Anonymous wrote:They're up! Both of my kids got perfect report cards (3rd and K, hahahaha)

Anonymous wrote:I’ve tried emailing the teachers to ask for help with this but they’re not very receptive. Why can’t I have a syllabus that details what assignments are due and by when? What makes HS planning so different from college? I get it if this is your first year teaching a class but after a few years, isn’t the planning mostly done? Sure there will be some tweaks here and there but the topics and assessments/assignments should be planned. You can’t tell me that every teacher is starting from scratch every year.

Anonymous wrote:It is tremendously hard for my kid with learning disabilities and an IEP that allows for extra time (which may or may not be actually given) to track progress when things aren’t graded until the very end of the quarter. Things appear as missing when he turned them in and we cannot prove it was within the bounds of his deadline (different from classmates). I think teaching is a tremendously difficult job. I also can’t imagine that a room full of kids who can’t track how they are doing is that conducive to learning and academic growth.

Anonymous wrote:It is tremendously hard for my kid with learning disabilities and an IEP that allows for extra time (which may or may not be actually given) to track progress when things aren’t graded until the very end of the quarter. Things appear as missing when he turned them in and we cannot prove it was within the bounds of his deadline (different from classmates). I think teaching is a tremendously difficult job. I also can’t imagine that a room full of kids who can’t track how they are doing is that conducive to learning and academic growth.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid hasn't had a grade entered since March 19 in one class. When are teachers supposed to get grades in?

Yesterday

If you have a teacher who is a hot mess who can't seem to manage Gradebook, at what point do you flag this to someone else in the school (guidance counselor)? All my kids' teachers are fine except for one who is near retirement whose grades lag by a month or so and even when grades are entered--it's often a mix of wrong stuff (0s and 50%s for the whole class.)

My experience is that the administration is utterly incapable of doing anything about the teachers who are a hot mess. What are they going to do -- fire them? They can't hire for most of these positions, so they really don't want to fire. Instead, the counselor will give you the sympathetic face, and say that they are aware of the problem and that efforts are being made to address it (which they probably aren't, but the counselors have no authority). My HS kid has one awful teacher who is getting fired -- after not doing much all year, she came into the class and blamed all the kids for the fact that her contract is getting not renewed -- literally said it was THEIR FAULT she was getting fire -- so of course at this point she's doing even less. I'm not the one that complained about her, but I'm sure some parents probably did.

For parents -- if you aren't checking the canvass grades as well as parentvue, that's sometimes helpful. You should consider that the grade is whichever is higher -- canvas or parentvue. And if they both say zero, there's a *chance* that it hasn't been turned in, but a chance that it just hasn't been entered onto either system. It makes it really, really hard for parents that want to impose consequences on their teens -- you can't really say "You're grounded until you're caught up on all that missing work" when you really can't tell what's missing!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Worst part of the new grading policy is you are seeing more and more teachers no longer assigning papers. Knowing we have only 10 days to grade for 150 kids, most English teachers I know are just chunking them into smaller, easier to read and grade assignments. Instead of kids having to write a 5 paragraph paper in 3 weeks, we are asking them to write 5 individual paragraphs with each being completed over a week. Also helps reach the AT requirements.

A 5 paragraph essay takes 3 weeks to write? Shouldn’t it take a week at most?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Worst part of the new grading policy is you are seeing more and more teachers no longer assigning papers. Knowing we have only 10 days to grade for 150 kids, most English teachers I know are just chunking them into smaller, easier to read and grade assignments. Instead of kids having to write a 5 paragraph paper in 3 weeks, we are asking them to write 5 individual paragraphs with each being completed over a week. Also helps reach the AT requirements.

I'm sympathetic to this, but I'm also kind of wondering. I went to a public HS in the 80s. My classes had probably 25-30 kids in them. We had essays assigned several times per semester (typically multiple pages were expected) and the teachers read them and provided substantive feedback within a week or so. And back then they had to read handwriting, typically not typed papers. What is it that's making it so hard for the current teachers to do that? Did the 80s teachers work more nights? Or do the current teachers have too much admin burden and -- if that's it -- is there a way to address that? If you're a HS english teacher, would it work to have a day or two a week where you assign the kids to talk amongst themselves about the reading, or something like that, while you grade essays? I think we also had classes where we traded essays and each marked up each other's essays with comments and constructive feedback. That could sometimes be really helpful itself.

Anonymous wrote:Worst part of the new grading policy is you are seeing more and more teachers no longer assigning papers. Knowing we have only 10 days to grade for 150 kids, most English teachers I know are just chunking them into smaller, easier to read and grade assignments. Instead of kids having to write a 5 paragraph paper in 3 weeks, we are asking them to write 5 individual paragraphs with each being completed over a week. Also helps reach the AT requirements.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid hasn't had a grade entered since March 19 in one class. When are teachers supposed to get grades in?

Yesterday

If you have a teacher who is a hot mess who can't seem to manage Gradebook, at what point do you flag this to someone else in the school (guidance counselor)? All my kids' teachers are fine except for one who is near retirement whose grades lag by a month or so and even when grades are entered--it's often a mix of wrong stuff (0s and 50%s for the whole class.)