High school teacher rant

[Anonymous]

I have always found high school teachers to be helpful when approached with the “please help me understand how my child can improve” perspective. They know that kids are still developing self-awareness, responsibility, self-monitoring etc.

My own son isn’t a great writer yet as he has dysgraphia so it is a long journey from the ideas in his head to appropriately complex text on a page.

He struggles with only positive feedback. It is encouraging but not super helpful in how to get better. He needs teachers to tell him what not to do and also what he needs to do that he hasn’t demonstrated.

He can’t look at the rubric and figure it out in comparison to his own paper. Example papers help, but those aren’t commonly available. Sometimes the examples are of perfect work which he finds discouraging.

It takes a lot of communication with his teachers to help him identify 3 specific things he can improve with his drafts for papers. We have found 3 is the number that feels challenging but achievable right now.

I’m not saying your child has dysgraphia, but sometime translating the rubric into an evaluation of your own work can be challenging. It might be worth asking for specific feedback at more frequent intervals to get ahead of the poor grade.

Grading and providing feedback on writing is really challenging and time-consuming. I can’t imagine any teacher wants to make extra work for themselves by deliberately grading inconsistently.

I would be curious what classroom behavior is like. Sometimes there is a workshop model where students give each other feedback on their work. I don’t think this is a very helpful model as you have unskilled people giving feedback. But if your son isn’t a helpful participant then that could be causing issues with grades too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter said that most English teachers will grade on how well they like the kid, after reading this she might be right.

No. Sigh. This isn’t true.

Why would I grade in a manner that is going to put MORE work on my plate?

I use a rubric to clearly outline my expectations and I leave plenty of comments to illustrate why the student received the grade. This already takes most of my nights and weekends. Grading in a manner that’s going to bring complaints would take even more time.

And I’m actually rather offended by your daughter’s comment. I’m an adult and a professional. I don’t play silly games.

I’m not sure why you’re so upset. I’m a 50-year-old, born and raised in NYC, and I went to a school equivalent to TJ. It’s absolutely true that English teachers tend to grade based on who they like rather than purely on merit. In other words, even if a student isn’t the top performer, if the teacher likes them, they’ll still get the same kind of treatment as the star pupils. This has been a fact for over three decades.

That said, teachers typically wouldn’t downgrade the work of a top student either—as long as that student wasn’t a disruptive presence in class.

This is the most eye-rolling, ridiculous response. You are so set in your opinions that there’s no way to communicate with you.

Your “school the equivalent of TJ” clearly didn’t teach you the definition of “fact”… or you were too busy entertaining your perceived notions about others to actually listen to your teachers.

It's actually not a ridiculous response. Here's a fact: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teacher%27s%20pet. That wouldn't exist if the concept weren't true. Teachers of all ages and modalities do it ... in elementary, middle, high, undergrad and grad. If you don't think that is true, then you need to dig a little deeper than just saying teachers cannot develop a liking for a particular student, which creates a bias in their grading (the reverse is also true). Teachers aren't robots. Human tendencies allow you to develop these pathways to connect with students (and students develop this pathway towards a teacher ... as noted in the millions of kids who write about the teacher that has influenced them the most ...). I'm guessing you haven't really understood anything from any bias training you've received. And, I also think you're an idiot for even saying what you said. Try and think critically before responding to something without understanding it on a deeper level.

This is more of the same garbage. You lost my interest when you used a dictionary definition as a fact. I did manage to read past that fallacy, though, and found your use of personal attacks. This is one of the most unconvincing arguments I’ve seen on this site, and that’s quite a statement.

You have not backed up your argument that English teachers grade via favoritism. Not at all. Not remotely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter said that most English teachers will grade on how well they like the kid, after reading this she might be right.

No. Sigh. This isn’t true.

Why would I grade in a manner that is going to put MORE work on my plate?

I use a rubric to clearly outline my expectations and I leave plenty of comments to illustrate why the student received the grade. This already takes most of my nights and weekends. Grading in a manner that’s going to bring complaints would take even more time.

And I’m actually rather offended by your daughter’s comment. I’m an adult and a professional. I don’t play silly games.

I’m not sure why you’re so upset. I’m a 50-year-old, born and raised in NYC, and I went to a school equivalent to TJ. It’s absolutely true that English teachers tend to grade based on who they like rather than purely on merit. In other words, even if a student isn’t the top performer, if the teacher likes them, they’ll still get the same kind of treatment as the star pupils. This has been a fact for over three decades.

That said, teachers typically wouldn’t downgrade the work of a top student either—as long as that student wasn’t a disruptive presence in class.

This is the most eye-rolling, ridiculous response. You are so set in your opinions that there’s no way to communicate with you.

Your “school the equivalent of TJ” clearly didn’t teach you the definition of “fact”… or you were too busy entertaining your perceived notions about others to actually listen to your teachers.

It's actually not a ridiculous response. Here's a fact: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teacher%27s%20pet. That wouldn't exist if the concept weren't true. Teachers of all ages and modalities do it ... in elementary, middle, high, undergrad and grad. If you don't think that is true, then you need to dig a little deeper than just saying teachers cannot develop a liking for a particular student, which creates a bias in their grading (the reverse is also true). Teachers aren't robots. Human tendencies allow you to develop these pathways to connect with students (and students develop this pathway towards a teacher ... as noted in the millions of kids who write about the teacher that has influenced them the most ...). I'm guessing you haven't really understood anything from any bias training you've received. And, I also think you're an idiot for even saying what you said. Try and think critically before responding to something without understanding it on a deeper level.

This is more of the same garbage. You lost my interest when you used a dictionary definition as a fact. I did manage to read past that fallacy, though, and found your use of personal attacks. This is one of the most unconvincing arguments I’ve seen on this site, and that’s quite a statement.

You have not backed up your argument that English teachers grade via favoritism. Not at all. Not remotely.

https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/ZHFHASC6MPGWZNCGTPHV/full

[Anonymous]

We run our kids stuff through chatghpt and other tools and the teacher still gave bad remarks so yes English is subject, there are food and services out there you can use to find this concern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter said that most English teachers will grade on how well they like the kid, after reading this she might be right.

No. Sigh. This isn’t true.

Why would I grade in a manner that is going to put MORE work on my plate?

I use a rubric to clearly outline my expectations and I leave plenty of comments to illustrate why the student received the grade. This already takes most of my nights and weekends. Grading in a manner that’s going to bring complaints would take even more time.

And I’m actually rather offended by your daughter’s comment. I’m an adult and a professional. I don’t play silly games.

I’m not sure why you’re so upset. I’m a 50-year-old, born and raised in NYC, and I went to a school equivalent to TJ. It’s absolutely true that English teachers tend to grade based on who they like rather than purely on merit. In other words, even if a student isn’t the top performer, if the teacher likes them, they’ll still get the same kind of treatment as the star pupils. This has been a fact for over three decades.

That said, teachers typically wouldn’t downgrade the work of a top student either—as long as that student wasn’t a disruptive presence in class.

This is the most eye-rolling, ridiculous response. You are so set in your opinions that there’s no way to communicate with you.

Your “school the equivalent of TJ” clearly didn’t teach you the definition of “fact”… or you were too busy entertaining your perceived notions about others to actually listen to your teachers.

It's actually not a ridiculous response. Here's a fact: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teacher%27s%20pet. That wouldn't exist if the concept weren't true. Teachers of all ages and modalities do it ... in elementary, middle, high, undergrad and grad. If you don't think that is true, then you need to dig a little deeper than just saying teachers cannot develop a liking for a particular student, which creates a bias in their grading (the reverse is also true). Teachers aren't robots. Human tendencies allow you to develop these pathways to connect with students (and students develop this pathway towards a teacher ... as noted in the millions of kids who write about the teacher that has influenced them the most ...). I'm guessing you haven't really understood anything from any bias training you've received. And, I also think you're an idiot for even saying what you said. Try and think critically before responding to something without understanding it on a deeper level.

This is more of the same garbage. You lost my interest when you used a dictionary definition as a fact. I did manage to read past that fallacy, though, and found your use of personal attacks. This is one of the most unconvincing arguments I’ve seen on this site, and that’s quite a statement.

You have not backed up your argument that English teachers grade via favoritism. Not at all. Not remotely.

https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/ZHFHASC6MPGWZNCGTPHV/full

That’s not as helpful as you think, PP.

From study 1:
“When all of the controls were included, there was a small but statistically significant tendency for teachers to have lower implicit bias and explicit bias than nonteachers.”

From study 2:
“Although both teachers and nonteachers held both implicit and explicit racial bias in Study 1, teachers had statistically lower implicit and explicit bias than nonteachers”

And from the conclusion:
“In conclusion, we have found that teachers’ bias levels are quite similar to those of the larger population.”

And since your argument is about favoritism and not race, the posted study actually seems rather tangential. You are trying to prove that most teachers grade based on how well they like a student…

But I doubt you read the study you posted.