents about behavior that, despite parents speaking with their students, does not change. I actually had a student today take a phone back off of my desk after I confiscated it while my back was turned. I'm one of the teachers kids say they really want to get for my subject. I still get incredible levels of disrespect every day.

You saw 90 students today, and I’m assuming will see another 40 tomorrow. It sounds like part of them problem is pure math- there are too many students per teacher for meaningful feedback to occur. If a high school teacher has 125 students on their case load, we are looking at over 2 hours to give each student 1 minute of feedback. Class sizes need to dramatically drop for things to be sustainable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach HS science and saw about 90 students today. I asked how many wanted to be a teacher and not a single hand went up. I asked them why not and they just started laughing because they know what the job requires, but they continue to joke around and hold side conversations, play on phones, watch cartoons on laptops they are "using to see the notes better", etc. I had multiple students write passes to the bathroom today only to be gone for 20 minutes, out of a 90 min period. I don't have time to write emails to parents about behavior that, despite parents speaking with their students, does not change. I actually had a student today take a phone back off of my desk after I confiscated it while my back was turned. I'm one of the teachers kids say they really want to get for my subject. I still get incredible levels of disrespect every day.

You saw 90 students today, and I’m assuming will see another 40 tomorrow. It sounds like part of them problem is pure math- there are too many students per teacher for meaningful feedback to occur. If a high school teacher has 125 students on their case load, we are looking at over 2 hours to give each student 1 minute of feedback. Class sizes need to dramatically drop for things to be sustainable.

I wish I only had 125. I, like most of my colleagues, have 149. One student under the number that would give us an extra stipend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach HS science and saw about 90 students today. I asked how many wanted to be a teacher and not a single hand went up. I asked them why not and they just started laughing because they know what the job requires, but they continue to joke around and hold side conversations, play on phones, watch cartoons on laptops they are "using to see the notes better", etc. I had multiple students write passes to the bathroom today only to be gone for 20 minutes, out of a 90 min period. I don't have time to write emails to parents about behavior that, despite parents speaking with their students, does not change. I actually had a student today take a phone back off of my desk after I confiscated it while my back was turned. I'm one of the teachers kids say they really want to get for my subject. I still get incredible levels of disrespect every day.

You saw 90 students today, and I’m assuming will see another 40 tomorrow. It sounds like part of them problem is pure math- there are too many students per teacher for meaningful feedback to occur. If a high school teacher has 125 students on their case load, we are looking at over 2 hours to give each student 1 minute of feedback. Class sizes need to dramatically drop for things to be sustainable.

Can we add SPED caseloads to this....not enough teachers= huge caseloads. Guess what happens in this scenario...caseload sizes need to drop as well. Both SPED and GEN ED do not feel like they have the tools/resources/time to do their job properly. But Gatehouse keeps ignoring staff concerns. IT IS NOT SUSTAINABLE!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I normally skip over all the FCPS/teacher bashing posts here, but the one post about teachers not providing feedback really got me thinking.

If the new norm is that teachers just put a score in the grade book and it’s on the student to come talk to the teachers to understand why they got that score, we have a serious problem. I can’t imagine not getting an essay back that I wrote without any feedback on how to improve my writing. Let alone a math test…

This is a core function to learning in my opinion and not something that can just be done away with or on a request only basis.

Teachers say this is because they are overworked and have too many students. The lack of teachers at the moment probably isn’t making this any easier. And with all the mud being thrown in their face on a daily basis, I can’t imagine anyone would want to go into teaching. So now we have a retention and recruiting problem…

At some point someone needs to throw up the red flag on a national level and turn this ship around. And by that I mean addressing the real issues and not these BS “CRT” and “GET THE PORN OUT OF SCHOOLS” distractions. The real issues i see are:

1. Retention- (fix this by better pay, benefits)
2. Recruiting- this is a nationwide issue. Perhaps full ride scholarships for teachers like the military does with ROTC. No one wants to go into student debt to get treated like a subhuman
3. Morale- give the teachers their dignity back. They are professionals and should be treated as such. No, Karen, just because you have children in school does not mean the teachers work for you or you should be able to dictate how they run their classroom. They are public servants - like police or judges. Treat them with respect.
4. State Testing- just get rid of it already. It takes away from the students learning and puts pressure on teachers to only teach towards the test (this is what happens when you tie teacher raises and school funding to test scores). Let’s be honest- rich people care about it because the high test scores affect their property value. We don’t need to be making decisions about public education to benefit some rich people and their property values

I’m sure there are a lot of other problems, but this really jumped out to me. Just my thoughts. And this isn’t just high school- my middle schooler also hasn’t received feedback on assignments all year

I agree with you on most points but as a former high school English teacher who left the profession because I was working 60-80 hours a week and still never done:

I absolutely support teachers not writing in margins of papers. Seriously. For the vast majority of students it is a complete waste of time. I’d spend hours and hours writing detailed feedback…let’s say, 10 mins per student x 120 students = 20 hours of work. 20 hours! And I got 5 hours is planning time per week to plan all of my lessons, not even counting grading. So it was never done, and I was always feeling inadequate and a failure and stressed.

Of those 120 students, fewer than 10 would actually read the comments, and maybe 5 per assignment might ask for the chance to re-write something. The rest just looked for a grade and threw out the paper…or at best maybe skimmed comments looking for praise and ignored everything else.

I might have at most 5-10% of students who acted upon suggestions even when I gave time to do revisions and rewriting in class.

So, of those 20 hours…only 1 hour actually had any impact on student achievement. I literally gave up that many hours every week that I could have spent with my friends, family, fitness, and my own goals and joys…all
Of which I neglected because I was constantly grading papers.

Now, if I were to go back (and if I could turn back time and get back those literally YEARS of my life I lost trying to earn gold stars for being a great English teacher) I would give just a grade and would conference with students in class who asked. Each student could get 5-10 mins and 3 actionable tips for improvement. All in the school day. They’d be able to revise. Win/win.

Teaching DOWN to those who don't care is not the answer. That's not fulfilling your job to the kids who do care.

Your complaints are valid and understandable, and the posts of other teachers on here are also appalling to read in terms of how the kids treat them, but you're lumping all the kids together. That's disrespectful also. And handing them some verbose, unhelpful "rubric" with a number on it is not teaching them. It's not. I was a writing instructor for awhile -and I did the margin comments and red ink write ups for my classes b/c it is the most useful feedback- and these things are useless.

So, your solution is not a solution. But I'd be interested in hearing from teachers what the solution is. Because at this point, why even give assignments. Most kids (in other than the fact-based subjects like math) are not getting meaningful feedback and learning the material to their abilities, and then college professors, employers, etc. complain that "kids can't write" or "kids aren't capable of analyzing" problems. Well. . . . that's b/c you don't learn that from a rubric.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I normally skip over all the FCPS/teacher bashing posts here, but the one post about teachers not providing feedback really got me thinking.

If the new norm is that teachers just put a score in the grade book and it’s on the student to come talk to the teachers to understand why they got that score, we have a serious problem. I can’t imagine not getting an essay back that I wrote without any feedback on how to improve my writing. Let alone a math test…

This is a core function to learning in my opinion and not something that can just be done away with or on a request only basis.

Teachers say this is because they are overworked and have too many students. The lack of teachers at the moment probably isn’t making this any easier. And with all the mud being thrown in their face on a daily basis, I can’t imagine anyone would want to go into teaching. So now we have a retention and recruiting problem…

At some point someone needs to throw up the red flag on a national level and turn this ship around. And by that I mean addressing the real issues and not these BS “CRT” and “GET THE PORN OUT OF SCHOOLS” distractions. The real issues i see are:

1. Retention- (fix this by better pay, benefits)
2. Recruiting- this is a nationwide issue. Perhaps full ride scholarships for teachers like the military does with ROTC. No one wants to go into student debt to get treated like a subhuman
3. Morale- give the teachers their dignity back. They are professionals and should be treated as such. No, Karen, just because you have children in school does not mean the teachers work for you or you should be able to dictate how they run their classroom. They are public servants - like police or judges. Treat them with respect.
4. State Testing- just get rid of it already. It takes away from the students learning and puts pressure on teachers to only teach towards the test (this is what happens when you tie teacher raises and school funding to test scores). Let’s be honest- rich people care about it because the high test scores affect their property value. We don’t need to be making decisions about public education to benefit some rich people and their property values

I’m sure there are a lot of other problems, but this really jumped out to me. Just my thoughts. And this isn’t just high school- my middle schooler also hasn’t received feedback on assignments all year

I agree with you on most points but as a former high school English teacher who left the profession because I was working 60-80 hours a week and still never done:

I absolutely support teachers not writing in margins of papers. Seriously. For the vast majority of students it is a complete waste of time. I’d spend hours and hours writing detailed feedback…let’s say, 10 mins per student x 120 students = 20 hours of work. 20 hours! And I got 5 hours is planning time per week to plan all of my lessons, not even counting grading. So it was never done, and I was always feeling inadequate and a failure and stressed.

Of those 120 students, fewer than 10 would actually read the comments, and maybe 5 per assignment might ask for the chance to re-write something. The rest just looked for a grade and threw out the paper…or at best maybe skimmed comments looking for praise and ignored everything else.

I might have at most 5-10% of students who acted upon suggestions even when I gave time to do revisions and rewriting in class.

So, of those 20 hours…only 1 hour actually had any impact on student achievement. I literally gave up that many hours every week that I could have spent with my friends, family, fitness, and my own goals and joys…all
Of which I neglected because I was constantly grading papers.

Now, if I were to go back (and if I could turn back time and get back those literally YEARS of my life I lost trying to earn gold stars for being a great English teacher) I would give just a grade and would conference with students in class who asked. Each student could get 5-10 mins and 3 actionable tips for improvement. All in the school day. They’d be able to revise. Win/win.

Teaching DOWN to those who don't care is not the answer. That's not fulfilling your job to the kids who do care.

Your complaints are valid and understandable, and the posts of other teachers on here are also appalling to read in terms of how the kids treat them, but you're lumping all the kids together. That's disrespectful also. And handing them some verbose, unhelpful "rubric" with a number on it is not teaching them. It's not. I was a writing instructor for awhile -and I did the margin comments and red ink write ups for my classes b/c it is the most useful feedback- and these things are useless.

So, your solution is not a solution. But I'd be interested in hearing from teachers what the solution is. Because at this point, why even give assignments. Most kids (in other than the fact-based subjects like math) are not getting meaningful feedback and learning the material to their abilities, and then college professors, employers, etc. complain that "kids can't write" or "kids aren't capable of analyzing" problems. Well. . . . that's b/c you don't learn that from a rubric.

Yes! All of this, but particularly the bolded comments. These rubrics will say something like "3= little analysis of source content; 4 = some analysis of the source content; 5= detailed analysis of source content". Okay, that's great but not very helpful. feedback would be providing the student with context (where in their paper did they demonstrate desired analysis, where was it lacking, how could it have been expanded, what information was highly relevant vs. not directly connected?)

[Anonymous]

I'm ok with the rubric grading only as long as it's detailed. Often the rubric will also have content on it at the end which summarizes what issues were seen. Need to provide more examples or details don't match main idea. I think it's easier to provide comments in the summary and with the high number of teachers, I'm perfectly fine with a detailed rubric and response regarding the grading.