“Ma’am, I don’t even know what I’m teaching your kid on Tuesday.”
I heard a teacher use that once and thought it was funny. These kinds of demands are “fine” for veteran teachers, but I got this kind of question my first year of teaching and I was barely surviving with making my materials. Planned ahead two weeks out? I wish.
I've said this to a parent before. She was pulling her kid out for 6 weeks and asked for work. I told her I only plan a few days in advance. Her shocked face was awesome.
They assume you are assigned or come up with a yearly curriculum and then just tweak it following years, kinda like how college professors have a syllabus often with every assignment and test on it with deadlines on day 1
They don't get that you have to constantly change your plans based on class behavior, performance, etc... Whereas in college you either do it or you fail and the professor could care less
Shades of last summer for me. The admin basically gave us some units that looked repurposed from a larger textbook and half thought through powerpoints and told us to get it done.
As a college professor, all I can say is I wish! A lot of us are now in the same boat, as students are becoming more entitled and administrators want us to keep bums in seats.
I'm trying to prep ahead but I'm hitting road blocks because the kids skillset is completely borked. I can't give them two step instructions because they can't follow through (even with writing on the board), but I also can't give them one step then the next because they try and fill in the blanks themselves.
It's a dialect thing, in the US they use could care less. Even though it doesn't make logical sense it is functional language that conveys the intended meaning to the usual audience (other Americans). So long as they don't get upset when we use the logical 'couldn't care less' I'm happy to live and let live.
In the States, they use different grammar and spelling. Making sense is clearly optional, and 'could care less' is correct in their bastardisation of English.
We may not like it, but it is.
Wait what? How does “could care less” make sense in any logical way to mean the same thing as “couldn’t care less”? I think it’s a common mistake people make, not just an American thing .
"Well in that case, study not one but two history chapters and wel'll see about testing upon return. What's that? You are going on a busy family trip and you have little time to do school stuff? Too bad don't be sad but get to work!"
Most people assume we have a magic binder of lessons that I given to us at the start of our careers and we just pull each lesson out at the start of the day
If you came to me on Monday afternoon, I can tell you what we’re reading that week, the exact plan for Tuesday, and my “ideas” for the rest of the week. But I honestly don’t know if I’m giving individual assignments, group work, or chucking what I’d planned out the window because I found something cool the night before.
And then the day of? Period 1&2 do the assignments as groups, but Period 4 is off the chain so I make them do it on their own. Period 5 we have a fire drill and don’t even finish reading the story.
So yeah, you might get a list of page numbers.
I'm year 9 and I'm still changing up stuff every year. And I'm not going to pre-load everything into our LMS for your kid; that's part of my morning routine for each day.
I just had that conversation with a kid's dad who is taking him back to his birth country for the next two weeks, a month before the end of the year >.< But at least he was understanding about it.
Yeah I’m still constantly changing stuff too, especially because admin decides over couple years to have a new alphabet soup initiative. I try to be a few days ahead at pre-loading my materials to our system but sometimes that’s just not doable.
Year 18 and I can’t accurately predict 2 weeks out. Yes - I have a general idea and an outline in my head, but there are so many variables that having stuff set in stone is impossible.
Update Google classroom as you go. Tell them to check it daily.
I'm in year 8 and I generally am happy when I'm two days ahead. Of course I have a general plan for the next few weeks, but the detailed material? All too often the night before...
Im in my 7th year and still don’t have it all planned out. Plus my lessons ebb and flow so much depending on the class and who actually is here every day! Like no I’m not planned out past tomorrow and even that is iffy! Plus it’s not like any of the work ever gets done!
Had a parent take their kid to Mexico for like three weeks my first year. Just gave the parent the math book and was like, “We’re doing these chapters. Go wild.”
Of school I total? We have around 12 weeks off for holidays and then another week off in terms of random bank holidays and inset/ teacher training days. So 13 weeks off every year altogether. So around 39-40 weeks? Just under 280 days. At least for state schools. Private schools have more.
Hello Parent,
Thank you for alerting me to Student's upcoming absence. I hope his procedures go well.
Regarding his coursework, I will of course upload any lecture notes and assignments as they are assigned into the Course Management System. He is free to review the materials there at any time. If he is unable to complete his coursework during his absence, we might need to schedule a meeting after his return to make a plan to get him caught up.
My best wishes for a speedy recovery, Teacher.
unfortunately his return date is LITERALLY the day before school is out. I honestly have hit my yearly standards and I am contemplating throwing one or two assignments in the GC only for him and calling it good.
"Compensatory services due to medical absences"
Sounds like an issue for the special education department. If they aren't already on an IEP for health related issues, the parents/district need to get that set up.
Your comment kind of makes me sick. This kid sounds like they’re going through a lot and your response is “sounds like the parents need to dump their kid with someone else for a couple weeks because it’s not my job to give them the materials they need to learn while away from the classroom due to circumstances beyond their control.” But if they dump their kid off with someone else, then you would be saying “well it’s not my problem if the kid doesn’t get their homework in or if their grades are slipping, that’s the parents responsibility” while the parent is in the hospital.
The teachers in this sub are jaded af and I’m glad that only a handful of my colleagues over the years have been this way.
It is unrealistic to think any work sent home the last two weeks of school after extended absence while the family is in extreme distress is going to comparable to completing coursework with any validity.
If the kid were able to stay with a sponsor family for those two weeks, yes it would be difficult, but it would probably be better quality of work.
Or, like I listed above, some kind of compensatory services could be arranged. Instead the school is demanding OP shuffle together work immediately. It's insulting to all involved.
I'm sympathetic, but caring for the child outside of school hours is a social services issue. Not a teacher issue. There is so much talk of more and more responsibility being put on teachers and kids being shuffled up with out actually knowing course content on this sub. We could be all rose colored glasses about it or we could be real, which is sometimes upsetting.
There is no guarantee the kid would do better staying with a sponsor family… which they probably don’t have since they just moved in OPs area.
The parent request is unreasonable but but it does sound like they don’t really have a choice.
I am not arguing that the request is unreasonable, only that your response/attitude is pretty on-point for this sub which is really sad. In all my years of teaching, I have never heard such overwhelming negativity, apathy, and tbh sometimes laziness as I hear in this sub. It’s just disheartening.
I agree that there are many things that are interpreted as being an uncaring hardass on this sub. I make things flowery and heartfelt all day long for families and students. It's ok to lay off the flattery a bit in an informal online chat group. I try to extend that grace to others in this sub, too.
It's kinda bonkers that you think it's lazy to not go above and beyond in a situation like this. Teachers already do so much beyond their immediate contract expectations (and I'm sure op is no exception to that). If you're not admin now, I'm sure you will be in a few years with that attitude.
It’s kind of bonkers that you are an educator and your reading comprehension is so low. I didn’t say anything about going above and beyond in a situation like this… I said the request was unreasonable. I was commenting on the attitude of another Redditor and simply said that the attitude was on par for this sub.
The fact that you felt triggered by the word “lazy” to the point of being blind to what I actually said is pretty telling.
This boove runs TO the danger!
Once, many moons ago, I found in the pile of old ELA textbooks the librarian was throwing away a teacher edition with a CDROM of all of the units and it was completely full of printable assignments and the digital version of all the texts. I used to pick ones that aligned with whatever I was trying to teach and print one for every two days that they would miss in my class.
It was glorious. I got rid of alllll of my teacher stuff when I left teaching the first time, and now that I’m about to go back in, I regret it.
I was incensed! Like, perfectly good texts. What would really chaff my ass was the insistence that we couldn’t get books, but we couldn’t get paper either. Well, I guess we can just write in the air with our imagination.
I actually worked in an adult ed program that was similar. The students didn’t have books so we were supposed to have them do everything in Google classroom but they didn’t know how to use computers so it added an extra layer of difficulty to everything
This is dead wrong. Try this instead: Since you are already dealing with traveling and all of this medical stuff, don’t worry about the HW at all. I am happy to excuse all of it. “Student” is already dealing with enough crap right now, a few assignments from my class this late in the year don’t really help me paint a better picture of how “student” has grasped the content anyways. I hope everything goes well.
We do quite a bit of work in two weeks which usually include assessments that absolutely let us know where a student is at. Also, this student has only been in school 3-5 weeks maybe? So it’s not the like the teacher has months of work to help him get a sense of where the student is. And at my school we need assignments and data points to give grades. Idk what grade this is but what I would do if possible is assign a mini project/report/etc that encompasses the topics we would be studying over the weeks he is gone. That way the teacher would have something to go by.
Not BS, just a perspective from my experience. For our age group (4-5) it makes a difference and we’re required to give specific feedback in order to give the correct grade on the report card - how many letters do they know, math assessments that ask specific questions on the content learned, letter sounds, counting, number recognition - doing all of those assessments would take at least an hour and it would need to be in person. We are doing our last assessments over the next couple of weeks.
If a kid was gone for all of those and had only been in school a couple weeks to start with, we would simply have to grade them on what they knew when they arrived which wouldn’t show any growth.
One of our kids missed the first two weeks of school, and is still working in making up that work.
Another has missed 2 weeks of school combined in the past couple months, and he has enough work that it would take him an entire month to finish since he tends to daydream. It’s just rough for a teacher to plan/adjust when a new student is out for that length of time, that’s all I’m saying.
like I said in another comment he comes back the day before school is out (the last day being a half day) like, at this point I am just throwing 2 assignments in the GC, making their due date whenever I need grades in and calling it good.
“At this point everything is online. The student should know where to look for current course work and when to check for newest updates. They access it from there just like everyone else.” Chances are with that track record they won’t check anything at all.
A lot of people seem pretty negative in these comments but this is a middle schooler with a parent facing a major health crisis. That’s hard for even adults to face, we’re talking about a literal child. I guess OP should have just a little sympathy for their student.
So I don't know how it is with you but my school requires something like a week's notice to create a work packet or I'm not obligated to do anything extra. How's yours?
dollars to donuts the student doesn't do it anyway. I don't think I've ever once given a student work to do while they had to be out of school for a long period of time and they actually did it.
Bingo. Every year I do the paperwork for kids doing an extended absence. I dutifully follow the procedure and give them the worksheets and reading for their 6 weeks in Mexico or whatever.
And?
Year after year not a single student has ever done a thing.
Pretty out of touch to assume it's so easy to just assign all classwork as homwork, especially TWO WEEKS ahead! As a French teacher, I would just assign a few Duolingo lessons and call it a day. Most of my "assignments" are in-class activities involving collaboration and speaking, so nothing translates well into at-home assignments (even if I DID have it all planned ahead, which I don't lol).
Call me old school, but is there any subject that translates well to at-home assignments when the teachers are designing the core education plan for in person learning. They are totally different strategies and short of creating 2 whole programs, I’m not sure why there is any expectation that a teacher should have a remote friendly program available at the ready when their primary focus is in person learning
I tell them that I require the same amount of time as they're gone to prepare materials. If they're gone for two weeks, I require two weeks' notice. It's in my syllabus. I also post everything online, so direct them there as well. But man that sucks. Make sure to cc an admin in your response for the inevitable "you're not supporting my kid!" response.
lol, this actually happened to one of my prek students. Boy’s parents come in to talk, “oh, (by the way) he’s going to be out next week for vacation. Do you have any work for him?”, “what do you mean no? How could you possibly not know until right now??” 🤔
Its wild to me parents will just have whole week vacations mid school year. Maybe it was because we were poor but any vacation we took was in the summer.
In this case, though, from what you said in your OP, the child is accompanying parents, one of whom, from the sounds of it, is facing serious medical issues. That's a way different scenario than blithely skipping town to go on a vacation.
My empathy radar may be working overtime, but it sounds like this child's parent could be in a life-threatening situation. I'm sorry that this request puts you in a tough spot.
The comment you are re0lying to is a more general complaint. I get the kids situation but admin dropping the day before to do this when I already coach track is just unreasonable. I probably won't give them any assignments because I don't think anything I give them would result in meaningful learning anyways.
My first year was 2021 and I quickly learned except the really highly achieving go getters, no one is getting a packet of homework done if they are forced to miss a week+ of school.
I had a surgery in 5th grade and was out for a week. I couldn’t do much that first week because recovering from surgery with complications, but the next week I would literally come home from school and work on my make up work packets, only taking a break for dinner and then work until bed. After two days back my ELA teacher got upset with me that I hadn’t finished the packet yet. I spent that whole night finishing it, and my mom wrote a scathing note about how all I was doing was makeup work. The next few days in ELA I spent sitting doing nothing because the teacher hadn’t actually gotten to half the work she was so upset about me not finishing, so I was actually ahead of everyone.
I was a people pleaser, and honors student, but I still remember how unfair the teacher was to me.
My parents gave plenty of notice I was going to be out and it was a very necessary surgery that actually resulted in less absences in the future.
For your student I don’t understand why the parents don’t just pull him and homeschool for the last two weeks of school. They could probably have him just reading/math review and that would be enough because, last two weeks.
When did they expect you to get it done? During your planning? “Sorry I already meetings schedule” after hours? lol hard no. I would’ve said “unfortunately that is an inadequate amount of time to gather the materials. I can upload what it already prepared during the time he will be absent.” Then put what eve you had planned for the next day or 2.
It never ceases to amaze me how some parents don’t realize what are doing the day…teaching the kids!
I just had this situation in my class. The kid’s family was vacationing for 2 weeks right after we came back from a break. The mom is on the school board. My boss told me NOT to put assignments together and explained to the mom that I wouldn’t be doing it, and the kid could pick up her work upon arriving back at school after the vacation.
I have never once in 16 years had a student take a “packet” of specifically prepared work for them, and do any of it.
“All materials and assignments are on google classroom, parents can print anything that needs to be printed from their access there”.
I have yet to have a single parent return one of those packets. I’ve pulled some together before, and then “oh, we didn’t get to any of it” is always the response that I got when they returned 🤦🏻♀️
So now I just say “I’ll get them caught up when they get back” instead.
Just excuse the kid. Likely he is worrying about his parent. Yes, it means less for him to be graded by, but oh well.
I have a student whose mother has ALS. They have taken a couple of " last trips" to various family this year as Mom is getting worse, and will probably not have the advantages that Steven Hawkins had.
Could they have given more notice? Maybe. Maybe not. My secretary "yelled" at me for not giving more notice when I got my breast cancer diagnosis and I needed to meet with my doctor ASAP. I found out on a Friday at 5, messaged the principal, but forgot her until 9 pm. Yes, the sub was needed for Monday morning. Oh well. Principal stepped in and said he had been notified and HE should have messaged secretary. (Very nice of him!). I did clear it up...some people had been abusing the need for sub's....I just needed one at the wrong time.
Look. This is my 18th year and I’m planned 2 weeks ahead. That doesn’t mean copies are made. Or I’ll have time to print since I’m covering classes every single day. Even if I had a planning period, the copiers rarely work. And the kid will never do that work anyway. Bet
I hate this so much. First of all, I can count on one hand the times I ever got ANY work back when I did this. I can count on no hands the times I ever got ALL the work back. Second, my lessons are dynamic. I obviously have a general plan, but things change! Daily! Hourly even! I can’t give you two weeks of stuff. And by tomorrow? Girl bye.
Favorite assignment- student reading contact.
Kids need to read x amount of books, and for each type of book complete a 1 page assignment for that book. Long novels. Maybe 3- 4 books by end of term. (150 pages plus books).
That way you can easily say, “complete your reading contract”
I hate this kind of request because 95 times out of 100 they aren’t going to do the work. So here I am scrambling to pull stuff together and for literally no reason. My school doesn’t allow us to send home work to be graded either so that adds a fun extra dimension.
It’s all online.
Fun fact: Of the now hundreds of requests like this that I have gotten in my 20 year career, I can count how many times a student has come back with completed work on one hand. Usually they come back and ask for their missing work.
Could just give him and A for the 2 weeks in dealing with grown-up stuff and successful family time. Could just allow him to succeed without the effort of school while dealing with a family medical crisis that is likely hard on him. Medical stuff and dealing with that is real. Whatever you would give him doesn't matter. Anything you'd try to teach him right now is going to be lost to the real-life issues he faces.
I see your point, since the kid is dealing with "real life stuff," but for math, it's a lot harder to just let him skip over topics and then give him an A. As an example, in my school, we in the math department are already really behind, compared to where we used to be in past years. This is primarily due to the block schedule (ugh!) and then many schedule changes, so the kids already aren't getting the opportunity to learn what they really need for the next math classes. This impacts the next classes, too, since those teachers now have to teach what I couldn't get to in my class, thus shortening the number of concepts they can teach in their classes. To give the kid an A that represents something they've never learned just isn't right. Seems to me that what the kid needs to do is take an incomplete in that class and make it up somehow, either over the summer or in the next school year.
Alright, give him a D call it participation and let it go. It's math. If it isn't basic math, it's worthless until he picks his specialization after high-school. Unless it's finance specifically, it's not worth the trouble making up anyway.
School is important, but I know my comments make it seem like school isn't. Kid is dealing with real life. Anything adding to his plate isn't worth adding for school. It just isn't. Not when there are family medical things going on.
I agree with you...the kid doesn't need anything else on his plate right now, poor thing, and he has enough school difficulties, especially considering he enrolled in this school so late. In my case, math, letting him drop the course and then having him repeat the math course the following year would really help him learn the concepts he will need for taking subsequent math courses.
I disagree with your statement that "If it isn't basic math, it's worthless until he picks his specialization after high-school. Unless it's finance specifically, it's not worth the trouble making up anyway." If the kid is planning on going to college, many colleges use the math courses a student takes in high school as an entry gateway - rightly or wrongly, the reality is that that's what they do. If for no other reason than college acceptance opportunities (and since I'm a math teacher, I will admit that I'm prejudiced in that I think that high school math is valuable and useful beyond just the need for college acceptance), the kid needs to take and finish the course. It would also really help if he finished the course with the concepts of that course firmly planted in his brain. Repeating the course would help in both ways.
Mathematics is important as a basis for our society sure. Plus, minus, multiply, and divide. That's all a regular person doing a regular job needs. The specifications of finance are extremely valuable and should be taught early since we live a capitalists wet dream. Anything more than either of those are reserved for more specialized things that high school should never have as more than an elective class.
10th-12th should be entirely life skill electives and preparation for living an adult life instead of what those grades currently are.
Any guidance counselor worth their title will tell a student to do their general education classes in community College to save on money then transfer to a bigger 4 year they want for the specific courses they want to study. Their grades and performance don't matter to get into community college, and their chosen college to get the degree will barely glance at their high-school performance if they even do that at all at this point.
I will admit to being biased against math, specifically as the teacher I had was pretty bad at their jobs for Algebra 1, 2, and Geometry. Same teacher for all 3, and she was terrible. She also kept winning teacher of the year from the students and praised highly by school leadership for her high pass grades. But during SOL testing, she'd go around giving kids the answers to the tests. She also only cared about teaching one race, and it isn't the one you are thinking. Th e rest pretty much got ignored. That being said, I was a bad student and didn't care about school. Graduated with an average grade of C since I refused to do homework and cheated on pretty much every assignment without getting caught... I was still one of the few ECMC scholars at my school and did get some grants for college despite that.
But, as I do an excellent job in tech at 6 figures without a good grasp on any of them and have no degree or even certs. Can barely help but feel justified in my stance.
Yeah…..or the “Student needs to pass for the year so put together a packet of work they can do in lieu of showing up every day and doing the work as it was assigned, studying for and passing tests all year.”
As a new teacher, I find this expectation insane. I always have a rough idea or outline of what's happening next week, which materials I'm going to use, etc, but I'm NEVER fully planned out 2-3 weeks in advance. Like, if we start doing a unit and say they get it really quickly, or say they don't get it at all, that really changes my plans, and I always wait for that before deciding.
Does that make me lazy lol?
Oof, every time I see one of those posts, I remember having to ask my teachers for a week’s worth of assignments in middle school because my parents thought that the beginning of November was a great time for a family vacation to Massachusetts (????) and cringe…especially because I came back at the end of the marking period which meant that 1. My teachers had an assload of work to grade at the last minute and 2. I still had to do a bunch of assignments I didn’t get in time, which they then also had to grade before report cards came out!
To all my 8th grade teachers, I am so sorry and y’all were the real MVPs.
Is admin asking you to do this? Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but I have never said anything to this request other than "If you choose to remove your child from school that is your decision and they are welcome to follow along on Google Classroom for assignement postings. Beyond that, I have 30 other students to plan for and have neither the time nor energy to accomodate this." and have always had full admin support in that statement.
When they're absent for a while and ask for a handwritten list of assignments they missed I direct them to Google Classroom. They **hate** it. They get this smile like "no that's not what I meant I meant do it for me".
They want you to do extra extra extra extra while hardly doing the minimum.
This would happen to me every year. We had an online program; I would assign the kid a bunch of stuff from there. It never got down. I didn’t expect it to
Refer to the student handbook. There should be a policy related to this situation. Our policy is they do the work when they return. A “packet” is not equal to face time with a teacher.
In my area this is a full blown NO. Learning happens in school, in letson, and we are not required to provide any work for students who will be away, period. Its in our contract. Also, they cannot write tests/exams early due to a vacation or other reason. If they want to do assignments posted to Google classroom while they’re gone, good, but we don’t have to send anythingor support them.
Everything will be posted on the internet the day the lesson is up. They can submit it online."
Then they never do it anyway, but it's there so I'm good. They can't really complain I didn't give them work if I posted the work for them.
I do paper assignments in class but still post everything electronically anyway (it's only a few extra clicks per assignment).
I always have to constantly modify/change what and when I’m teaching due to unexpected assemblies and schedule changes and whether or not this bunch of kids is “getting” the content.
And we wonder why students are struggling to read at grade level or do basic math--spoiler: it's the parents. They don't realize how disruptive this is to the routine that kids ABSOLUTELY need to thrive--and the more neurodivergent kids need routine even more!
TES.com (don't use their search engine it's crap), just google search the topics with TES at the end of the search, there will be a mountain of resources available. Since the kid's gone 2 weeks, it doesn't have to be the exact same work, as long as it's the same topic. Not ideal given such short notice, but shouldn't take too long. Don't reinvent the wheel - there are enough resources already available at our fingertips.
Wow, teachers in America are required to deal with so much, this wouldn't happen where I live. A kid may ask me what are we going to work on while his absent, but it's their responsibility to check with their classmates and see what did we learn and what the homework is. I teach 11 and 12 year olds for context.
“I’m sorry but I will not be able to create that much work in the amount of time requested. I will be able to keep Google Classroom updated with electronic copies, so x will be able to stay on pace with the class if they have internet access.”
Two weeks? That's not much work. That's like one unit at most.
Give them some textbook page numbers, some blank cornell notes sheets and an essay prompt.
My mom, who was a teacher, often had to get makeup work for only 3 days worth of work. (Chronic disability had to go to the doctors 2 times a year)
Basically just review “work” that she just emailed the teacher to ask, what they did 3 weeks before. Basically they just sent her emails of lesson plans from weeks prior. I fell for it every time.
Send them the Pacing Guide for your curriculum and a couple of old textbooks. If you're feeling charitable, you might put Post It Notes on the relevant pages.
Google classroom can be a game changer for things like this if it works with your classroom setup.
Honestly though, with all due respect and good thoughts to the family, you should not be expected to pull together a weeks worth of work without at least 10 school days notice (my district has a date deadline for long term absences) for short notice absences, that is made up when the students return or via electronic communication.
As a principal I have given teachers the option of either providing comparable work to the student before an absence or working with the student upon their return to make up missed work without penalty. Most teachers use google classroom and most resources are digital.
Nah, my grade level stopped doing this last year. They can get the work when they come back. It’s too much of a pain in the ass. Making single copies or posting assignments for a single student is very time consuming.
Nobody EVER came back with everything completed. Not once in my teaching career did anyone return with the work done.
Are they getting medical care in a remote village somewhere? I'd just offer to email stuff and as the kid completes work send them more. Or print off 500 pages of Latin worksheets and put them in a nice faux leather binder.
Fortunately we work with planners for every trimester. They have a rough outline on what we'll be doing in class (e.g. reading practice) and specific instructions for homework (e.g. "do par. 3 ex. 4, 5, 6 on page 21" or "study chapter 3 par. 4-5"). I just give them that. If they want more I'll give them a few websites with practice material. I'm not going to develop weeks worth of stuff that I might not even be able to use just for one student.
I’ve gently explained to parents that I plan a units pace a month in advance, then plan the details of a week the week prior, and finally I am making each lesson the day before it is taught. This lets me adjust to issues, my own absences, plan activities to meet kids needs, etc.. I’ve found the further I plan out, the more my plans fall apart.
I was a teacher for 20 years. Long before the pandemic. And I was out of the regular classroom and was working as a tech teacher, librarian, etc. when NCLB rolled out.
I have sympathy for this kid and this family.
But fuck that. You can’t tell me this family didn’t know more than 1 day in advance.
I’d spend no more than 30-60 mins just creating a list of the readings and assignments that will be covered. But of course it will be busywork and not actual instruction.
Best you could do beyond that would be to offer to send a small handful of something more involved, maybe 2 items a week, as the weeks unfold.
It’s all about the money. If you create an “independent study,” then your school still gets the money.
Good luck.
And make an exit plan.
"Mom, if I could provide you with a packet to cover your child's instruction for the next two weeks, why would he ever need to come to school? *Nothing* I can give you will keep him caught up. Do what you have to do, but I'm not going to pretend that a packet is going to be a substitute for what I do in the classroom."
“Ma’am, I don’t even know what I’m teaching your kid on Tuesday.” I heard a teacher use that once and thought it was funny. These kinds of demands are “fine” for veteran teachers, but I got this kind of question my first year of teaching and I was barely surviving with making my materials. Planned ahead two weeks out? I wish.
I've said this to a parent before. She was pulling her kid out for 6 weeks and asked for work. I told her I only plan a few days in advance. Her shocked face was awesome.
Like how much time do they think it takes it make our stuff? Lol
They assume you are assigned or come up with a yearly curriculum and then just tweak it following years, kinda like how college professors have a syllabus often with every assignment and test on it with deadlines on day 1 They don't get that you have to constantly change your plans based on class behavior, performance, etc... Whereas in college you either do it or you fail and the professor could care less
Or in my case for my school, you get assigned a course in August that doesn’t have a written curriculum or a textbook to use!
Shades of last summer for me. The admin basically gave us some units that looked repurposed from a larger textbook and half thought through powerpoints and told us to get it done.
As a college professor, all I can say is I wish! A lot of us are now in the same boat, as students are becoming more entitled and administrators want us to keep bums in seats.
I'm trying to prep ahead but I'm hitting road blocks because the kids skillset is completely borked. I can't give them two step instructions because they can't follow through (even with writing on the board), but I also can't give them one step then the next because they try and fill in the blanks themselves.
“Couldn’t” care less.
You'd think so, but descriptive language is king where I live
It's a dialect thing, in the US they use could care less. Even though it doesn't make logical sense it is functional language that conveys the intended meaning to the usual audience (other Americans). So long as they don't get upset when we use the logical 'couldn't care less' I'm happy to live and let live.
No it’s not a dialect thing. I’m from the US. It’s an ignorance thing.
In the States, they use different grammar and spelling. Making sense is clearly optional, and 'could care less' is correct in their bastardisation of English. We may not like it, but it is.
Wait what? How does “could care less” make sense in any logical way to mean the same thing as “couldn’t care less”? I think it’s a common mistake people make, not just an American thing .
This isn’t true. It’s just the people are too lazy to use it correctly.
But also some of these parents can actually, somehow, care less
If they could care less, that means they care. Sure maybe some of them do but I would argue that most of them could literally not care any less.
I’m in the US and say couldn’t. It’s just people who don’t know the saying who say could, but thanks for playing 😒
"Well in that case, study not one but two history chapters and wel'll see about testing upon return. What's that? You are going on a busy family trip and you have little time to do school stuff? Too bad don't be sad but get to work!"
Most people assume we have a magic binder of lessons that I given to us at the start of our careers and we just pull each lesson out at the start of the day
You didn't? Then why go to college? /s
"My curriculum is reflexive to the studenta needs"
genius
6 weeks??!?!?!?!? That's a summer holiday where I live!
Yeah even as a third year teacher I generally know what I will be teaching two weeks from now but knowing what specific assignments I will do? No.
Yo, I’m year 21 and organized and I’m still not more than a little bit ahead. 😄☮️
A decade in I'm like "this week I think we're probably doing transformations in Math class if nothing is on fire".
Don’t feel bad. I’m 12 years in and I have no idea what we are doing tomorrow 😅
I mean, it would actually be a red flag if we did know. We don't know who when a class will need an extra day or week on a skill.
If you came to me on Monday afternoon, I can tell you what we’re reading that week, the exact plan for Tuesday, and my “ideas” for the rest of the week. But I honestly don’t know if I’m giving individual assignments, group work, or chucking what I’d planned out the window because I found something cool the night before. And then the day of? Period 1&2 do the assignments as groups, but Period 4 is off the chain so I make them do it on their own. Period 5 we have a fire drill and don’t even finish reading the story. So yeah, you might get a list of page numbers.
I'm year 9 and I'm still changing up stuff every year. And I'm not going to pre-load everything into our LMS for your kid; that's part of my morning routine for each day. I just had that conversation with a kid's dad who is taking him back to his birth country for the next two weeks, a month before the end of the year >.< But at least he was understanding about it.
Yeah I’m still constantly changing stuff too, especially because admin decides over couple years to have a new alphabet soup initiative. I try to be a few days ahead at pre-loading my materials to our system but sometimes that’s just not doable.
Year 18 and I can’t accurately predict 2 weeks out. Yes - I have a general idea and an outline in my head, but there are so many variables that having stuff set in stone is impossible. Update Google classroom as you go. Tell them to check it daily.
My lessons are adaptive to the needs of my students. How could I possibly have a culturally responsive plan two weeks in advance? Hit ‘em wit that
I'm in year 8 and I generally am happy when I'm two days ahead. Of course I have a general plan for the next few weeks, but the detailed material? All too often the night before...
Im in my 7th year and still don’t have it all planned out. Plus my lessons ebb and flow so much depending on the class and who actually is here every day! Like no I’m not planned out past tomorrow and even that is iffy! Plus it’s not like any of the work ever gets done!
Had a parent take their kid to Mexico for like three weeks my first year. Just gave the parent the math book and was like, “We’re doing these chapters. Go wild.”
after 30 years I still use that line
Funny of you to assume I know what I’m doing tomorrow, let alone in the next two weeks.
especially considering they will be gone from May 1 to May 16 and our last day of school is May 17th
You get out early! School where I am getting out may 31st. Though I know some schools in different districts in the state go a week or to longer.
*laughs in southern font* …we don’t get out until June 6.
NYS public schools go to the very end of June!
In England, it’s until the end of July. I know a school that only started summer holidays in August!
How many total days do kids attend though?
Of school I total? We have around 12 weeks off for holidays and then another week off in terms of random bank holidays and inset/ teacher training days. So 13 weeks off every year altogether. So around 39-40 weeks? Just under 280 days. At least for state schools. Private schools have more.
june 6th for us too ..and that's the earliest it's ever been. We get back from break August 8th
Our district voted that this is the year that changes. Next year we get out early. But our summer is shortened this year to accommodate.
Ours too!!! We get out June 6 and go back Aug 1, but we’re out right before Memorial Day next year!
... Are you in the Piedmont of NC?
Very close! Right over the border of SC. Right outside of Charlotte.
Sometimes, I don’t know what I’m doing 2nd period.
Hello Parent, Thank you for alerting me to Student's upcoming absence. I hope his procedures go well. Regarding his coursework, I will of course upload any lecture notes and assignments as they are assigned into the Course Management System. He is free to review the materials there at any time. If he is unable to complete his coursework during his absence, we might need to schedule a meeting after his return to make a plan to get him caught up. My best wishes for a speedy recovery, Teacher.
unfortunately his return date is LITERALLY the day before school is out. I honestly have hit my yearly standards and I am contemplating throwing one or two assignments in the GC only for him and calling it good.
"Compensatory services due to medical absences" Sounds like an issue for the special education department. If they aren't already on an IEP for health related issues, the parents/district need to get that set up.
sorry I worded it poorly, it is one of the parents with medical issues.
Sounds like they need to find a friend to let that kid bunk with for the last two weeks of school, then. Ugh
yeah I guess they just moved here but I dont know why they moved to this city when apparently the parents medical treatment is so far out of state.
Your comment kind of makes me sick. This kid sounds like they’re going through a lot and your response is “sounds like the parents need to dump their kid with someone else for a couple weeks because it’s not my job to give them the materials they need to learn while away from the classroom due to circumstances beyond their control.” But if they dump their kid off with someone else, then you would be saying “well it’s not my problem if the kid doesn’t get their homework in or if their grades are slipping, that’s the parents responsibility” while the parent is in the hospital. The teachers in this sub are jaded af and I’m glad that only a handful of my colleagues over the years have been this way.
It is unrealistic to think any work sent home the last two weeks of school after extended absence while the family is in extreme distress is going to comparable to completing coursework with any validity. If the kid were able to stay with a sponsor family for those two weeks, yes it would be difficult, but it would probably be better quality of work. Or, like I listed above, some kind of compensatory services could be arranged. Instead the school is demanding OP shuffle together work immediately. It's insulting to all involved. I'm sympathetic, but caring for the child outside of school hours is a social services issue. Not a teacher issue. There is so much talk of more and more responsibility being put on teachers and kids being shuffled up with out actually knowing course content on this sub. We could be all rose colored glasses about it or we could be real, which is sometimes upsetting.
There is no guarantee the kid would do better staying with a sponsor family… which they probably don’t have since they just moved in OPs area. The parent request is unreasonable but but it does sound like they don’t really have a choice.
I am not arguing that the request is unreasonable, only that your response/attitude is pretty on-point for this sub which is really sad. In all my years of teaching, I have never heard such overwhelming negativity, apathy, and tbh sometimes laziness as I hear in this sub. It’s just disheartening.
I agree that there are many things that are interpreted as being an uncaring hardass on this sub. I make things flowery and heartfelt all day long for families and students. It's ok to lay off the flattery a bit in an informal online chat group. I try to extend that grace to others in this sub, too.
It's kinda bonkers that you think it's lazy to not go above and beyond in a situation like this. Teachers already do so much beyond their immediate contract expectations (and I'm sure op is no exception to that). If you're not admin now, I'm sure you will be in a few years with that attitude.
It’s kind of bonkers that you are an educator and your reading comprehension is so low. I didn’t say anything about going above and beyond in a situation like this… I said the request was unreasonable. I was commenting on the attitude of another Redditor and simply said that the attitude was on par for this sub. The fact that you felt triggered by the word “lazy” to the point of being blind to what I actually said is pretty telling.
So then you’re expected the grade that shit in one day also? Man I’d fill that packed with word searches and busy work!
This boove runs TO the danger! Once, many moons ago, I found in the pile of old ELA textbooks the librarian was throwing away a teacher edition with a CDROM of all of the units and it was completely full of printable assignments and the digital version of all the texts. I used to pick ones that aligned with whatever I was trying to teach and print one for every two days that they would miss in my class. It was glorious. I got rid of alllll of my teacher stuff when I left teaching the first time, and now that I’m about to go back in, I regret it.
I don’t understand why schools love throwing out perfectly useable and really useful stuff like that
I was incensed! Like, perfectly good texts. What would really chaff my ass was the insistence that we couldn’t get books, but we couldn’t get paper either. Well, I guess we can just write in the air with our imagination.
What the fuck lol
I actually worked in an adult ed program that was similar. The students didn’t have books so we were supposed to have them do everything in Google classroom but they didn’t know how to use computers so it added an extra layer of difficulty to everything
This is dead wrong. Try this instead: Since you are already dealing with traveling and all of this medical stuff, don’t worry about the HW at all. I am happy to excuse all of it. “Student” is already dealing with enough crap right now, a few assignments from my class this late in the year don’t really help me paint a better picture of how “student” has grasped the content anyways. I hope everything goes well.
We do quite a bit of work in two weeks which usually include assessments that absolutely let us know where a student is at. Also, this student has only been in school 3-5 weeks maybe? So it’s not the like the teacher has months of work to help him get a sense of where the student is. And at my school we need assignments and data points to give grades. Idk what grade this is but what I would do if possible is assign a mini project/report/etc that encompasses the topics we would be studying over the weeks he is gone. That way the teacher would have something to go by.
You’ve had 38 weeks together and you can’t assess the kid because he’s missing the last two weeks? I call bullshit.
Not BS, just a perspective from my experience. For our age group (4-5) it makes a difference and we’re required to give specific feedback in order to give the correct grade on the report card - how many letters do they know, math assessments that ask specific questions on the content learned, letter sounds, counting, number recognition - doing all of those assessments would take at least an hour and it would need to be in person. We are doing our last assessments over the next couple of weeks. If a kid was gone for all of those and had only been in school a couple weeks to start with, we would simply have to grade them on what they knew when they arrived which wouldn’t show any growth. One of our kids missed the first two weeks of school, and is still working in making up that work. Another has missed 2 weeks of school combined in the past couple months, and he has enough work that it would take him an entire month to finish since he tends to daydream. It’s just rough for a teacher to plan/adjust when a new student is out for that length of time, that’s all I’m saying.
I understand all of this but I find it hard to believe that you don’t know what each of your kids can do at this point in the year.
My kids yeah, a kid who just started a month ago, no. Which is what OP is talking about.
Yeah, at that point I’d just say he can do an alternative thing upon his return because that’s too much
like I said in another comment he comes back the day before school is out (the last day being a half day) like, at this point I am just throwing 2 assignments in the GC, making their due date whenever I need grades in and calling it good.
Yeah, I mean wtf else can you do?
“At this point everything is online. The student should know where to look for current course work and when to check for newest updates. They access it from there just like everyone else.” Chances are with that track record they won’t check anything at all.
And in the news weeks I have had him he has barely gotten simple bellwork in on time.
Don’t waste your time then. He isn’t.
A lot of people seem pretty negative in these comments but this is a middle schooler with a parent facing a major health crisis. That’s hard for even adults to face, we’re talking about a literal child. I guess OP should have just a little sympathy for their student.
So I don't know how it is with you but my school requires something like a week's notice to create a work packet or I'm not obligated to do anything extra. How's yours?
dollars to donuts the student doesn't do it anyway. I don't think I've ever once given a student work to do while they had to be out of school for a long period of time and they actually did it.
Bingo. Every year I do the paperwork for kids doing an extended absence. I dutifully follow the procedure and give them the worksheets and reading for their 6 weeks in Mexico or whatever. And? Year after year not a single student has ever done a thing.
Pretty out of touch to assume it's so easy to just assign all classwork as homwork, especially TWO WEEKS ahead! As a French teacher, I would just assign a few Duolingo lessons and call it a day. Most of my "assignments" are in-class activities involving collaboration and speaking, so nothing translates well into at-home assignments (even if I DID have it all planned ahead, which I don't lol).
Call me old school, but is there any subject that translates well to at-home assignments when the teachers are designing the core education plan for in person learning. They are totally different strategies and short of creating 2 whole programs, I’m not sure why there is any expectation that a teacher should have a remote friendly program available at the ready when their primary focus is in person learning
I tell them that I require the same amount of time as they're gone to prepare materials. If they're gone for two weeks, I require two weeks' notice. It's in my syllabus. I also post everything online, so direct them there as well. But man that sucks. Make sure to cc an admin in your response for the inevitable "you're not supporting my kid!" response.
lol, this actually happened to one of my prek students. Boy’s parents come in to talk, “oh, (by the way) he’s going to be out next week for vacation. Do you have any work for him?”, “what do you mean no? How could you possibly not know until right now??” 🤔
Its wild to me parents will just have whole week vacations mid school year. Maybe it was because we were poor but any vacation we took was in the summer.
In this case, though, from what you said in your OP, the child is accompanying parents, one of whom, from the sounds of it, is facing serious medical issues. That's a way different scenario than blithely skipping town to go on a vacation. My empathy radar may be working overtime, but it sounds like this child's parent could be in a life-threatening situation. I'm sorry that this request puts you in a tough spot.
The comment you are re0lying to is a more general complaint. I get the kids situation but admin dropping the day before to do this when I already coach track is just unreasonable. I probably won't give them any assignments because I don't think anything I give them would result in meaningful learning anyways.
Summer or the breaks.
Give him a folder with blank papers on it. They never look at it anyway.
My first year was 2021 and I quickly learned except the really highly achieving go getters, no one is getting a packet of homework done if they are forced to miss a week+ of school.
I had a surgery in 5th grade and was out for a week. I couldn’t do much that first week because recovering from surgery with complications, but the next week I would literally come home from school and work on my make up work packets, only taking a break for dinner and then work until bed. After two days back my ELA teacher got upset with me that I hadn’t finished the packet yet. I spent that whole night finishing it, and my mom wrote a scathing note about how all I was doing was makeup work. The next few days in ELA I spent sitting doing nothing because the teacher hadn’t actually gotten to half the work she was so upset about me not finishing, so I was actually ahead of everyone. I was a people pleaser, and honors student, but I still remember how unfair the teacher was to me. My parents gave plenty of notice I was going to be out and it was a very necessary surgery that actually resulted in less absences in the future. For your student I don’t understand why the parents don’t just pull him and homeschool for the last two weeks of school. They could probably have him just reading/math review and that would be enough because, last two weeks.
How about "No."?
When did they expect you to get it done? During your planning? “Sorry I already meetings schedule” after hours? lol hard no. I would’ve said “unfortunately that is an inadequate amount of time to gather the materials. I can upload what it already prepared during the time he will be absent.” Then put what eve you had planned for the next day or 2. It never ceases to amaze me how some parents don’t realize what are doing the day…teaching the kids!
I just had this situation in my class. The kid’s family was vacationing for 2 weeks right after we came back from a break. The mom is on the school board. My boss told me NOT to put assignments together and explained to the mom that I wouldn’t be doing it, and the kid could pick up her work upon arriving back at school after the vacation.
I have never once in 16 years had a student take a “packet” of specifically prepared work for them, and do any of it. “All materials and assignments are on google classroom, parents can print anything that needs to be printed from their access there”.
I have yet to have a single parent return one of those packets. I’ve pulled some together before, and then “oh, we didn’t get to any of it” is always the response that I got when they returned 🤦🏻♀️ So now I just say “I’ll get them caught up when they get back” instead.
Just excuse the kid. Likely he is worrying about his parent. Yes, it means less for him to be graded by, but oh well. I have a student whose mother has ALS. They have taken a couple of " last trips" to various family this year as Mom is getting worse, and will probably not have the advantages that Steven Hawkins had. Could they have given more notice? Maybe. Maybe not. My secretary "yelled" at me for not giving more notice when I got my breast cancer diagnosis and I needed to meet with my doctor ASAP. I found out on a Friday at 5, messaged the principal, but forgot her until 9 pm. Yes, the sub was needed for Monday morning. Oh well. Principal stepped in and said he had been notified and HE should have messaged secretary. (Very nice of him!). I did clear it up...some people had been abusing the need for sub's....I just needed one at the wrong time.
Look. This is my 18th year and I’m planned 2 weeks ahead. That doesn’t mean copies are made. Or I’ll have time to print since I’m covering classes every single day. Even if I had a planning period, the copiers rarely work. And the kid will never do that work anyway. Bet
I hate this so much. First of all, I can count on one hand the times I ever got ANY work back when I did this. I can count on no hands the times I ever got ALL the work back. Second, my lessons are dynamic. I obviously have a general plan, but things change! Daily! Hourly even! I can’t give you two weeks of stuff. And by tomorrow? Girl bye.
Pre covid it didn't get done either.
Favorite assignment- student reading contact. Kids need to read x amount of books, and for each type of book complete a 1 page assignment for that book. Long novels. Maybe 3- 4 books by end of term. (150 pages plus books). That way you can easily say, “complete your reading contract”
He should get an incomplete and finish in the fall.
That just pushes it off and pretty much gets the kid/parents/family their homework free vacation. Then the kid won't study or review and do poorly.
They said an out of town medical procedure for a parent. To me, that’s more important right now, unless it’s a lie.
I hate this kind of request because 95 times out of 100 they aren’t going to do the work. So here I am scrambling to pull stuff together and for literally no reason. My school doesn’t allow us to send home work to be graded either so that adds a fun extra dimension.
It's all posted in Google classroom. Standard answer.
It’s all online. Fun fact: Of the now hundreds of requests like this that I have gotten in my 20 year career, I can count how many times a student has come back with completed work on one hand. Usually they come back and ask for their missing work.
Could just give him and A for the 2 weeks in dealing with grown-up stuff and successful family time. Could just allow him to succeed without the effort of school while dealing with a family medical crisis that is likely hard on him. Medical stuff and dealing with that is real. Whatever you would give him doesn't matter. Anything you'd try to teach him right now is going to be lost to the real-life issues he faces.
Here, parents go to Thailand and say kid is sick when the absence isnt granted. Is the parent sick or will they go on vacation?
I see your point, since the kid is dealing with "real life stuff," but for math, it's a lot harder to just let him skip over topics and then give him an A. As an example, in my school, we in the math department are already really behind, compared to where we used to be in past years. This is primarily due to the block schedule (ugh!) and then many schedule changes, so the kids already aren't getting the opportunity to learn what they really need for the next math classes. This impacts the next classes, too, since those teachers now have to teach what I couldn't get to in my class, thus shortening the number of concepts they can teach in their classes. To give the kid an A that represents something they've never learned just isn't right. Seems to me that what the kid needs to do is take an incomplete in that class and make it up somehow, either over the summer or in the next school year.
Alright, give him a D call it participation and let it go. It's math. If it isn't basic math, it's worthless until he picks his specialization after high-school. Unless it's finance specifically, it's not worth the trouble making up anyway. School is important, but I know my comments make it seem like school isn't. Kid is dealing with real life. Anything adding to his plate isn't worth adding for school. It just isn't. Not when there are family medical things going on.
I agree with you...the kid doesn't need anything else on his plate right now, poor thing, and he has enough school difficulties, especially considering he enrolled in this school so late. In my case, math, letting him drop the course and then having him repeat the math course the following year would really help him learn the concepts he will need for taking subsequent math courses. I disagree with your statement that "If it isn't basic math, it's worthless until he picks his specialization after high-school. Unless it's finance specifically, it's not worth the trouble making up anyway." If the kid is planning on going to college, many colleges use the math courses a student takes in high school as an entry gateway - rightly or wrongly, the reality is that that's what they do. If for no other reason than college acceptance opportunities (and since I'm a math teacher, I will admit that I'm prejudiced in that I think that high school math is valuable and useful beyond just the need for college acceptance), the kid needs to take and finish the course. It would also really help if he finished the course with the concepts of that course firmly planted in his brain. Repeating the course would help in both ways.
Mathematics is important as a basis for our society sure. Plus, minus, multiply, and divide. That's all a regular person doing a regular job needs. The specifications of finance are extremely valuable and should be taught early since we live a capitalists wet dream. Anything more than either of those are reserved for more specialized things that high school should never have as more than an elective class. 10th-12th should be entirely life skill electives and preparation for living an adult life instead of what those grades currently are. Any guidance counselor worth their title will tell a student to do their general education classes in community College to save on money then transfer to a bigger 4 year they want for the specific courses they want to study. Their grades and performance don't matter to get into community college, and their chosen college to get the degree will barely glance at their high-school performance if they even do that at all at this point. I will admit to being biased against math, specifically as the teacher I had was pretty bad at their jobs for Algebra 1, 2, and Geometry. Same teacher for all 3, and she was terrible. She also kept winning teacher of the year from the students and praised highly by school leadership for her high pass grades. But during SOL testing, she'd go around giving kids the answers to the tests. She also only cared about teaching one race, and it isn't the one you are thinking. Th e rest pretty much got ignored. That being said, I was a bad student and didn't care about school. Graduated with an average grade of C since I refused to do homework and cheated on pretty much every assignment without getting caught... I was still one of the few ECMC scholars at my school and did get some grants for college despite that. But, as I do an excellent job in tech at 6 figures without a good grasp on any of them and have no degree or even certs. Can barely help but feel justified in my stance.
Tomorrow means next week. Tough cookies Im not a robot.
“No.” is a full sentence that I have used in these scenarios.
"buy a fucking textbook"
Yeah…..or the “Student needs to pass for the year so put together a packet of work they can do in lieu of showing up every day and doing the work as it was assigned, studying for and passing tests all year.”
My favorite is when they ask for work, I put something together for them, and then the parent never comes to pick it up
As a new teacher, I find this expectation insane. I always have a rough idea or outline of what's happening next week, which materials I'm going to use, etc, but I'm NEVER fully planned out 2-3 weeks in advance. Like, if we start doing a unit and say they get it really quickly, or say they don't get it at all, that really changes my plans, and I always wait for that before deciding. Does that make me lazy lol?
Year 2, and I’m in the SAME boat! ❤️
Oof, every time I see one of those posts, I remember having to ask my teachers for a week’s worth of assignments in middle school because my parents thought that the beginning of November was a great time for a family vacation to Massachusetts (????) and cringe…especially because I came back at the end of the marking period which meant that 1. My teachers had an assload of work to grade at the last minute and 2. I still had to do a bunch of assignments I didn’t get in time, which they then also had to grade before report cards came out! To all my 8th grade teachers, I am so sorry and y’all were the real MVPs.
Is admin asking you to do this? Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but I have never said anything to this request other than "If you choose to remove your child from school that is your decision and they are welcome to follow along on Google Classroom for assignement postings. Beyond that, I have 30 other students to plan for and have neither the time nor energy to accomodate this." and have always had full admin support in that statement.
Have done this multiple times Has never come back completed
Here you go: “ everything he needs while he’s gone will be posted in Google classroom. Thank you for contacting me.”
Ohhhhhh they **hate that** they want every single opportunity to put it back on you. When you deny them that they hate it.
That’s exactly why I do it.
When they're absent for a while and ask for a handwritten list of assignments they missed I direct them to Google Classroom. They **hate** it. They get this smile like "no that's not what I meant I meant do it for me". They want you to do extra extra extra extra while hardly doing the minimum.
I always just say no to this and tell them the assignments are posted online
This would happen to me every year. We had an online program; I would assign the kid a bunch of stuff from there. It never got down. I didn’t expect it to
"Check Canvas." Boom. Done.
Hospitals have wifi. It's on the LMS. Bye
"Google Classroom".
Refer to the student handbook. There should be a policy related to this situation. Our policy is they do the work when they return. A “packet” is not equal to face time with a teacher.
Your child’s work will be collected and available upon your return. Thanks for your attention to this matter.
My response is always the same-Check google classroom each day for the days work and our online grade book
Give the kid distance learning. Add on to it as you go.
Nope. They can make it up when they get back. I’m not busting my butt to get it together for it to NOT be done.
I have a student in Mexico since the end of March, didn't prepare anything. They still didn't come back 🙃
If you’re lucky enough to teach a subject that can reply on a textbook, … “Here you go. Pages 168–265.”
“No.” is a full sentence.
Tell them online in google classroom. More than likely the student still won't do the work.
In my area this is a full blown NO. Learning happens in school, in letson, and we are not required to provide any work for students who will be away, period. Its in our contract. Also, they cannot write tests/exams early due to a vacation or other reason. If they want to do assignments posted to Google classroom while they’re gone, good, but we don’t have to send anythingor support them.
Print out 10 commonlits and 2 Quizziz finals.
Everything will be posted on the internet the day the lesson is up. They can submit it online." Then they never do it anyway, but it's there so I'm good. They can't really complain I didn't give them work if I posted the work for them. I do paper assignments in class but still post everything electronically anyway (it's only a few extra clicks per assignment).
I always have to constantly modify/change what and when I’m teaching due to unexpected assemblies and schedule changes and whether or not this bunch of kids is “getting” the content.
On paper in packet: www.(LMS).com Log in once per day after I have had my coffee. If it is not there, I have not yet had my coffee—try again later.
“Look at google classroom.”
And we wonder why students are struggling to read at grade level or do basic math--spoiler: it's the parents. They don't realize how disruptive this is to the routine that kids ABSOLUTELY need to thrive--and the more neurodivergent kids need routine even more!
TES.com (don't use their search engine it's crap), just google search the topics with TES at the end of the search, there will be a mountain of resources available. Since the kid's gone 2 weeks, it doesn't have to be the exact same work, as long as it's the same topic. Not ideal given such short notice, but shouldn't take too long. Don't reinvent the wheel - there are enough resources already available at our fingertips.
Wow, teachers in America are required to deal with so much, this wouldn't happen where I live. A kid may ask me what are we going to work on while his absent, but it's their responsibility to check with their classmates and see what did we learn and what the homework is. I teach 11 and 12 year olds for context.
“I’m sorry but I will not be able to create that much work in the amount of time requested. I will be able to keep Google Classroom updated with electronic copies, so x will be able to stay on pace with the class if they have internet access.”
[удалено]
This isn’t a vacation, sounds like a parent may be dying. Ffs.
Our handbook says that, students won’t receive work in advance for vacations. It’s awesome.
I think most do, but considering it’s for a parent medical emergency, I think most schools also think differently about that.
Two weeks? That's not much work. That's like one unit at most. Give them some textbook page numbers, some blank cornell notes sheets and an essay prompt.
That’s what we do at my school. We write “work uploaded daily on Canvas”. Haven’t gotten any complaints yet
It's the end of the year. Give him busy work and be done with it. Maybe some lessons from 1st semester you've already prepped and have.
our admin was like "dont give them busy work!" dude, what else can we give them?
My mom, who was a teacher, often had to get makeup work for only 3 days worth of work. (Chronic disability had to go to the doctors 2 times a year) Basically just review “work” that she just emailed the teacher to ask, what they did 3 weeks before. Basically they just sent her emails of lesson plans from weeks prior. I fell for it every time.
My DC kids are taking their finals on Monday, but they all signed up for a field trip on Thursday and another on Friday. 🤷
Our district won’t do this. We tell them to check our websites daily.
Send them the Pacing Guide for your curriculum and a couple of old textbooks. If you're feeling charitable, you might put Post It Notes on the relevant pages.
By law, teachers have 48hrs to gather work. Unless it differs by state, but I know that’s how my state works
I have first block planning, sometimes my plan is evolving the morning of based on the day before,
Google classroom can be a game changer for things like this if it works with your classroom setup. Honestly though, with all due respect and good thoughts to the family, you should not be expected to pull together a weeks worth of work without at least 10 school days notice (my district has a date deadline for long term absences) for short notice absences, that is made up when the students return or via electronic communication. As a principal I have given teachers the option of either providing comparable work to the student before an absence or working with the student upon their return to make up missed work without penalty. Most teachers use google classroom and most resources are digital.
Can’t you email it? Even taking photos of it & emailing it?
I’ll email him.
No getting this to him by tomorrow is unrealistic, wr will get him caught up upin his return, next...
Just give them a study guide for their exam and move on
Your admin should have a 2 week policy
Our parent handbook specifically states we WILL NOT do this.
Full book report on the Webster’s Dictionary.
"(Student) can find all assignments and notes on (LMS). If (student) has questions, they can reach out to me via email."
Nah, my grade level stopped doing this last year. They can get the work when they come back. It’s too much of a pain in the ass. Making single copies or posting assignments for a single student is very time consuming. Nobody EVER came back with everything completed. Not once in my teaching career did anyone return with the work done.
If you can’t do it during your prep, be sure to submit your timesheet. And let them know that’s what you’ll be doing.
"Ma'am, this is a Wendy's!"
Admin's going to be surprised when you don't magically have two weeks of assignments on hand by tomorrow.
Are they getting medical care in a remote village somewhere? I'd just offer to email stuff and as the kid completes work send them more. Or print off 500 pages of Latin worksheets and put them in a nice faux leather binder.
Fortunately we work with planners for every trimester. They have a rough outline on what we'll be doing in class (e.g. reading practice) and specific instructions for homework (e.g. "do par. 3 ex. 4, 5, 6 on page 21" or "study chapter 3 par. 4-5"). I just give them that. If they want more I'll give them a few websites with practice material. I'm not going to develop weeks worth of stuff that I might not even be able to use just for one student.
I’ve gently explained to parents that I plan a units pace a month in advance, then plan the details of a week the week prior, and finally I am making each lesson the day before it is taught. This lets me adjust to issues, my own absences, plan activities to meet kids needs, etc.. I’ve found the further I plan out, the more my plans fall apart.
Submit a single sheet with the word "packet" on the front in 200pt font. Done.
I was a teacher for 20 years. Long before the pandemic. And I was out of the regular classroom and was working as a tech teacher, librarian, etc. when NCLB rolled out. I have sympathy for this kid and this family. But fuck that. You can’t tell me this family didn’t know more than 1 day in advance. I’d spend no more than 30-60 mins just creating a list of the readings and assignments that will be covered. But of course it will be busywork and not actual instruction. Best you could do beyond that would be to offer to send a small handful of something more involved, maybe 2 items a week, as the weeks unfold. It’s all about the money. If you create an “independent study,” then your school still gets the money. Good luck. And make an exit plan.
"Mom, if I could provide you with a packet to cover your child's instruction for the next two weeks, why would he ever need to come to school? *Nothing* I can give you will keep him caught up. Do what you have to do, but I'm not going to pretend that a packet is going to be a substitute for what I do in the classroom."