Reply to Why don’t teachers respond to student emails in a timely manner or not at all?

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Why don’t teachers respond to student emails in a timely manner or not at all?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Because it’s impossible to keep up for some disciplines and ages.  Impossible.  We have to focus on planning lessons, being great teachers when the class is actually happening, participating in meetings during our planning times, completing required documentation (like IEP’s), responding to paperwork for which there are hard deadlines, assessing student work, responding to emails from our colleagues and administration, and THEN there is email from students.  If you teach secondary or you’re a specialist in ES, you have over a hundred or many hundreds of students.  Do you know what that volume of email is like, especially when a lot of it is tech support?

There are student and parent tech support lines.  Try there first, please, for the tech one.  Many times teachers have no idea how to fix things either, and we wait to reply while we ask our SBTS for help, who is also inundated and buried in incoming requests.

Parents often compare our email response times to their emails from an office job.  I’ve worked in the software industry and in politics and it doesn’t remotely compare to the pace of teaching.  There are kids at you EVERY SECOND when they are in the room.  Then you have a couple of minutes transition between classes, maybe.  (as a specialist this year, I have none.) There is no time to check email during the day.  No time.  When I finally get to my inbox after school, it’s triage: who are the bleeders?  Who need replies immediately?  Which replies will take more work than I have time to do right now?  Those get flagged for answer later.  I do what I can in the time I have, but I have to focus on getting ready for all my classes tomorrow.  I have to be prepared for ALL of them with materials and lessons.  If that means emails go unanswered, it is what is is.  I have a lot do classes coming in tomorrow.  The damage to them is much worse if I am unprepared than the harm of not replying to a single non urgent student email.

The problem is, there are more tomorrow, and more the next day.  And there is no catch up day.  There is no day they stop coming.  So some…I just have to let go of.  I can’t work 24/7.  I work at least 11 hour days plus 8 or so on the weekend.  It’s enough.

If it’s been a few days, and it’s urgent, the kid thing to do would be to send it again to the teacher’s @fcps.edu address from the student’s @fcpsschools.net email.  Please be kind.  We are doing our best.

Btw, for the Google Form, click to sign it while your are signed in under your child’s FCPS Google account.  It’s probably set to only be open to FCPS users.  It’s a setting you can ask the teacher to change but it’s easier for you to just log in to Google as your kid than stew here waiting for a reply.

(I’m a mom of an FCPS kid, too.)

[/quote]

I am learning to be less like you.  The pay is the same and you don’t risk a nervous breakdown.  Look at this board.  It’s not like parents appreciate that you make an extra effort just to *meet* their expectations.  They just think it was what you were supposed to do.  [/quote]

PP here.  I’m working to be less like me, too.  :) (I say as I read DCUM and read a book for work at the pool while my kid is swimming.  I don’t have time to get wet myself because I have lesson materials yo prep when I get home!)[/quote]

Yeah, I am getting up early to do mine.  If it weren’t for my pride and the fact that I like the kids I teach tomorrow (they try), i would probably just do something I didn’t have to prepare for. [/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