Anonymous
12/24/2020 13:07
Subject: Re:I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I post my syllabus every year. I've had to change it twice in the last 3 months due to my district grading regulations changing. My friends who teach in other districts around the country have told me that their districts have reweighted everything too. I don't post all due dates in the syllabus. I teach in high school, not college. We sometimes have to adjust test dates and assignments. If students struggle with something, I'll push back the test. If I just published everything in September and didn't respond to my student's needs, parents would complain about that. We can't win.
The lack of publishing due dates means that kids no longer have a central location to find them
I update the syllabus throughout the year. I give at least 10 days (minimum) notice prior to the test. It's all in the syllabus which is pinned to the top of all of my classes' notices. When I make changes to it, it automatically sends an email to each student. Plus I verbally tell students in class.
I would assume your kids are doing fine. DD has assignment dates buried in e-mails (with no heads up in the subject line)
OMG yes, put the pertinent info in the subject line. Teachers are awful about this, they constantly bury the lead. Deadlines need to be the first sentence/subject.
It's "bury the lede." Apparently, spelling needs to be brought back into public education. Do you know why teachers put important information in the middle/end of their assignments? To get students to read through the entire assignment. If they didn't, students would never get past the first line or two.
We have been instructed that no dates other than school system info go into our syllabi. Instead we use Canvas for the Weekly Agenda and Assignments. It works out a lot better for the everyone imo because it allows teachers to adjust timelines as things come up. Otherwise, as an example, my students would have had a big assignment due right when they were also doing some unplanned/unexpected MAP testing. I was able to change my due dates and deadlines to accommodate that so that the students weren't backed into a corner with testing and a project all at the same time.
Anonymous
12/24/2020 13:02
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm sick of all of these teachers who are defending teacher disorganization by pointing out that the children are also disorganized.
Yes, we hold children's hands. Because they need help. They are not little adults. We do not expect children to be equal to or better at their jobs than adults.
They are children. You are adults. Get your shit together.
Thank you.
+1000
These are not adults. It took you extensive training all summer to 'learn' the tools. Get it together. Parents can't do it all either. We have jobs too.
You're naive if you think that those two weeks (delaying the start of school) was for extensive training. (ES Teacher)
LOL, same. We were talked at for days about restorative practices, equity and other things that had nothing to do with DL. There was no DL training at all.
Anonymous
12/24/2020 11:46
Subject: Re:I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I post my syllabus every year. I've had to change it twice in the last 3 months due to my district grading regulations changing. My friends who teach in other districts around the country have told me that their districts have reweighted everything too. I don't post all due dates in the syllabus. I teach in high school, not college. We sometimes have to adjust test dates and assignments. If students struggle with something, I'll push back the test. If I just published everything in September and didn't respond to my student's needs, parents would complain about that. We can't win.
The lack of publishing due dates means that kids no longer have a central location to find them
I update the syllabus throughout the year. I give at least 10 days (minimum) notice prior to the test. It's all in the syllabus which is pinned to the top of all of my classes' notices. When I make changes to it, it automatically sends an email to each student. Plus I verbally tell students in class.
I would assume your kids are doing fine. DD has assignment dates buried in e-mails (with no heads up in the subject line)
OMG yes, put the pertinent info in the subject line. Teachers are awful about this, they constantly bury the lead. Deadlines need to be the first sentence/subject.
It's "bury the lede." Apparently, spelling needs to be brought back into public education. Do you know why teachers put important information in the middle/end of their assignments? To get students to read through the entire assignment. If they didn't, students would never get past the first line or two.
Anonymous
12/24/2020 08:15
Subject: Re:I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and I post my syllabus every year. I've had to change it twice in the last 3 months due to my district grading regulations changing. My friends who teach in other districts around the country have told me that their districts have reweighted everything too. I don't post all due dates in the syllabus. I teach in high school, not college. We sometimes have to adjust test dates and assignments. If students struggle with something, I'll push back the test. If I just published everything in September and didn't respond to my student's needs, parents would complain about that. We can't win.
The lack of publishing due dates means that kids no longer have a central location to find them
I update the syllabus throughout the year. I give at least 10 days (minimum) notice prior to the test. It's all in the syllabus which is pinned to the top of all of my classes' notices. When I make changes to it, it automatically sends an email to each student. Plus I verbally tell students in class.
I would assume your kids are doing fine. DD has assignment dates buried in e-mails (with no heads up in the subject line)
OMG yes, put the pertinent info in the subject line. Teachers are awful about this, they constantly bury the lead. Deadlines need to be the first sentence/subject.
Anonymous
12/24/2020 03:25
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
I don't think any believes that, so what the heck was going on during those two weeks?
Data. What do you think administrators want to talk to teachers about?
Gathering data on your students.
We talk about how to plan to gather the data, how to plan based on the data, and most importantly, how to record the data in our school improvement plan. We spend a lot of time choosing the correct verbs to describe the improvement in data.
Yep! (ES Teacher here)
Anonymous
12/23/2020 20:56
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:
I don't think any believes that, so what the heck was going on during those two weeks?
Data. What do you think administrators want to talk to teachers about?
Gathering data on your students.
We talk about how to plan to gather the data, how to plan based on the data, and most importantly, how to record the data in our school improvement plan. We spend a lot of time choosing the correct verbs to describe the improvement in data.
Anonymous
12/23/2020 18:59
Subject: Re:I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Happens to our daughter too, we screen shot now and e-mail those in response to missing assignment messages. I can’t figure out if the systems are terrible, the teacher is unorganized, or the teacher doesn’t understand how tow receive documents
Same here. DD has to screenshot some assignments because they are not really downloadable. Its frustrating because if she doesn't take this extra step the grade would be a zero which really drops her overall course grade.
What's happening now with distance learning is that process is being evaluated over content or skill knowledge. I have noticed that the teachers are very lax and generous on the actual content ..ie everything is much easier from a skill/knowledge standpoint but they are very inflexible on process. ie tech problems, teacher problems, submission problems etc. This is a huge win for kids who have a parent checking everything or kids who are very process and instruction oriented. This is a huge loss for kids who don't have a parent watching the process or kids that struggle with executive functioning. For middle school, the emphasis on process is not age appropriate for many, especially boys.
I'm surprised that more teachers have not seemed to even attempt to review their own contributions to this problem or attempt to look through the lens of a student.
Yes and yes! My MS boy definitely struggles with the process of submitting. I’ve said to screenshot stuff but he forgets that too. Honesty we shouldn’t even have to make our kids screenshot. The submit process should be smoother so we aren’t all playing catch-up constantly, looking for “missing “ assignments and emailing them in, then having kid remind teacher to look again. I complained about this to the school board at the beginning of the year and was chastised on here ...people said What can the board do? The board can decide on a contract for a better learning submittal and grade tracking system. I can totally see why so many kids have
D and F now. How can they keep up with this mess?
Cosigning everything here. 100% my child does not have special needs and is a strong A/B+ student, but landed in the D/F category due to submission problems, teacher not adjusting the grade once work was produced by the makeup deadline, simply missing that she had to do an assignment due to confusion from too many lists if assignments that didnt reconcile, tech issues she was being penalized for. We have good internet and an excess of computers at our house, but still thr connection was sometimes glitchy but teachers would downgrade for having no audio or no video or not being able to open or efut a doc. As soon as i realized her midterm grades were so low, i dove in and applied pressure to her and the teachers to bring the grades up. Im a non working mom ( at this point in time due to covid), so I was able to help her get organized and plow through the backlog. So much work! I dont know how kids with less involved or tech or non English speaking parents do it, let alone special needs kids.
Anonymous
12/23/2020 18:49
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Teachers so YOU feel like you didn't receive enough training when in theory you had two weeks of training, but you're expecting more from children and adults who haven't had any formal training?
I have quite a few coworkers that are 50-65 years old. Honestly, a year's worth of training wouldn't have been enough for them.
Anonymous
12/23/2020 18:45
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm sick of all of these teachers who are defending teacher disorganization by pointing out that the children are also disorganized.
Yes, we hold children's hands. Because they need help. They are not little adults. We do not expect children to be equal to or better at their jobs than adults.
They are children. You are adults. Get your shit together.
Thank you.
+1000
These are not adults. It took you extensive training all summer to 'learn' the tools. Get it together. Parents can't do it all either. We have jobs too.
You're naive if you think that those two weeks (delaying the start of school) was for extensive training. (ES Teacher)
I don't think any believes that, so what the heck was going on during those two weeks?
Staff meetings, LOTS of emails, YouTube videos, and planning.
Anonymous
12/23/2020 07:51
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Teachers so YOU feel like you didn't receive enough training when in theory you had two weeks of training, but you're expecting more from children and adults who haven't had any formal training?
The SCHOOL DISTRICT expects more. Fixed that for you. Too many parents complained that last spring wasn’t rigorous enough we are making it more rigorous and parents are complaining. If you don’t want your kids to do the work, fine but then don’t complain out of the other dude of your mouth that they didn’t learn anything.
The other piece is that for the vast majority of the software in my district, the student and parent use is very simple. Typically, they just need to be able to navigate to a specific place by clicking buttons and the rest is just using Google Suite. The teacher part is much more complex. A lot of teachers were tricked because last spring most courses were given premade modules to use each week. Those teachers had no idea how time consuming it is to create modules abs test them for bugs. And the training made it seem like it could all be done in 2 or 3 steps. I had to make a video for my team and it took 7 steps for a simple assignment.
Anonymous
12/23/2020 07:44
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Teachers so YOU feel like you didn't receive enough training when in theory you had two weeks of training, but you're expecting more from children and adults who haven't had any formal training?
The SCHOOL DISTRICT expects more. Fixed that for you. Too many parents complained that last spring wasn’t rigorous enough we are making it more rigorous and parents are complaining. If you don’t want your kids to do the work, fine but then don’t complain out of the other dude of your mouth that they didn’t learn anything.
Anonymous
12/22/2020 22:07
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Teachers so YOU feel like you didn't receive enough training when in theory you had two weeks of training, but you're expecting more from children and adults who haven't had any formal training?
Anonymous
12/22/2020 15:15
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm sick of all of these teachers who are defending teacher disorganization by pointing out that the children are also disorganized.
Yes, we hold children's hands. Because they need help. They are not little adults. We do not expect children to be equal to or better at their jobs than adults.
They are children. You are adults. Get your shit together.
Thank you.
+1000
These are not adults. It took you extensive training all summer to 'learn' the tools. Get it together. Parents can't do it all either. We have jobs too.
You're naive if you think that those two weeks (delaying the start of school) was for extensive training. (ES Teacher)
I don't think any believes that, so what the heck was going on during those two weeks?
Anonymous
12/22/2020 15:12
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm sick of all of these teachers who are defending teacher disorganization by pointing out that the children are also disorganized.
Yes, we hold children's hands. Because they need help. They are not little adults. We do not expect children to be equal to or better at their jobs than adults.
They are children. You are adults. Get your shit together.
Thank you.
+1000
These are not adults. It took you extensive training all summer to 'learn' the tools. Get it together. Parents can't do it all either. We have jobs too.
You're naive if you think that those two weeks (delaying the start of school) was for extensive training. (ES Teacher)
Anonymous
12/22/2020 14:43
Subject: I understand why so many kids are failing now
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I'm sick of all of these teachers who are defending teacher disorganization by pointing out that the children are also disorganized.
Yes, we hold children's hands. Because they need help. They are not little adults. We do not expect children to be equal to or better at their jobs than adults.
They are children. You are adults. Get your shit together.
Thank you.
+1000
These are not adults. It took you extensive training all summer to 'learn' the tools. Get it together. Parents can't do it all either. We have jobs too.
Wait, what? Did I miss it? I am a teacher and we had 5 days of training prior to the start of school. It was day after day of being dumped on. Zoom, Google Classroom, Seesaw, Nearpod, Peardeck, Google accessibility tools, SEL, more SEL, etc. It left our heads spinning.