Or, I should say, doesn't appear to be reading them anyhow.
I love my son. He's got a monstrous vocabulary and generally enjoys writing. But good grief he can really produce some Word Salad at times. And silly me, I'm expecting the schools to actually help!
For the last few years, it was painfully clear that the teachers were satisfied with giving gold stars as long as the margins, line-spacing and headers were all correct. I bit my tongue, expecting that things would change in high school and that DS would actually get constructive feedback on his efforts so that he could actually learn to write more betterish.
We're now 3/4 through Freshman year and in my son's advanced English & Comp class, I'm seriously questioning whether or not his teacher actually reads the papers he turns in. I think the first couple essays came back with some much-needed criticism with an opportunity to rewrite and resubmit. But to the best of my recollection, he's not had a single paper kicked back for a re-write in months.
Are my expectations out of whack? It's been a few decades since I was a freshman, but I remember our teacher regularly ripping our efforts to shreds (sometimes literally) and putting us through the paces to edit and improve our work. Dare to use passive voice? DIE! Contractions? DIE! Faulty parallel structure? Failure to provide examples? Weak transitions? DIE! DIE! DIE!
But this teacher just gives an A with nary a comment... and I know that I've let some pretty shoddy work leave this house HOPING that the teacher would ding my son and demand a partial rewrite.
My son thinks that we are punishing him by making him slog through the editing process with us before he turns it in because he knows he can get an A without the additional effort.
The principal & counselor both say the teacher has no guidelines regarding editing & rewrites and that I should cut him some slack because he has such a large class. Arggh.
This is a problem in my H.S. as well. Teachers have up to 40 students in a class, teach 5 classes and are expected to grade their own essays. Thus papers are not graded for weeks sometimes months, there is very few comments evens with a bad grade. And most of the writing for fear of cheating is done in class. It's easier to make sure that the writing is the students own words if you watch them write it. Essays are rarely sent home for rewrite. I have no idea how anyone learns to write this way.
It came back to bite my DS last semester because half his grade was writing. It was based on two essays, the second one wasn't graded till almost the end of the semester. And the teacher dropped my son out of honors because of it. This semester, the class he was moved into because they would teach writing skills. This week will be the first writing assignment, half way through the semester.
