Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, there are a lot of teachers in MCPS that really don't like their jobs.

I love my job! My job is educating children. My job is not catering to emotionally unstable helicopter parents or disrespectful parents on power trips. I'll be honest, if you are easy to work with and I get an email from you between 3 and 8 pm, I probably email you back within 15 minutes. If you are difficult to work with, I wait until the next morning. If you are a complete douche or a raving maniac, I forward your email to the counselor first, wait for her decide what if any response is merited, and I'll reply to you at 3 pm: "Thanks for your email and appraising me of this concern. Unfortunately, I will need to consult _____ before I can address this matter. I will contact you ASAP."

That made me laugh .

Anonymous wrote:Wow, there are a lot of teachers in MCPS that really don't like their jobs.

I love my job! My job is educating children. My job is not catering to emotionally unstable helicopter parents or disrespectful parents on power trips. I'll be honest, if you are easy to work with and I get an email from you between 3 and 8 pm, I probably email you back within 15 minutes. If you are difficult to work with, I wait until the next morning. If you are a complete douche or a raving maniac, I forward your email to the counselor first, wait for her decide what if any response is merited, and I'll reply to you at 3 pm: "Thanks for your email and appraising me of this concern. Unfortunately, I will need to consult _____ before I can address this matter. I will contact you ASAP."

Another public school educator here. In the very rare instance I don't respond right away, it's because I need admin. to advise, or I need access to files not in my possession--or I want to think about my response so it's thoughtful. It is absolutely a two-way street. I will do my best to help, but please consider thIs:
If it is in regards to a grade dispute or a request to grade a late assignment:
Please, consider letting your child experience a setback. Let them do it now, while they are young. It's an important lesson, and often reveals areas for growth, like time management or organization or lack of understanding.

If it is about a procedural issue like dismissal, follow school rules/expectations.

Remember that your kids are not always reliable narrators. Approach teachers with a tone of patience and collaboration. And be reasonable and try to see the big picture. If you are petty or demanding, the teacher will be distracted by the tone and less able to strategize. I say this as an educator who is as well-educated and credentialed as they come. I also am very devoted, passionate, and hard working--I feel deserving of parents' respect. This is anonymous so I will say it here: you probably want people like me to want to continue educating your children. I find the comments on this board very demoralizing at times. I stay in the profession because I absolutely love what I do. I certainly could make a better living doing something else. I am not sure why teachers are scrutinized and judged so harshly in comparison to other fields.

Anonymous wrote:Wow, there are a lot of teachers in MCPS that really don't like their jobs.

I absolutely love my job. I'm just trying to say this as gently as possible: without question, parent emails are the lowest priority item in my day 95% of the time. Add to that the amount of energy required to be truthful, concise and tactful, and it is sometimes a time-sucking task. I know this may sound offensive, and for that I am sorry. But if you child's teacher isn't getting back to you ASAP it might mean they are busy or they may have forgotten (they don't sit at a desktop and check email all day). Other possibilities could be that your request doesn't even make it onto the radar in grand scheme of things of his/her tasks, or that you are somehow off-putting and it's hard for the teacher to shift gears from working with kids to trying to placate an adult.

Hey, can this work both ways? If I promise to get back to you within 1 business day will you promise to return my phone calls and emails when I am trying to get ahold of you when there's something to discuss regarding your child?

Will you promise to update your phone numbers and email addresses with the office when they change so that when your child is sick or has missed the bus I can actually get in touch with you and not have to call every person listed on your emergency form to find someone who has a way to contact you?

Will you promise to send your child to school knowing how they'll get home each day so I don't have to make that phone call 5 minutes before dismissal numerous times per week?

Will you promise to follow protocol and send in a written note when your child is going home with someone else and not just send me an email at 2pm then get mad that I was teaching your child and not reading email at 2pm so I sent them home the usual way?

For the record--I check my email at home once before I leave in the morning and once in the evening. I will get back to you if I have the answer on hand and I'll at least respond to say I need to find out if that's the case.

But this relationship works both ways.

Wow, there are a lot of teachers in MCPS that really don't like their jobs.

In a 40 hour work week if you divide my time evenly with all students each one gets 14 minutes (providing I don't eat, attend department/staff meetings or use the bathroom). In that time I need to do everything for that student: teach them the content, make their lessons, make their tests, grade their papers, attend their IEP meetings, meet with their counselors, co-plan with team members, adopt new materials, disaggregate data to inform instruction, etc. When you take into consideration all of the "back-end" stuff that takes place it takes it down to maybe 4 or 5 minutes per student. If each email takes 2-5 minutes it eats into my most limited of resources: time.

Of course I spend more time than this working because their are more needs than will fit into a 40 hour week, but their are not enough hours in the day to get everything done to high standards all the time. I'm not trying to justify it because I try really, really hard to get everything done to the best of my ability (like almost all of the teachers I know). The reality is that something has to give. And if something has to give it will never, ever be the well-being of my students or the teaching quality they receive.

Some will check, some won't. I would check and reply during regular hours.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. I was up at 8am checking, sending, and responding to emails. I have no problem with parents emailing me a question, in fact I love when they do! However, I also sometimes need to wait for a response from a supervisor or feel that a phone call would be better to answer their questions, and I don't call parents from my home number. In that case I generally let them know unless I can call them within the next few hours at work.

The parents I don't respond to at night are the ones that email me 3 times a day, or even 3 times an hour. Those are the ones I work hard to set boundaries with and will respond to once a day. Otherwise their family starts to take over my life and that's not fair to anyone.

'

Some parents emails you 3 times an hour? They send you 20 emails a day everyday? And you don't report this to your principal to handle? Sorry not buying it.

I'm a different poster, but below our principal's pay grade. However, our counselor knows which parents do this and asks that we cc her on our replies. Then the parents flip out and want to know why the counselor has to be involved. Because you emailed me ten times in two days!

I'm the first poster, and we have a similar strategy. If the child is in special education, the case manager (at least) gets cc'd on any emails. If the child is gen-ed, the counselor or assistant principal gets cc'd, depending on the parent's concerns.

And yes, the parents tend to get upset about that, but it's all about those boundaries again. I want to have a good relationship with the parents of all of my kids, but there has to be a line.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I emailed a teacher for the first time this week. No reply (about 3 days ago). I am not upset but I would be a bit more impressed if she did reply..even if it were just to say I need to get back to you when I can access my files (though I think it was a very simple question)

Teachers can occasionally miss emails; their email volume is pretty high and from what I hear the MCPS email system can drop messages from time to time. I don't think it's inappropriate to send a "just a ping to make sure you got my last message" after a few days.

Teacher here-please do this! We get so many emails and occasionally I open one, read it, but don't have time to reply at that moment and just forget it in the daily whirlwind.

So what do you do when a student forgets to do something because of the same excuse you are saying? Just curious

In MCPS, you do nothing. It's not even worth giving a late penalty when you know that a kid didn't even try the assignment until a week after it was due. And, if you are even thinking about not accepting work that is weeks past the deadline, give up. The parents will bully the principal into forcing you to grade it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I emailed a teacher for the first time this week. No reply (about 3 days ago). I am not upset but I would be a bit more impressed if she did reply..even if it were just to say I need to get back to you when I can access my files (though I think it was a very simple question)

Teachers can occasionally miss emails; their email volume is pretty high and from what I hear the MCPS email system can drop messages from time to time. I don't think it's inappropriate to send a "just a ping to make sure you got my last message" after a few days.

Teacher here-please do this! We get so many emails and occasionally I open one, read it, but don't have time to reply at that moment and just forget it in the daily whirlwind.

So what do you do when a student forgets to do something because of the same excuse you are saying? Just curious

If that child was managing 150 other children and differentiating their interactions while completing all their work and this was an unusual occurrence (she used the word occasionally), I'd give them a pass on it. I think most teachers in my experience would. It's the ones who are constantly forgetting things that don't get one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. I was up at 8am checking, sending, and responding to emails. I have no problem with parents emailing me a question, in fact I love when they do! However, I also sometimes need to wait for a response from a supervisor or feel that a phone call would be better to answer their questions, and I don't call parents from my home number. In that case I generally let them know unless I can call them within the next few hours at work.

The parents I don't respond to at night are the ones that email me 3 times a day, or even 3 times an hour. Those are the ones I work hard to set boundaries with and will respond to once a day. Otherwise their family starts to take over my life and that's not fair to anyone.

'

Some parents emails you 3 times an hour? They send you 20 emails a day everyday? And you don't report this to your principal to handle? Sorry not buying it.

I'm a different poster, but below our principal's pay grade. However, our counselor knows which parents do this and asks that we cc her on our replies. Then the parents flip out and want to know why the counselor has to be involved. Because you emailed me ten times in two days!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the smug private school parents out there:

I'm a private school teacher. I get why you need to justify your choice to spend 25K+/year on each child's education. I frankly think it's worth it.

But you don't need to justify your choice by putting down MCPS teachers. They are not lazy or unskilled. From what I have seen, they work a lot harder than most of us private school teachers. They have to deal with a lot more bureaucratic crap and often twice as many students.

The private school setting allows me to teach to the best of my ability because for the most part I am able to prioritize classroom instruction, individual attention to student needs, extensive feedback to students and communication with parents/counselors. That's why you spend 25K+ for your child. Not because MCPS teachers are worse than us.

We pulled our child from a private b/c the teachers weren't required to earn certification. A BS in English doesn't equip you with skills to teach.

What other profession would accept such nonsense?

Her "free" education is superior to any instruction she received at her former private. I could kick myself for wasting that money. People pay for the prestige.

Yes all those stale teachers with tenure who are just riding things out are A+

Agree. They never fire teachers. They just shuffle them around. Heck, even teachers that molest don't get fired in MCPS

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, all you teachers are lazy as fuck. You have been off a week and consider yourself off the clock or it is a slippery slope to answer a few emails written by parents? My husband works construction and takes emails, calls, and texts as needed to help the jobs. Sometimes as early as 5am and as late as 11pm. I am a physician's assistant and feel the same way. I check my emails often for patients. Most people in the real world don't work 6hr days and get off weekends, 10+ holidays, winter break, spring break, summers and snow days. How shameful of any of you who can't put in any effort to email a parent back so you can enjoy your free paid days off.

It would have been nice if they did some work-at-home for MCPS teachers. Most of the real world puts in extra hours.

Well, I think nothing would motivate someone to do work off the clock than calling them "lazy as fuck." If I thought I would checking emails at home could expose me to people like these two posters, then I also would limit my interaction with email to the day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I emailed a teacher for the first time this week. No reply (about 3 days ago). I am not upset but I would be a bit more impressed if she did reply..even if it were just to say I need to get back to you when I can access my files (though I think it was a very simple question)

Teachers can occasionally miss emails; their email volume is pretty high and from what I hear the MCPS email system can drop messages from time to time. I don't think it's inappropriate to send a "just a ping to make sure you got my last message" after a few days.

Teacher here-please do this! We get so many emails and occasionally I open one, read it, but don't have time to reply at that moment and just forget it in the daily whirlwind.

So what do you do when a student forgets to do something because of the same excuse you are saying? Just curious