Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Why can't teachers be more organized?

I hate to say this, but we haven't seen it get any better in middle school. If anything, it's gotten worse.

Dd12 is an 8th grader and has been having ongoing issues with her literacy teacher, whom she loves but who doesn't give them due dates for virtually anything.

I fear that broaching it at conferences has shot her in the foot. I told him that she's having a hard time prioritizing b/c she doesn't know when any of his assignments are due beyond the "sometime this quarter" or "within the next two weeks" type of stuff he's giving them. For that reason, she's putting his things down as low priority and finishing work for other classes first. More than once she's been caught off guard when she finds out that his big essay is due tomorrow suddenly.

His assertion is that she should know that she needs to be working on it b/c she got it a week ago, for instance, even if he didn't tell them until the last minute when it was due. When I told him that it wasn't working that way and she's winding up writing the whole thing the night before at 8 p.m., he kind of insinuated that she isn't giving him her best effort and he may grade her more harshly in the future.

I believe that the exact quote was something to the effect of how well she had done on a recent essay (an A) until he found out that it had been written the night before it was due at which point he said that he would give her a "D for effort." I really hope that doesn't translate into her getting Bs or Cs on future essays b/c they aren't massively better than the quickly written one.

She really is an excellent writer and, despite last minute work that is stressing her, she turns out quality work on short notice.

Cricket2, this is nothing short of outrageous. If this happened at the college level, the student would have grounds for a grievance procedure against the professor.

We'll be monitoring her grades closely. If he grades her more poorly based on his perception that she did the work too quickly, I will complain to the GT coordinator, who loves dd, and the administration if needed.

I think the elementary school teachers are not providing you with a syllabus because they aren't required to. I taught at a community college, and we were required to turn in our syllabus by the day the class started. Our public schools have a curriculm set by the sd, and they have pacing guides for at least some of the classes. I don't know if you can get your hands on that info though.

Some teachers are just more organized than others, so some years you lose out. I do know that the teachers at the school where my dd go have 45 minutes of planning daily plus another 45 minutes twice a week. Unfortunately, they spend a lot of that time in meetings, going over standardized test scores curriculm changes, meeting with parents, etc.

I think it's reasonable to ask for the spelling words a week early.

Exactly!

Not to hijack this thread, but this quote got me. It is something I've been thinking too. I've gone in with a very "cooperative/teamwork" attitude to help my son in school. I've gotten back a clear message, "do it my way or get out." The [elementary] teachers I'm dealing with DO NOT want anything from the parents except cookies, gifts, and kudos. They don't want to work with me at all. I'm become bitter in case you can't tell.

All it seems to take is one kid for whom the system really doesn't work to make a parent bitter. I'm in that same spot with dd10. Although we've gotten some accommodations that are better this year, she still doesn't fit and dealing with that has made me hyperaware of how flawed our GT identification and services are such that I rant and derail threads regularly with my irritation about both.

Cricket, this is spot on. Document everything. Write down what he said to you, in ink with the date on it, and put it in a binder with everything she already has from him this year. Write down any further interactions and date them. Your record-keeping can be a key negotiating item.

DeeDee

Would you preemptively talk to the GT coordinator or just wait and see what happens with her grades?

I would do something now. Changing your daughter's grade based on how she did the work (rather than on the quality of the work itself) is an ethical violation. The only way he could ethically do this is if 1) he stated ahead of time that the work process was part of the assignment and would be graded, and 2) he had a systematic way of getting the same information for all the students.