A plea to HS teachers

[Anonymous]

*work not week

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Great perspective. Teacher bashing is useless. I agree that in most cases, it is not that the teachers who are failing Instead, the system is unworkable given all of the administrative demands, training that takes away from class time, etc. We are so focused on trying to get teachers to do better and to monitoring whether that is happening, we don't give them the time they need to actually teach the kids they have. And part of teaching is giving timely feedback to students. Teachers seem to spend more time training than they do teaching. Training for what? Next year, when there's going to be a new educational philosophy that renders today's training obsolete? What about the kids setting in class now with an unqualified sub and months of ungraded work? Administrators don't seem to care about that.

I am also a big believer in trying to solve a problem directly with the person involved before going over that person's head. That is a best practice in all areas of life. Why is everyone so obsessed with going straight to the top with every complaint? I'm not perfect in my professional life, and I would rather hear a complaint or concern directly before someone goes over my head. That's the cowardly approach.

[Anonymous]

This could be my DD's AP Lang teacher. It is unfortunate, because DD there was one meh essay that brought her grade from an A to a B for the quarter with no time to do anything to regain it. More upsetting to my DD is 1) he only grades about 1/3 of the essays, and 2) her final grade ended up at a 89.4 (B+).

Credit to DD, she advocated for herself. The meh easy was supposed to be a draft, but since he never returned it, he graded it like the final. DD wanted to revise it. The teacher did not want to grade more, but he did add a class participation grade. That got her year-end grade unto an A-.

[Anonymous]

I teach ES so less grading overall but teacher students are being asked to spend their planning periods on other things like meetings, meetings and more meetings. In the last two weeks, I have had one planning period to myself out of ten. I have had IEP meetings, retention meetings, EOY meetings with my admin, parent meetings. In a typical two week period, I have five out of ten planning periods to myself. Teachers have to prove how well they are teaching by collecting artifacts, etc. That takes up a lot of time. My friends who teach HS are forced to use their planning periods to reteach students so they can retake assessments/assignments. So since students decided not to study for assessments, teachers have to give up their minimal planning time to reteach and come up with new assessments. So the result of using up their teachers’ planning time is less time spent on grading, writing lesson plans, parent contact, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This could be my DD's AP Lang teacher. It is unfortunate, because DD there was one meh essay that brought her grade from an A to a B for the quarter with no time to do anything to regain it. More upsetting to my DD is 1) he only grades about 1/3 of the essays, and 2) her final grade ended up at a 89.4 (B+).

Credit to DD, she advocated for herself. The meh easy was supposed to be a draft, but since he never returned it, he graded it like the final. DD wanted to revise it. The teacher did not want to grade more, but he did add a class participation grade. That got her year-end grade unto an A-.

“My daughter took an AP level course and wants to do revisions on a crappy paper which aren’t allowed in higher level courses with 1.0 GPA bumps. I will call the teacher lazy because I am not astute enough to read syllabi and know this is the policy, especially per College Board and AP requirements. My daughter whined enough about her 89.4 that the teacher bumped her to a 90 to shut her up. I am very pleased with my obviously AP level child who was in no way inappropriately placed in this course level.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This could be my DD's AP Lang teacher. It is unfortunate, because DD there was one meh essay that brought her grade from an A to a B for the quarter with no time to do anything to regain it. More upsetting to my DD is 1) he only grades about 1/3 of the essays, and 2) her final grade ended up at a 89.4 (B+).

Credit to DD, she advocated for herself. The meh easy was supposed to be a draft, but since he never returned it, he graded it like the final. DD wanted to revise it. The teacher did not want to grade more, but he did add a class participation grade. That got her year-end grade unto an A-.

I'm glad he ended up giving her the "credit" for what would have happened had the draft actually been graded as a draft with a revision. It is still a story about an irresponsible prefssional since he punted on letting her do the actual learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This could be my DD's AP Lang teacher. It is unfortunate, because DD there was one meh essay that brought her grade from an A to a B for the quarter with no time to do anything to regain it. More upsetting to my DD is 1) he only grades about 1/3 of the essays, and 2) her final grade ended up at a 89.4 (B+).

Credit to DD, she advocated for herself. The meh easy was supposed to be a draft, but since he never returned it, he graded it like the final. DD wanted to revise it. The teacher did not want to grade more, but he did add a class participation grade. That got her year-end grade unto an A-.

“My daughter took an AP level course and wants to do revisions on a crappy paper which aren’t allowed in higher level courses with 1.0 GPA bumps. I will call the teacher lazy because I am not astute enough to read syllabi and know this is the policy, especially per College Board and AP requirements. My daughter whined enough about her 89.4 that the teacher bumped her to a 90 to shut her up. I am very pleased with my obviously AP level child who was in no way inappropriately placed in this course level.”

Wtf?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This could be my DD's AP Lang teacher. It is unfortunate, because DD there was one meh essay that brought her grade from an A to a B for the quarter with no time to do anything to regain it. More upsetting to my DD is 1) he only grades about 1/3 of the essays, and 2) her final grade ended up at a 89.4 (B+).

Credit to DD, she advocated for herself. The meh easy was supposed to be a draft, but since he never returned it, he graded it like the final. DD wanted to revise it. The teacher did not want to grade more, but he did add a class participation grade. That got her year-end grade unto an A-.

I'm glad he ended up giving her the "credit" for what would have happened had the draft actually been graded as a draft with a revision. It is still a story about an irresponsible prefssional since he punted on letting her do the actual learning.

In Lang it was almost certainly a timed write for which there are no revisions. Redos and revisions are often not allowed in courses that receive that high of a GPA bump either. The kid has no way of knowing that only 1/3 were graded. That is literally not credible or believable. If anything the teacher would grade none if they weren’t going to grade all but nobody grades 1/3 and only 1/3. Great way to have your gradebook audited especially in an AP course.

[Anonymous]

OP here. To the two posters who talked about how cowardly it is to go above someone’s head and about how the kid should self-advocate. My kid did talk to the teacher multiple times about the inaccurate grading. He said he would do something and then he didn’t. She reminded him multiple times. Kid asked counselor for guidance and got nothing. We as parents didn’t step in to allow her to self-advocate but nothing has happened.

The non-grading English teacher has not been approached.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This could be my DD's AP Lang teacher. It is unfortunate, because DD there was one meh essay that brought her grade from an A to a B for the quarter with no time to do anything to regain it. More upsetting to my DD is 1) he only grades about 1/3 of the essays, and 2) her final grade ended up at a 89.4 (B+).

Credit to DD, she advocated for herself. The meh easy was supposed to be a draft, but since he never returned it, he graded it like the final. DD wanted to revise it. The teacher did not want to grade more, but he did add a class participation grade. That got her year-end grade unto an A-.

“My daughter took an AP level course and wants to do revisions on a crappy paper which aren’t allowed in higher level courses with 1.0 GPA bumps. I will call the teacher lazy because I am not astute enough to read syllabi and know this is the policy, especially per College Board and AP requirements. My daughter whined enough about her 89.4 that the teacher bumped her to a 90 to shut her up. I am very pleased with my obviously AP level child who was in no way inappropriately placed in this course level.”

That is not even remotely what she said and you know it. If the teacher says it's a draft, then he shoudl treat it as a draft. If it's a final paper, fine.
If he gives an assignment, then he grades it. That's the point of an assignment.

As described by the first PP, the teacher was not performing his work. And, you know what? Some teachers don't and it's not "teacher bashing" to say so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. To the two posters who talked about how cowardly it is to go above someone’s head and about how the kid should self-advocate. My kid did talk to the teacher multiple times about the inaccurate grading. He said he would do something and then he didn’t. She reminded him multiple times. Kid asked counselor for guidance and got nothing. We as parents didn’t step in to allow her to self-advocate but nothing has happened.

The non-grading English teacher has not been approached.

One of the PPs here - I wasn't saying that you were a coward. Just speaking generally. Believe me, I feel your pain. I rarely complain about teachers, as try to pick my battles. One of the battles I picked involved a math teacher who didn't quizzes before the unit test. I got nowhere, even after meeting with administration. So frustrating!

[Anonymous]

I’m shocked at the low level of some of my kids teachers. Why does teaching seem to attract the crazies? Low entry bar? I worship the highly competent teachers I come across but they are far and few between

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m shocked at the low level of some of my kids teachers. Why does teaching seem to attract the crazies? Low entry bar? I worship the highly competent teachers I come across but they are far and few between

I lament the harsh ones who rushed off to leave so quickly after the school day, with impatience toward any student who might have a question. I recognize they've got lives and yadda yadda, but somehow, a bunch of people who were demanding my kid learn to self-advocate taught him a certain shyness that translated into being afraid to go to office hours in college.

Teachers really have to pick:

a) have some office hours to help those who were out or were confused
b) handle email promptly so that personal stuff can be attended to appropriately. "During class" isn't the answer because it is just to hectic.

My kid is no snowflake. Sometimes a kid really does have a special concern, circumstance, or need that cannot be handled during class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This could be my DD's AP Lang teacher. It is unfortunate, because DD there was one meh essay that brought her grade from an A to a B for the quarter with no time to do anything to regain it. More upsetting to my DD is 1) he only grades about 1/3 of the essays, and 2) her final grade ended up at a 89.4 (B+).

Credit to DD, she advocated for herself. The meh easy was supposed to be a draft, but since he never returned it, he graded it like the final. DD wanted to revise it. The teacher did not want to grade more, but he did add a class participation grade. That got her year-end grade unto an A-.

I'm glad he ended up giving her the "credit" for what would have happened had the draft actually been graded as a draft with a revision. It is still a story about an irresponsible prefssional since he punted on letting her do the actual learning.

In Lang it was almost certainly a timed write for which there are no revisions. Redos and revisions are often not allowed in courses that receive that high of a GPA bump either. The kid has no way of knowing that only 1/3 were graded. That is literally not credible or believable. If anything the teacher would grade none if they weren’t going to grade all but nobody grades 1/3 and only 1/3. Great way to have your gradebook audited especially in an AP course.

Nope. It was a draft. It was submitted as a draft, but graded as the final.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1

Leave the school counselors out of the grading issue- they are on equal level with teachers and have no ability to make anyone grade anything. If speaking with the teacher doesn't work, go to assistant principal or department head (in DCPS go to assistant principal, department heads are not really anyone's boss).