Changes to grading for all MCPS high school students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At least at my child’s high school, lunch for the teachers is not considered a planning time. There is close to an hour for students and of that 30 minutes is available for students to go into any teachers and get help or use their extended time accommodation. There were years when my daughter would spend almost every day with her math teacher, as she would really struggled with that. Another year, my son spent a lot of time with his English teacher because he needed extra help with his writing and really strives to do his best. I was actually always really impressed with how willing teachers were to spend time with them.

Is it not like this at all schools? One child graduated this year and my other child last year so this is all very recent information.

Not in MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least at my child’s high school, lunch for the teachers is not considered a planning time. There is close to an hour for students and of that 30 minutes is available for students to go into any teachers and get help or use their extended time accommodation. There were years when my daughter would spend almost every day with her math teacher, as she would really struggled with that. Another year, my son spent a lot of time with his English teacher because he needed extra help with his writing and really strives to do his best. I was actually always really impressed with how willing teachers were to spend time with them.

Is it not like this at all schools? One child graduated this year and my other child last year so this is all very recent information.

Not in MCPS.

That’s the case at WJ. It’s not great for either teachers or kids because the kids don’t get to eat lunch if they missed school due to illness -/ lunch is used to make up missed assignments.

[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:How about a rule where teachers and admin need to respond to parents within three days. We have teachers and admin who clearly read the messages and don’t respond. How about teachers needing to consistently post assignments online so parents know what’s going on. How about teachers grade within a week so kids know how they are doing? We have teachers who still have not graded or posted in a month. Not ok. Kids can only be successful if teachers also put in the effort.

Most teachers are putting in the effort. But that effort requires time. We’ve done this math multiple times but here it is again:
150 students x 5min an assignment =750mins / 60mins in an hour = 12.5 hours . Thats the total time to grade one assignment. If a teacher got one class period free per day let’s say 47mins x 5 days =235 mins /60 =3.9 hours. That’s how much time they had in their work week to potentially grade. There other 8.6 hours comes from their personal life.

Out of seven teachers, three are putting in effort. Getting a month behind on grading and not responding to parents is not ok.

Thank those three. They gave up their weekends and evenings for you.

The other four are giving you what they are paid for.

Some, yes, some no. It’s their job. Not ok to not grade. As of today still no grades posted for the past month.

I’m a DP, but I’m happy to repeat the math for you:

I have 150 students. A writing assignment can take 15 minutes to grade. That’s 37.5 hours of grading. I get approximately 3.5 hours a week of time to get my work done.

And that’s just one assignment. Just one. That doesn’t include emails I need to respond to, reports I have to update, plans I have to revise.

So literally half my job has to be done on my own time. Over 30 hours a week.

So… SHOULD this be my job?

How do you think your students will improve without written feedback? I get that it takes time, but isn’t this a huge part of learning and the job?

I am a middle school teacher. My students do not read the feedback. They look at their grade and come up to me and say 'why did I get a B/C?' I ask them about looking at the feedback and they say nope.

As parents, we are going in and reading it. And, if that many kids are struggling, maybe you need to take some more time to reinforce the concepts they are struggling with.

Yep, keep blaming the teacher. At what point does the student have any accountability.

“Please read my feedback and if you have additional questions, we can meet at x time.”

The teacher mentioned middle schoolers. She needs to train them in the way she wants to behave. You get tweens to be accountable by telling and holding them what the standards are.

I know that it is difficult to believe, so I will ask it again, what time during the day do I have to meet with 150 middle schoolers to go over their feedback? I don't have office hours. If I am not teaching a class, I am in a meeting or planning or grading. If I open up time to meet individually with students, what should I not do? Plan or grade? Oh, you want me to be like the PP who works 70 hours a week. I am not going to do that. And you can continue to assume that I am a bad teacher, but this is a job. Until MCPS can give me the appropriate time to do my job, things won't get done. The only reason the public school system is not failing is because teachers are giving up their lives to hold it together. And for what? For parents to still not value what we do. I will say it again. Please fight for teachers to have the time to implement this new grading policy with fidelity. Demand MCPS gives us time to do this.

I’ve asked multiple times about the role of the union. No one has responded. Teachers presumably know what they need to ensure learning and to ensure a manageable work environment. Why isn’t the union taking the lead?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least at my child’s high school, lunch for the teachers is not considered a planning time. There is close to an hour for students and of that 30 minutes is available for students to go into any teachers and get help or use their extended time accommodation. There were years when my daughter would spend almost every day with her math teacher, as she would really struggled with that. Another year, my son spent a lot of time with his English teacher because he needed extra help with his writing and really strives to do his best. I was actually always really impressed with how willing teachers were to spend time with them.

Is it not like this at all schools? One child graduated this year and my other child last year so this is all very recent information.

Not in MCPS.

That’s the case at WJ. It’s not great for either teachers or kids because the kids don’t get to eat lunch if they missed school due to illness -/ lunch is used to make up missed assignments.

It's like this at Einstein as well.

[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:How about a rule where teachers and admin need to respond to parents within three days. We have teachers and admin who clearly read the messages and don’t respond. How about teachers needing to consistently post assignments online so parents know what’s going on. How about teachers grade within a week so kids know how they are doing? We have teachers who still have not graded or posted in a month. Not ok. Kids can only be successful if teachers also put in the effort.

Most teachers are putting in the effort. But that effort requires time. We’ve done this math multiple times but here it is again:
150 students x 5min an assignment =750mins / 60mins in an hour = 12.5 hours . Thats the total time to grade one assignment. If a teacher got one class period free per day let’s say 47mins x 5 days =235 mins /60 =3.9 hours. That’s how much time they had in their work week to potentially grade. There other 8.6 hours comes from their personal life.

Out of seven teachers, three are putting in effort. Getting a month behind on grading and not responding to parents is not ok.

Thank those three. They gave up their weekends and evenings for you.

The other four are giving you what they are paid for.

Some, yes, some no. It’s their job. Not ok to not grade. As of today still no grades posted for the past month.

I’m a DP, but I’m happy to repeat the math for you:

I have 150 students. A writing assignment can take 15 minutes to grade. That’s 37.5 hours of grading. I get approximately 3.5 hours a week of time to get my work done.

And that’s just one assignment. Just one. That doesn’t include emails I need to respond to, reports I have to update, plans I have to revise.

So literally half my job has to be done on my own time. Over 30 hours a week.

So… SHOULD this be my job?

How do you think your students will improve without written feedback? I get that it takes time, but isn’t this a huge part of learning and the job?

I am a middle school teacher. My students do not read the feedback. They look at their grade and come up to me and say 'why did I get a B/C?' I ask them about looking at the feedback and they say nope.

As parents, we are going in and reading it. And, if that many kids are struggling, maybe you need to take some more time to reinforce the concepts they are struggling with.

Yep, keep blaming the teacher. At what point does the student have any accountability.

“Please read my feedback and if you have additional questions, we can meet at x time.”

The teacher mentioned middle schoolers. She needs to train them in the way she wants to behave. You get tweens to be accountable by telling and holding them what the standards are.

I know that it is difficult to believe, so I will ask it again, what time during the day do I have to meet with 150 middle schoolers to go over their feedback? I don't have office hours. If I am not teaching a class, I am in a meeting or planning or grading. If I open up time to meet individually with students, what should I not do? Plan or grade? Oh, you want me to be like the PP who works 70 hours a week. I am not going to do that. And you can continue to assume that I am a bad teacher, but this is a job. Until MCPS can give me the appropriate time to do my job, things won't get done. The only reason the public school system is not failing is because teachers are giving up their lives to hold it together. And for what? For parents to still not value what we do. I will say it again. Please fight for teachers to have the time to implement this new grading policy with fidelity. Demand MCPS gives us time to do this.

If the idea that you would meet with a kid before school, at lunch, or after school is so unfathomable to you, you are worse than I thought. My children are in high school and fortunately we have yet to encounter a teacher who is so extreme.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about a rule where teachers and admin need to respond to parents within three days. We have teachers and admin who clearly read the messages and don’t respond. How about teachers needing to consistently post assignments online so parents know what’s going on. How about teachers grade within a week so kids know how they are doing? We have teachers who still have not graded or posted in a month. Not ok. Kids can only be successful if teachers also put in the effort.

Most teachers are putting in the effort. But that effort requires time. We’ve done this math multiple times but here it is again:
150 students x 5min an assignment =750mins / 60mins in an hour = 12.5 hours . Thats the total time to grade one assignment. If a teacher got one class period free per day let’s say 47mins x 5 days =235 mins /60 =3.9 hours. That’s how much time they had in their work week to potentially grade. There other 8.6 hours comes from their personal life.

Out of seven teachers, three are putting in effort. Getting a month behind on grading and not responding to parents is not ok.

Thank those three. They gave up their weekends and evenings for you.

The other four are giving you what they are paid for.

Some, yes, some no. It’s their job. Not ok to not grade. As of today still no grades posted for the past month.

I’m a DP, but I’m happy to repeat the math for you:

I have 150 students. A writing assignment can take 15 minutes to grade. That’s 37.5 hours of grading. I get approximately 3.5 hours a week of time to get my work done.

And that’s just one assignment. Just one. That doesn’t include emails I need to respond to, reports I have to update, plans I have to revise.

So literally half my job has to be done on my own time. Over 30 hours a week.

So… SHOULD this be my job?

How do you think your students will improve without written feedback? I get that it takes time, but isn’t this a huge part of learning and the job?

I am a middle school teacher. My students do not read the feedback. They look at their grade and come up to me and say 'why did I get a B/C?' I ask them about looking at the feedback and they say nope.

Out of curiosity, can the parents see the feedback? One thing I find frustrating is that as a parent I can rarely see the feedback. Otherwise I would go over it with my kid. “the teacher says you need a better into sentence. Can you think of a good into sentence for this paragraph?” Etc. I do think it’s hard for 11-13 year olds to look at written feedback and internalize it. I work with 25-30 hear olds and I am often told they want oral feedback, not just my written feedback on their work product. I get ghat teachers don’t have time to sit down with every kid but I feel like there is missed opposition for parents to partner with teachers in this effort.

I receive that feeeback in the work place too - don’t just send written comments. Make appointments to sit and go through the document to explain the reasons for high and low level changes. Personally I didn’t post it earlier because it’s clear the teachers posting here don’t care about such things or don’t want to spend the time.

I’m one of the teachers posting here. I work about 70 hours a week, primarily because of my grading load. That’s what it takes to provide feedback in a timely manner. As I said earlier: I am the teacher you want. Being that teacher is burning me out.

Here’s what I do:
1. Give up my nights and weekends to grade
2. Give written feedback within two weeks. I can’t do earlier because, as I said, one assignment can take me almost 40 hours to grade.
3. Provide class time for students to read my comments. They must comment back AND provide revisions. This goes home for review and comes back to me within 2 days.
4. I review their revisions (another 10 hours of grading) returned within 3 days.
5. The process starts again with the next writing assignment. The portfolio builds.

This is what everybody here is asking for. It’s me doing the job as it should be done.

I’m not given ANY time to do this, so it comes from my family. No, that’s not okay. It’s why teachers start phoning it in. Our job should not be in direct competition with our health and our own lives.

I want to thank you for this but can you tell me if you share that feedback with parents? If not, is there a reason why? I genuinely want to help the teachers help my kids — I spent several hours a week myself on parentvue and canvass trying to figure out what I can see, but it’s actually very little. When I was a kid I have paper assignments and books and graded papers that my parents could review with me. I feel like part of the problem is that the current systems discourage parents from being involved in their kids education, which is probably to the detriment of both the kids and the teachers.

I teach advanced high school courses. I firmly believe students must be their own advocates, so I do not involve parents every step of the way. My students must be prepared for college coursework in 1-2 years, and parents will have no access to professors then.

I explain my writing tasks and the progression at the start of the year; this information is in all of my course documentation. Essays, which are hand written in class, are announced a week ahead of time in class and online. I include links to any prep materials. The essays, with comments, can go home for two days for reflection and revision. At that point, I want them back in the classroom so I can rescore and then they can be added to individual portfolios.

Parents have access to the calendar and prep materials. They can see the comments when the essays go home for revision.

But, by junior year, I do not directly involve parents. If a parent wants to meet with me, which occasionally happens, I absolutely welcome that and we can review the student’s work together. I’m available before or after school every day.

Kids sometimes have reasons why they will not approach teachers and someone still need support. As a parent if my kid needs me to step in I will. Handwriting essays is terrible.

By high school, you need to ask your child to show you the essays and comments. They don’t need to be readily available at your fingertips. They are in the STUDENT account. If your child does not show you, that’s a family issue and not one for the teachers just like the good ol’ days when things would be returned but never shown to their parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least at my child’s high school, lunch for the teachers is not considered a planning time. There is close to an hour for students and of that 30 minutes is available for students to go into any teachers and get help or use their extended time accommodation. There were years when my daughter would spend almost every day with her math teacher, as she would really struggled with that. Another year, my son spent a lot of time with his English teacher because he needed extra help with his writing and really strives to do his best. I was actually always really impressed with how willing teachers were to spend time with them.

Is it not like this at all schools? One child graduated this year and my other child last year so this is all very recent information.

Not in MCPS.

This is Churchill’s policy too. That’s why the lunch period is so long. I think teachers get to decide if they are using the first half or the second half for drop in support. We are always told at BTSN, but after that it is my kids who know.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:How about a rule where teachers and admin need to respond to parents within three days. We have teachers and admin who clearly read the messages and don’t respond. How about teachers needing to consistently post assignments online so parents know what’s going on. How about teachers grade within a week so kids know how they are doing? We have teachers who still have not graded or posted in a month. Not ok. Kids can only be successful if teachers also put in the effort.

Most teachers are putting in the effort. But that effort requires time. We’ve done this math multiple times but here it is again:
150 students x 5min an assignment =750mins / 60mins in an hour = 12.5 hours . Thats the total time to grade one assignment. If a teacher got one class period free per day let’s say 47mins x 5 days =235 mins /60 =3.9 hours. That’s how much time they had in their work week to potentially grade. There other 8.6 hours comes from their personal life.

Out of seven teachers, three are putting in effort. Getting a month behind on grading and not responding to parents is not ok.

Thank those three. They gave up their weekends and evenings for you.

The other four are giving you what they are paid for.

Some, yes, some no. It’s their job. Not ok to not grade. As of today still no grades posted for the past month.

I’m a DP, but I’m happy to repeat the math for you:

I have 150 students. A writing assignment can take 15 minutes to grade. That’s 37.5 hours of grading. I get approximately 3.5 hours a week of time to get my work done.

And that’s just one assignment. Just one. That doesn’t include emails I need to respond to, reports I have to update, plans I have to revise.

So literally half my job has to be done on my own time. Over 30 hours a week.

So… SHOULD this be my job?

How do you think your students will improve without written feedback? I get that it takes time, but isn’t this a huge part of learning and the job?

I am a middle school teacher. My students do not read the feedback. They look at their grade and come up to me and say 'why did I get a B/C?' I ask them about looking at the feedback and they say nope.

Out of curiosity, can the parents see the feedback? One thing I find frustrating is that as a parent I can rarely see the feedback. Otherwise I would go over it with my kid. “the teacher says you need a better into sentence. Can you think of a good into sentence for this paragraph?” Etc. I do think it’s hard for 11-13 year olds to look at written feedback and internalize it. I work with 25-30 hear olds and I am often told they want oral feedback, not just my written feedback on their work product. I get ghat teachers don’t have time to sit down with every kid but I feel like there is missed opposition for parents to partner with teachers in this effort.

I receive that feeeback in the work place too - don’t just send written comments. Make appointments to sit and go through the document to explain the reasons for high and low level changes. Personally I didn’t post it earlier because it’s clear the teachers posting here don’t care about such things or don’t want to spend the time.

I’m one of the teachers posting here. I work about 70 hours a week, primarily because of my grading load. That’s what it takes to provide feedback in a timely manner. As I said earlier: I am the teacher you want. Being that teacher is burning me out.

Here’s what I do:
1. Give up my nights and weekends to grade
2. Give written feedback within two weeks. I can’t do earlier because, as I said, one assignment can take me almost 40 hours to grade.
3. Provide class time for students to read my comments. They must comment back AND provide revisions. This goes home for review and comes back to me within 2 days.
4. I review their revisions (another 10 hours of grading) returned within 3 days.
5. The process starts again with the next writing assignment. The portfolio builds.

This is what everybody here is asking for. It’s me doing the job as it should be done.

I’m not given ANY time to do this, so it comes from my family. No, that’s not okay. It’s why teachers start phoning it in. Our job should not be in direct competition with our health and our own lives.

I want to thank you for this but can you tell me if you share that feedback with parents? If not, is there a reason why? I genuinely want to help the teachers help my kids — I spent several hours a week myself on parentvue and canvass trying to figure out what I can see, but it’s actually very little. When I was a kid I have paper assignments and books and graded papers that my parents could review with me. I feel like part of the problem is that the current systems discourage parents from being involved in their kids education, which is probably to the detriment of both the kids and the teachers.

I teach advanced high school courses. I firmly believe students must be their own advocates, so I do not involve parents every step of the way. My students must be prepared for college coursework in 1-2 years, and parents will have no access to professors then.

I explain my writing tasks and the progression at the start of the year; this information is in all of my course documentation. Essays, which are hand written in class, are announced a week ahead of time in class and online. I include links to any prep materials. The essays, with comments, can go home for two days for reflection and revision. At that point, I want them back in the classroom so I can rescore and then they can be added to individual portfolios.

Parents have access to the calendar and prep materials. They can see the comments when the essays go home for revision.

But, by junior year, I do not directly involve parents. If a parent wants to meet with me, which occasionally happens, I absolutely welcome that and we can review the student’s work together. I’m available before or after school every day.

This is great. My kid is going into his junior year and I’ve never seen comments come back on essays. I would definitely review them with him so that he could have more opportunity to grow in his writing. Thank you for doing that.
I think the college analogy is somewhat stretched though. In a typical McPS schedule a kid might have 20 assignments due on a week. That just never happens in college. It’s a lot to keep track of — for kids whose frontal lobes are much less developed than college kids. My kid got a C this wuarter because he missed one assignment in a class — got as on everything he turned in but just missed one thing and got a zero. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in college because yo don’t have constant turn-in dates. I’d love a system where it’s easier to track what it coming up and what has been turned in. With the current systems, you often don’t see that something wasn’t turned in until a month later when the grade posts. And many teachers don’t post the calendar due dates until a couple days before.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about a rule where teachers and admin need to respond to parents within three days. We have teachers and admin who clearly read the messages and don’t respond. How about teachers needing to consistently post assignments online so parents know what’s going on. How about teachers grade within a week so kids know how they are doing? We have teachers who still have not graded or posted in a month. Not ok. Kids can only be successful if teachers also put in the effort.

Most teachers are putting in the effort. But that effort requires time. We’ve done this math multiple times but here it is again:
150 students x 5min an assignment =750mins / 60mins in an hour = 12.5 hours . Thats the total time to grade one assignment. If a teacher got one class period free per day let’s say 47mins x 5 days =235 mins /60 =3.9 hours. That’s how much time they had in their work week to potentially grade. There other 8.6 hours comes from their personal life.

Out of seven teachers, three are putting in effort. Getting a month behind on grading and not responding to parents is not ok.

Thank those three. They gave up their weekends and evenings for you.

The other four are giving you what they are paid for.

Some, yes, some no. It’s their job. Not ok to not grade. As of today still no grades posted for the past month.

I’m a DP, but I’m happy to repeat the math for you:

I have 150 students. A writing assignment can take 15 minutes to grade. That’s 37.5 hours of grading. I get approximately 3.5 hours a week of time to get my work done.

And that’s just one assignment. Just one. That doesn’t include emails I need to respond to, reports I have to update, plans I have to revise.

So literally half my job has to be done on my own time. Over 30 hours a week.

So… SHOULD this be my job?

How do you think your students will improve without written feedback? I get that it takes time, but isn’t this a huge part of learning and the job?

I am a middle school teacher. My students do not read the feedback. They look at their grade and come up to me and say 'why did I get a B/C?' I ask them about looking at the feedback and they say nope.

Out of curiosity, can the parents see the feedback? One thing I find frustrating is that as a parent I can rarely see the feedback. Otherwise I would go over it with my kid. “the teacher says you need a better into sentence. Can you think of a good into sentence for this paragraph?” Etc. I do think it’s hard for 11-13 year olds to look at written feedback and internalize it. I work with 25-30 hear olds and I am often told they want oral feedback, not just my written feedback on their work product. I get ghat teachers don’t have time to sit down with every kid but I feel like there is missed opposition for parents to partner with teachers in this effort.

I receive that feeeback in the work place too - don’t just send written comments. Make appointments to sit and go through the document to explain the reasons for high and low level changes. Personally I didn’t post it earlier because it’s clear the teachers posting here don’t care about such things or don’t want to spend the time.

I’m one of the teachers posting here. I work about 70 hours a week, primarily because of my grading load. That’s what it takes to provide feedback in a timely manner. As I said earlier: I am the teacher you want. Being that teacher is burning me out.

Here’s what I do:
1. Give up my nights and weekends to grade
2. Give written feedback within two weeks. I can’t do earlier because, as I said, one assignment can take me almost 40 hours to grade.
3. Provide class time for students to read my comments. They must comment back AND provide revisions. This goes home for review and comes back to me within 2 days.
4. I review their revisions (another 10 hours of grading) returned within 3 days.
5. The process starts again with the next writing assignment. The portfolio builds.

This is what everybody here is asking for. It’s me doing the job as it should be done.

I’m not given ANY time to do this, so it comes from my family. No, that’s not okay. It’s why teachers start phoning it in. Our job should not be in direct competition with our health and our own lives.

I want to thank you for this but can you tell me if you share that feedback with parents? If not, is there a reason why? I genuinely want to help the teachers help my kids — I spent several hours a week myself on parentvue and canvass trying to figure out what I can see, but it’s actually very little. When I was a kid I have paper assignments and books and graded papers that my parents could review with me. I feel like part of the problem is that the current systems discourage parents from being involved in their kids education, which is probably to the detriment of both the kids and the teachers.

I teach advanced high school courses. I firmly believe students must be their own advocates, so I do not involve parents every step of the way. My students must be prepared for college coursework in 1-2 years, and parents will have no access to professors then.

I explain my writing tasks and the progression at the start of the year; this information is in all of my course documentation. Essays, which are hand written in class, are announced a week ahead of time in class and online. I include links to any prep materials. The essays, with comments, can go home for two days for reflection and revision. At that point, I want them back in the classroom so I can rescore and then they can be added to individual portfolios.

Parents have access to the calendar and prep materials. They can see the comments when the essays go home for revision.

But, by junior year, I do not directly involve parents. If a parent wants to meet with me, which occasionally happens, I absolutely welcome that and we can review the student’s work together. I’m available before or after school every day.

This is great. My kid is going into his junior year and I’ve never seen comments come back on essays. I would definitely review them with him so that he could have more opportunity to grow in his writing. Thank you for doing that.
I think the college analogy is somewhat stretched though. In a typical McPS schedule a kid might have 20 assignments due on a week. That just never happens in college. It’s a lot to keep track of — for kids whose frontal lobes are much less developed than college kids. My kid got a C this wuarter because he missed one assignment in a class — got as on everything he turned in but just missed one thing and got a zero. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in college because yo don’t have constant turn-in dates. I’d love a system where it’s easier to track what it coming up and what has been turned in. With the current systems, you often don’t see that something wasn’t turned in until a month later when the grade posts. And many teachers don’t post the calendar due dates until a couple days before.

I guess part of the problem is that parental expectations are different now. I have HSers and I am very glad we’ve moved to a world where the teacher puts the burden on them and not me. At BTSN, in every class for my junior, the teacher gave some version of what the teacher above posted, and I appreciated it. It was not as overt until 11th grade.

Do you not see the zeros/upcoming assignments in ParentVue?

[Anonymous]

Stop blaming teachers. By HS, students know what they need to do, the just choose not to do it. They think sports is a priority, their phone, their friends, etc., not their school work.

What did we do before parentvue?

Parents need to take responsibility of their kids. Show teachers some respect, then students will learn to respect teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least at my child’s high school, lunch for the teachers is not considered a planning time. There is close to an hour for students and of that 30 minutes is available for students to go into any teachers and get help or use their extended time accommodation. There were years when my daughter would spend almost every day with her math teacher, as she would really struggled with that. Another year, my son spent a lot of time with his English teacher because he needed extra help with his writing and really strives to do his best. I was actually always really impressed with how willing teachers were to spend time with them.

Is it not like this at all schools? One child graduated this year and my other child last year so this is all very recent information.

Not in MCPS.

That’s the case at WJ. It’s not great for either teachers or kids because the kids don’t get to eat lunch if they missed school due to illness -/ lunch is used to make up missed assignments.

It's like this at Einstein as well.

At Einstein, it depends on the teacher. We've only had a few teachers available at lunch. They often have a free day in class and that's when they do the make up or weeks later. We've only had a few that are willing to provide help at lunch. Most refuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop blaming teachers. By HS, students know what they need to do, the just choose not to do it. They think sports is a priority, their phone, their friends, etc., not their school work.

What did we do before parentvue?

Parents need to take responsibility of their kids. Show teachers some respect, then students will learn to respect teachers.

No, not at all. What did we do before parentvue, for one we had clear a syllabus with assignments, test dates, chaper weeks, etc. You knew the expectations vs. now where some teachers make it up week to week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least at my child’s high school, lunch for the teachers is not considered a planning time. There is close to an hour for students and of that 30 minutes is available for students to go into any teachers and get help or use their extended time accommodation. There were years when my daughter would spend almost every day with her math teacher, as she would really struggled with that. Another year, my son spent a lot of time with his English teacher because he needed extra help with his writing and really strives to do his best. I was actually always really impressed with how willing teachers were to spend time with them.

Is it not like this at all schools? One child graduated this year and my other child last year so this is all very recent information.

Not in MCPS.

That’s the case at WJ. It’s not great for either teachers or kids because the kids don’t get to eat lunch if they missed school due to illness -/ lunch is used to make up missed assignments.

It's like this at Einstein as well.

At Einstein, it depends on the teacher. We've only had a few teachers available at lunch. They often have a free day in class and that's when they do the make up or weeks later. We've only had a few that are willing to provide help at lunch. Most refuse.

Disagree. I've had two kids at Einstein and they've never had a teacher refuse to meet with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop blaming teachers. By HS, students know what they need to do, the just choose not to do it. They think sports is a priority, their phone, their friends, etc., not their school work.

What did we do before parentvue?

Parents need to take responsibility of their kids. Show teachers some respect, then students will learn to respect teachers.

No, not at all. What did we do before parentvue, for one we had clear a syllabus with assignments, test dates, chaper weeks, etc. You knew the expectations vs. now where some teachers make it up week to week.

I think you are mistaking college courses for MCPS. Or at least the MCPS I attended! Teachers did not give out a full syllabus with all of those details. Kids were expected to use assignment books. This included assignments, but also quizzes and tests. If they did not write things down, parents got upset with the kid- not the teacher. Parents were way more hands-off and let the kids make their own successes and failures.

Only the end of semester tests were set in stone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least at my child’s high school, lunch for the teachers is not considered a planning time. There is close to an hour for students and of that 30 minutes is available for students to go into any teachers and get help or use their extended time accommodation. There were years when my daughter would spend almost every day with her math teacher, as she would really struggled with that. Another year, my son spent a lot of time with his English teacher because he needed extra help with his writing and really strives to do his best. I was actually always really impressed with how willing teachers were to spend time with them.

Is it not like this at all schools? One child graduated this year and my other child last year so this is all very recent information.

Not in MCPS.

That’s the case at WJ. It’s not great for either teachers or kids because the kids don’t get to eat lunch if they missed school due to illness -/ lunch is used to make up missed assignments.

It's like this at Einstein as well.

At Einstein, it depends on the teacher. We've only had a few teachers available at lunch. They often have a free day in class and that's when they do the make up or weeks later. We've only had a few that are willing to provide help at lunch. Most refuse.

Listen... your bratty little kid needs to turn their work in on time. The teacher did their job: your kid got taught, got the assignment, got the deadline. If they blew it, tough. This BS about how teachers need to spend their lunch breaks giving your gobshite kid twelve extra chances to do their work is absolute nonsense, and I say this as someone whose kid spent the better part of this past semester being exactly this sort of flaky, slacking gobshite. I let them get the grades they deserved. They learned.

Actions have consequences. If you blow off your duties at your job, do you expect your boss to give up their lunch break to accommodate make ups? Of course not! That would be absurd. Which is why it's equally absurd that we're giving highschoolers a false sense of security in their slacking. Do the work the right way, the first time, and there's no trouble.

And if you're talking about "help" needed to actually do the work, maybe your kid needs to drop down a level, or get a tutor, or both. Again, not the teacher's job to make sure your kid is prepared and supported. That's our job as the parents. Discipline and support structures are PARENT responsibilities, so quit shifting them to the already-overburdened teachers.