Teach Your Kids To Respectfully Email With Teachers
“Why haven’t you graded my paper yet?”
The previous statement started the conversation. This article is a departure from my normal RV and technical writings, but it hit home recently. Students and teachers are having a really rough year. Governments and school districts are asking the impossible from teachers as if anyone was ready to drop everything and begin teaching remotely. Students are being left behind in what I am calling “The Lost Year.” The curriculum has been dumbed down for all 3 of my kids. Homework seems ridiculously simple and the policies for late and missing work are extremely lax.
One interesting bit of technology that has made its way into my life was the ability to use something called Powerschool. It allows me to log in and literally check every class all my kids have and how they are doing real time. I say real time, but obviously there are delays as teachers receive assignments and grade papers. Having the ability to check on your kid at any time is very useful, though as an 80’s kid it is difficult to even want to log in as it almost feels like spying in a weird way. I want my kids to do well so I check it anyway.
Upon logging in a couple months ago I noticed a few alarming situations. Most of which revolved around missing and late assignments. I haven’t heard a peep from my kid about having trouble in any of the classes or her seemingly needing to be doing a lot of homework. So, blood……….boil. Instant grounding and lockdown of all devices (Except, the school uses Youtube for some assignments which is a problematic topic for another time).
When I was a kid (wow I sound old now), if assignments were not turned in on time, students received a 0. If students were allowed to turn in the assignment late, the work would usually receive only half credit. I went through that a few times with teachers and it sucked. On one hand, that philosophy can teach the skills of following through and completing tasks on time. On the other, that philosophy doesn’t seem to do much for the actual learning. Philosophy aside now, the teachers in my kids’ district were allowing them to turn in the assignments late with no penalty and at any time. I think the students latched on to this and adopted the logical fallacy of “I’ll just get it done later.”
My daughter and I worked through each assignment and she completed them all. I told her I would follow up with her every day and check on her grades from here on out. Crazy as this may seem, her teachers didn’t immediately look at their inboxes and begin grading the late assignments at 8pm on a Saturday. I asked my daughter to follow up with the teacher after a few days to make sure the assignments were received. Just before she sent one of the follow up emails, I asked if I could read it. Oh boy, there it was in all its glory.
“Mr. X I turned in this assignment, why haven’t you graded it yet?”
Suddenly, I realized nobody taught these kids how to communicate through email. I walked over to my wife’s high school classroom (which is presently in our house) and she also has students sending similar emails.
The strange part to me was the students’ lack of realization they were, for lack of a better term, in the wrong. Assignments were not turned in when they were due, so when the student so decides to grace a teacher with their work; the onus is now on the teacher to drop what they are doing to respond to the student. The skill of writing effective emails with tact is hard to master. I still struggle with it.
I spent some time with my daughter explaining how what she wrote would likely be mis-interpreted and may instigate the teacher to have a more negative attitude toward her whether consciously or subconsciously. I have the personal belief that it is on the student, and not the teacher, to make the communication work. The only thing I expect out of the teacher is to be consistent and approachable. If a teacher has 30 kids in a class, they likely have 60-90 personalities (students and parents) to deal with.
We talked about ways to compose better emails that are not accusatory or demanding. Those emails have their place when the situation warrants it, but I wanted her to go back and try to understand why that verbiage was incorrect in this situation. Going back even further we found emails that were just oddly worded about needing help on a subject.
She wrote, “Ms. Y, I don’t understand the assignment. I can’t do it.”
The teacher was good about responding to her, but it prompted 6 more emails about what exactly she didn’t understand before they zero’d in on what was actually the problem. At the end of all this we agreed that for the next couple of months before she sends any emails to teachers to run it by us first just to make sure it doesn’t read the wrong way. Even if we are really busy (2 working parents) it takes less than 5 minutes at most and will greatly improve your child’s writing skill as well as helping a teacher be more effective.