Reply to Dear Parents

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Dear Parents "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some teacher just had an awesome time reading this thread and I’m very happy for them! [/quote]

I did and I’m not a teacher. I’m a parent who’s totally DISGUSTED by the behavior of jackass entitled parents on this thread. [/quote]

Teacher here. I just read your comments and want to thank you for your support. It’s helpful to know you’re out there, especially on DCUM which can skew very anti-teacher.[/quote]

Most parents do support teachers. However, as this thread illustrates, they also advocate for their children, which might sometimes come across as anti-teacher when it's not. Ultimately, parents can't control teacher working conditions. Some of the advice given to parents in this thread, such as, "if you don't have grades, ask for a conference," seems like it would make teachers' jobs harder, not easier. Some parents are horrible, but others have had their trust eroded by non-responsive teachers. Dedicated teachers might not know or understand what it is like to have your child in a class with an ineffective teacher. As a parents, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. [b]If teacher communication with parents or grading isn't timely, and it's really an overall workload issue, then it would make sense to go to an administrator, which no teacher wants.[/b] We wind up with the back and forth where teachers rightfully demand to be treated like the professionals that they are, while at the same time telling parents that they are unreasonable for wanting teachers to perform core functions of their jobs, like gradiig. [/quote]

This is an outdated concept.  That was true before the pandemic, but no longer.  Since the pandemic, working conditions have gotten worse.  School district and school administration have continued to pile on non-teaching responsibilities to teachers and have offered very little in the way of relief to overworked and exhausted teachers, forcing many teachers out of the career.  Teachers have realized that their complaints are ignored at the administration and district level.  So, teachers have been forced to take other measures which include Work to Rule.  It isn't because teachers want to stop doing all these things that help make students more successful, but they are out of options.  So they work to rule, they provide hard limits to the amount of extra off-duty work that they will complete, they end up not doing some elements like parent conferences, posting grades in a timely manner, etc.  The hope, now, is that the parents will go to the administration.  The hope is that if there are enough complaints from the parents and community that the administration will actually act to take some of the administrative tasks that should not be on the teachers off their plate so that the teachers can get back to teaching and teaching related duties.

So, help out.  Go to the administration, but try not to go with torches and pitchforks, but go to the school administration and inform them that your child is not getting the support from the teacher that they need, and that the teacher has not bee responsive to your outreach on your student's behalf.  Ask them to please do what is necessary to allow the teacher to get to these teaching duties.  The school administration needs to be involved and needs to know the extent of the problem and the complaints of the community or they will continue to ignore the teachers' complaints about overburdened non-class time.  [/quote]

I am sympathetic to this but what are examples of the new admin tasks that the non-teaching staff could / should do instead? [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics