Reply to Does FCPS have any requirements for instructors regarding posting grades in timely fashion

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Stand up for the teachers. The reason they aren’t grassing work quickly is because they have to cover other teacher’s classes during their planning periods. [/quote]

The ones who can't do their jobs had other excuses when they weren't covering other teachers' classes.  It's really quite ridiculous and just breeds cynicism and a lack of respect on the part of students when teachers can't get their act together to post grades on a timely basis. [/quote]

Do some math. 
Let’s say Teacher has 125 students.  
It takes him, on average, 4 meninges to grade each assignment and enter that student’s grade online.
125x4=500

For one assignment, we are already talking about about 8 hours of work.

So the teacher gets 2 45 minute planning periods per day, but is covering another teacher’s class (sub shortage) leaving 45 minutes per day of planning time.  That time, of course, is only useful for practical matters: answering parent emails, reading all the emails that come in from the county and administration, tidying up the classroom, making copies, etc.  actual lesson planning is more time intensive; maybe it’s done for a couple of hours after school a couple of times a week, or for 5-6 hours on Sundays.

So when is all this grading happening?  For 2-3 hours a night a few nights a week.  On weekends.  Or over long weekends and teacher workdays.  Maybe, like me, a teacher has been fighting a nasty virus for the last 10 days and doesn’t have the energy or brain power to spend a few hours grading at night.  We get backed up.  We do our best.

Maybe what “breeds cynicism” among students is not the fact that their teachers attend working 60 hour weeks and grossly overtaxed and over stressed, but the fact that parents like you are accusing them of not “getting their act together” rather than understanding that our class sizes are unreasonably large, our requirements to cover other people’s classes due to the teacher and sub shortage is leaving us with no time to plan or grade, and our colleagues are leaving the profession in droves because it all feels close to impossible right now?

Maybe you could reach out to the teacher and see if they need any support.  Maybe you could be patient. Maybe you could be kind.  Maybe you could stop speaking so derisively of the people who are trying their best to help your kid.[/quote]

Let’s be real. Teachers assign work or projects for kids to do in class. That actually gives the teacher time to get work done while the kids are working. Generally in middle and high school kids can work without a teacher hovering. The teacher can sit at his/her desk to check emails and grade. [/quote]

Are you a teacher? I don’t do that. My 90 minute math block is:
5 minutes: attendance, warm up
25 minutes: notes/lecture
10-15 minutes: activity (quick game to practice a basic new skill, mini Kahoot! to check in how they’re doing, white board check ins)
10-15 minutes: remainder of notes/examples
30 minutes: activity 2 (usually some sort of problem set where it self checks) This is where I pull the 5-10 kids who bombed that first check in activity to a small group at the back table or hallway or just rotate and check in with each of them repeatedly while others work.
5 minutes: exit ticket, monitor to make sure kids are doing their own work.

The only time I’m not talking or helping kids directly is on test days, and then I’m walking around monitoring like a hawk because holy hell your adorable, funny children turn into sneaky, cheating cell phone users with drifting eyeballs on test days, lol

But seriously, I’ve never just sat while kids worked. I don’t think my peers do either. Maybe we are doing it wrong. School is basically a complete 180 from when I was in high school 20 years ago though. I remember my math teacher doing 30 minutes of lecture and 15 minutes free time to “start our homework” each day. That would never fly now.[/quote]thanks for recognizing that you all could be doing it all wrong.  Since there are SO many check-in, exit tickets, tests, and assessments, (not to mention POG, SEL, useless stuff, there is less time across 180 days for instruction now a days.  As you mentioned, teaching and the whole philosophy has changed.  Learning in bulk in quarters 2 and 3 has occurred which is cramming the material and not allowing adequate time for students to practice and (gulp) even memorize some facts, this leads to a bunch of re-learning and re-takes. [/quote]

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