Anonymous wrote:One of my kid’s teachers got his recs in just under the wire. My kid wasn’t worried. “Mr X would never have agreed to write me a letter if he was going to flake on me.” It caused my kid exactly zero stress and he really likes and respects this teacher.

He has thanked both his recommenders in person (stopped by their classrooms before school last week). Teachers - do you prefer receiving a hand written note also? I suggested to my kid that he could write a thank you note once he decides where he will be going (so after decisions come in). Any small gift that works for you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid's teacher still has just over 4 hours, application still not submitted, so I hope she's almost done. Yes, he requested it back in April per our school's policy and yes, followed up as recently as a few days ago. I believe she will get it done, but geez, this is last minute!

Crazy of you to agree to 50. I set my max at 20 and don’t agree to more. Let other teachers carry some of the burden. It is hard to do a good job if you do too many. I would actually like to set a limit of 15.

Well, you had one student’s application to worry about.

She may have 50 or so students to help, plus her real job and her home obligations on top of that. Just because she hasn’t done yours doesn’t mean she hasn’t been working diligently.

this is part of her read job. if she had too many already, she should have said no

Sigh. No, it is NOT part of a teacher’s job. That has been repeatedly clarified throughout this thread. It isn’t in a teacher’s contract. And as your comment demonstrates, teachers can say no. Since they can say no, it clearly isn’t part of their job.

And because some teachers do say no, those of us who agree to write letters get slammed.

If parents would actually understand that we have until 11/1, then this thread would have stopped on page 1. Interestingly, nobody has come back and said the letters were late. It’s just a ton of parents assuming teachers aren’t fulfilling the task (even though they clearly are).

Man, I hope some of these parents actually encourage their kids to say thank you.

If you're a jr year teacher and you don't see this as part of your job, you should do something else.

No, it’s not a part of our job. Screaming the opposite doesn’t change reality.

There’s an assumption/hope we will write some, but we are able to say no as often as we like. And think about this logically: would you want it to be a requirement? What if I can’t say anything positive about your student?

I write close to 50. All on time / early. I do that out of respect for my students and a desire to help them out, NOT because it’s a requirement of my job.