Reply to No longer writing in middle school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is no writing in middle school beyond filling in braindead templates for braindead essays where every single sentence is assigned a prescribed format.

The exception is the National History Day essay, which is national and not designed by MCPS. That's a long paper, that the kids are completely unprepared for, due to yearlong lack of instruction and feedback, which the teachers grade by eyeballing and then assigning a random score with no feedback on the essay itself.
And this is only for students who choose not to draw a picture as part of a group project instead. [/quote]

Had an middle schooler getting this "fill in the blank" template, then showing parents the final product without informing them that it was "fill in the blank" - like MadLibs. This in a cluster widely regarded for high performance.

The "draw a picture" was another kiddo's experience. Thankfully this one is now out of MCPS.

Gutting the current MS Humanities program will seal the deal - perhaps the last bastion of actual writing, research, and citations. Boo MCPS.[/quote]
+2 The problem is not only lack of required writing but also no meaningful feedback or corrections. In ES, all writing was done at school so I could not help DC.

Now that DC is in MS, I can at least see the writing assignments because they are online. Dismayed to see DC writes like a 3rd grader. So what I have been doing is what my public teachers used to do for me: give DC guidance and corrections for every writing assignment (English and HIGH).[b] I do not understand why I have to do this when—in my time—teachers used to do this. [/B]Before my intervention, DC didn’t know how to make citations, work in quotations, the list goes on. On the bright side, DC’s writing is finally rapidly improving.

If your kid is not getting a chance to write or get meaningful corrections (ie, if they are an MCPS ES or MS student), I suggest you add this to your DIY mountain. Help them first with short answers. Then when they get the hang of that, work on essay writing. If no one is a good writer at home, then consider outsourcing—but make sure you agree with the teacher’s approach. You don’t want the teacher to make your kid dread writing.[/quote]

Unfortunately teachers have huge class sizes these days, so they have to grade 150 or more assignments at a time.  Spending even 5 minutes giving feedback on each assignment would be over 12 hours of work for every single assignment..

If we want to fix this, we need to advocate for smaller class sizes, more prep time for teachers outside of class, and/or funding for writing grading assistants (I don't think any middle schools have this, and high schools often have just one person to help with all the English classes in the whole school.)[/quote]

This.

We had a full day of PD today. I drove home and have been grading since 3:35. I only took a break because I am waiting for Door Dash to bring groceries that I don’t have time to pickup since I have to grade 138 document based question paragraphs this long weekend as well as do the planning cancelled by today’s PD. [/quote]
Thank you for your service. I’m advocating for lightening teacher load so you great people can do what you were probably called to do in the first place: help students.[/quote]

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