Grading at the last minute

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Totally sympathize with teachers' not having enough time.

Totally sympathize with students' not having timely assignment feedback (or even advance notice to allow their own planning) such that they might have agency in their own performance/improvement.

Totally understand that some teachers are better about this than others, but that that is only one facet of teacher performance -- everyone has relative strengths and weaknesses. But the variation is pretty high in this regard, and the impact can be substantial.

The question is, what can administrators, both school and central, do to define an appropriate expectation for this important responsiveness, encourage or demand fidelity to that from teachers, and identify & implement supports for teachers to meet this goal.

Of course, the costs & benefits of all that would have to be weighed against those of alternate goals. MCPS should be forthright with an explanation of an associated decision, especially if it is deemed less worthy of pursuit in light of other initiatives.

This response possesses nuanced understanding, asks common sense questions and a balanced analysis. Can we hire you to work for MCPS?

[Anonymous]

I teach over 100 students as a part time teacher, but McPS is only bound to provide me with 36 minutes/day of planning time. I’m sorry I needed to wait until I had 5 1/2 hours of uninterrupted grading/planning time to finish grading for the quarter. Teacher work conditions = student learning conditions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach over 100 students as a part time teacher, but McPS is only bound to provide me with 36 minutes/day of planning time. I’m sorry I needed to wait until I had 5 1/2 hours of uninterrupted grading/planning time to finish grading for the quarter. Teacher work conditions = student learning conditions

If kids don't know how they are doing throughout its hard to know what's going on. You are making excuses and it's not ok to grade at the last minute. It hurts kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach over 100 students as a part time teacher, but McPS is only bound to provide me with 36 minutes/day of planning time. I’m sorry I needed to wait until I had 5 1/2 hours of uninterrupted grading/planning time to finish grading for the quarter. Teacher work conditions = student learning conditions

If kids don't know how they are doing throughout its hard to know what's going on. You are making excuses and it's not ok to grade at the last minute. It hurts kids.

But it is not the teachers fault that this is hurting students. It is the system that only gives us a small amount of time daily to plan and grade. And that time is often taken away for all of the other tasks. The system is set up that gives us a grading day at the end of the quarter. If you don't like, don't blame the teachers. Blame the system. Advocate for teachers to have time grade and give timely feedback.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All semester long one of my son’s classes was showing 0 missing assignments and to his knowledge he didn’t have any missing. Today(!) all of a sudden he is showing 1 missing. He is annoyed and so am I. He still has an A but this last minute grading and catching up can mess up some kids.

It'd almost as like your son should have know what his assignments were prior to the end of the semester.

Yeah, stop blaming everyone else when you really need to be looking in a mirror.

Are you this nasty in real life or do you just like to be mean to strangers online?

The message came across as nasty, but I agree with the previous poster. We cannot blame everything on teachers. We need to teach our kids how to be proactive if they're really grade conscious. My son has developed the habit of checking his Canvas every week to see which ones are marked as not submitted. I also check Parent Vue every week to see which work has not been graded, and I counter check it with my son's Canvas to make sure that he indeed submitted the work. Never had the problem of last-minute notification of missing assignment.

This assumes that a lot of teachers communicate in advance and run clear, organized and updated Canvas pages. I assure you thi sis not the case.

Stop defaulting to always assuming the teachers are blameless. A lot of teachers struggle or fail to offer insights and tools to allow students and parents to plan and manage without them.

I agree. Canvas for certain teachers rarely seems to be updated. Our process for checking on assignments involves looking at Canvas AND asking the teacher if they have all assignments. Often the teacher shares that they have received assignments that aren’t yet reflected on Canvas or they can’t “see” an assignment that was electronically submitted multiple times. And this is towards the end of marking periods when you’d hope Canvas is relatively up to date.

I honestly wish they would go back to using paper and pencils because the multiple platforms the kids have to use to receive and submit assignments is horrifically complicated.

+1
I complained about all of these multiple systems for tracking and follow ups needed three years ago when my kid was in middle school. Nothing changed.
The person who cross checks with Canvas- I guess you’ve been incredibly fortunate that all assignments are actually IN Canvas for cross checking. In at least one or two classes per semester this has not been the case for my high schooler. And he thought he submitted it and had to verify through email, only to hear that it will be graded eventually. Then BOOM the grade comes out after quarter and if it’s lower than expected- that’s always fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But it is not the teachers fault that this is hurting students. It is the system that only gives us a small amount of time daily to plan and grade. And that time is often taken away for all of the other tasks. The system is set up that gives us a grading day at the end of the quarter. If you don't like, don't blame the teachers. Blame the system. Advocate for teachers to have time grade and give timely feedback.

+1 We can acknowledge that this pattern of last-minute grading is not good for students, and also acknowledge that, in general, teachers are grading this way because the system is totally flawed and leaves them very little time to complete an immense amount of work. (Of course, there will always be individuals who are less organized, and that's definitely a contributing problem in some cases.) If we want this to change, we need to advocate for more planning time for teachers and more staffing for schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach over 100 students as a part time teacher, but McPS is only bound to provide me with 36 minutes/day of planning time. I’m sorry I needed to wait until I had 5 1/2 hours of uninterrupted grading/planning time to finish grading for the quarter. Teacher work conditions = student learning conditions

If kids don't know how they are doing throughout its hard to know what's going on. You are making excuses and it's not ok to grade at the last minute. It hurts kids.

DP here.
It’s also not okay for a teacher to get 36 minutes a day to plan lessons, grade papers, respond to emails, update data, eat lunch, attend meetings, etc.

When you aren’t given time at work to complete important functions of your job, then your workplace is telling you those tasks aren’t important.

If we care about up-to-date grade books, then time for that task should actually be built into the school day.

Until it is, grades are competing with a teacher’s other responsibilities, including their own children and household obligations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach over 100 students as a part time teacher, but McPS is only bound to provide me with 36 minutes/day of planning time. I’m sorry I needed to wait until I had 5 1/2 hours of uninterrupted grading/planning time to finish grading for the quarter. Teacher work conditions = student learning conditions

If kids don't know how they are doing throughout its hard to know what's going on. You are making excuses and it's not ok to grade at the last minute. It hurts kids.

Would you rather I answer your email or grade during my planning time? This isn’t counting the days I lose planning for field trips, team meetings, or PD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I teach over 100 students as a part time teacher, but McPS is only bound to provide me with 36 minutes/day of planning time. I’m sorry I needed to wait until I had 5 1/2 hours of uninterrupted grading/planning time to finish grading for the quarter. Teacher work conditions = student learning conditions

If kids don't know how they are doing throughout its hard to know what's going on. You are making excuses and it's not ok to grade at the last minute. It hurts kids.

DP here.
It’s also not okay for a teacher to get 36 minutes a day to plan lessons, grade papers, respond to emails, update data, eat lunch, attend meetings, etc.

When you aren’t given time at work to complete important functions of your job, then your workplace is telling you those tasks aren’t important.

If we care about up-to-date grade books, then time for that task should actually be built into the school day.

Until it is, grades are competing with a teacher’s other responsibilities, including their own children and household obligations.

Exactly! This is why private school is so enticing. Way more planning time AND smaller class sizes.