Reply to Teachers not providing feedback IS a serious problem

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I normally skip over all the FCPS/teacher bashing posts here, but the one post about teachers not providing feedback really got me thinking.

If the new norm is that teachers just put a score in the grade book and it’s on the student to come talk to the teachers to understand why they got that score, we have a serious problem. I can’t imagine not getting an essay back that I wrote without any feedback on how to improve my writing. Let alone a math test…

This is a core function to learning in my opinion and not something that can just be done away with or on a request only basis.

Teachers say this is because they are overworked and have too many students. The lack of teachers at the moment probably isn’t making this any easier. And with all the mud being thrown in their face on a daily basis, I can’t imagine anyone would want to go into teaching. So now we have a retention and recruiting problem…

At some point someone needs to throw up the red flag on a national level and turn this ship around. And by that I mean addressing the real issues and not these BS “CRT” and “GET THE PORN OUT OF SCHOOLS” distractions. The real issues i see are:

1. Retention-  (fix this by better pay, benefits)
2. Recruiting- this is a nationwide issue. Perhaps full ride scholarships for teachers like the military does with ROTC. No one wants to go into student debt to get treated like a subhuman 
3. Morale- give the teachers their dignity back. They are professionals and should be treated as such. No, Karen, just because you have children in school does not mean the teachers work for you or you should be able to dictate how they run their classroom. They are public servants - like police or judges. Treat them with respect. 
4. State Testing- just get rid of it already. It takes away from the students learning and puts pressure on teachers to only teach towards the test (this is what happens when you tie teacher raises and school funding to test scores). Let’s be honest- rich people care about it because the high test scores affect their property value. We don’t need to be making decisions about public education to benefit some rich people and their property values

I’m sure there are a lot of other problems, but this really jumped out to me. Just my thoughts. And this isn’t just high school- my middle schooler also hasn’t received feedback on assignments all year :( [/quote]

I agree with you on most points but as a former high school English teacher who left the profession because I was working 60-80 hours a week and still never done:

I absolutely support teachers not writing in margins of papers.  Seriously.  For the vast majority of students it is a complete waste of time.  I’d spend hours and hours writing detailed feedback…let’s say, 10 mins per student x 120 students = 20 hours of work.  20 hours!  And I got 5 hours is planning time per week to plan all of my lessons, not even counting grading.  So it was never done, and I was always feeling inadequate and a failure and stressed.

Of those 120 students, fewer than 10 would actually read the comments, and maybe 5 per assignment might ask for the chance to re-write something.  The rest just looked for a grade and threw out the paper…or at best maybe skimmed comments looking for praise and ignored everything else.

I might have at most 5-10% of students who acted upon suggestions even when I gave time to do revisions and rewriting in class.

So, of those 20 hours…only 1 hour actually had any impact on student achievement.  I literally gave up that many hours every week that I could have spent with my friends, family, fitness, and my own goals and joys…all
Of which I neglected because I was constantly grading papers.

Now, if I were to go back (and if I could turn back time and get back those literally YEARS of my life I lost trying to earn gold stars for being a great English teacher) I would give just a grade and would conference with students in class who asked.  Each student could get 5-10 mins and 3 actionable tips for improvement.  All in the school day.  They’d be able to revise.  Win/win.[/quote]

Teaching DOWN to those who don't care is not the answer. That's not fulfilling your job to the kids who do care.

Your complaints are valid and understandable, and the posts of other teachers on here are also appalling to read in terms of how the kids treat them, but you're lumping all the kids together. That's disrespectful also. And handing them some verbose, unhelpful "rubric" with a number on it is not teaching them. It's not. I was a writing instructor for awhile -and I did the margin comments and red ink write ups for my classes b/c it is the most useful feedback- and these things are useless.

So, your solution is not a solution. But I'd be interested in hearing from teachers what the solution is. Because at this point, why even give assignments. Most kids (in other than the fact-based subjects like math) are not getting meaningful feedback and learning the material to their abilities, and then college professors, employers, etc. complain that "kids can't write" or "kids aren't capable of analyzing" problems. Well. . . . that's b/c you don't learn that from a rubric. [/quote]

Well, you are not resign very closely. This actually IS a solution.  No margin comments….there is no need to do for 149 students what is useful only to 5 of them.  The fact that you were a “writing instructor” and wrote margin notes that you felt were effective doesn’t mean they actually ARE effective.[b]It actually does mean that. I've seen it first hand through teaching, grading/commenting and meeting with students.[/b]

My HS students were honest, for the most part.  And the vast majority would admit they didn’t care or pay attention to the comments.  Just the grade. [b]"Vast majority." Ok. Whatever you need to tell yourself.[/b]

Rubrics don’t teach writing.  But writers become better writers the more they write and have a real audience who gives feedback on their writing.  NOT assessment feedback from a teacher.  Real feedback from a real audience.  [b]Lazy and false.[/b]

A good writing teacher would assign FAR more than she could ever read, much less comment on.  A great English teacher would spend time creating real writing opportunities for students, planning effective lessons, and guiding students toward developing lots of first drafts into a few final drafts. [/quote][/quote]

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