6mo ago

I need to vent about my daughter's school because I vented to my wife about it last night but it wasn't enough and I'm still mad, so you folks get to see me rant.

My daughter is in online school. It's a state public school, not a private school or homeschooling. She's in it due to being severely bullied. I have to stay home with her, but I don't actually teach her anything, I'm a designated 'learning coach.'

She has assignments based on the same shitty Pierson textbooks the regular school kids use and has online classes with accredited teachers. Those teachers are generally get paid better than other public school teachers since the whole thing is a deal with Pierson, so they're usually a better level of teacher, which is part of what pisses me off so much.

My daughter worked really hard on her science presentation, a slideshow she was assigned to do. The overall topic was humanity's impact on the environment and one of the options she could pick was disease. My daughter is a weird kid- in a good way- who is into history when it's weird too, so she picked the Black Death.

Like I said, she worked really hard. I was really proud of her too because it was the first time she worked on a project this big without asking for or needing any help from me. So, she saved the project as a PDF and submitted the assignment.

The next day (Thursday), she gets back a grade of a zero. This is the teacher's note:

I noticed that you submitted a placeholder for the portfolio assignment. Is this an error? The portfolio is worth a lot..so please contact me as soon as possible. Please note that intentional placeholders are subject to not being accepted. If I don’t hear back from you soon, I will assume that it is a placeholder. Please do not upload placeholders to move ahead in the class as this may result in failing grades, calls home and referral to administration.

My daughter isn't a cheater and, like I said, she worked really hard. This stressed her out a lot because one of the reasons we took her out of her middle school was that the teachers rarely had her back when it came to bullying and sometimes also treated her like shit. Because that's what school is like for neurodivergent kids, even in 2024.

So... were totally confused. On top of everything else, the PDF was right there to download when you review the teacher's message. I sent her an email asking her what the hell is going on and also have my daughter send her a Google Slides link instead just in case there is some corruption issue on her end or something even though I can download and view the PDF just fine.

We don't hear back all Thursday and nothing until mid-day Friday, when she sent us both what is clearly a form email, ignoring both of the messages we sent:

Hello Parents and Students!
I wanted to take a moment to let you know that your student received a 0 on their science portfolio, but the great news is that there's still a chance to improve that grade!
Please log into your student’s gradebook and click on the science portfolio grade to read the feedback provided. This feedback outlines how your student can correct any issues and resubmit the portfolio within the timeframe specified for a better grade.
Let’s work together to help your student succeed! Thank you!

She also responds to my daughter's google slides link and says it's a very interesting slideshow and asks where she got it from (you will see below why that is just a bullshit lie to get her to reveal that she cheated).

So I have my daughter also send her the PDF the "fill this out to help you with your research" document my daughter diligently filled out before doing her slideshow and I got mad and sent a message to her homeroom teacher, who you're supposed to go to for any major problems.

My daughter is now super stressed, and Friday is a pretty easy day for her, so I take her out to do things to give her a nice day- get her a smoothie, let her walk around Five Below, etc.

When we get back, maybe at 1 pm, I check my email. I get this from the teacher:

I have to apologize!! When I first saw her portfolio and saw all the old pictures and the Black Death title, I assumed ( I know, I shouldn’t have) it was a placeholder.

She left a similar voicemail to my wife and apparently one to my daughter, but I didn't read it. I just said thanks and told my daughter to say thanks as well.

But I'm just floored. She didn’t bother just reading the text. This is the slide right after the title slide. If she had taken a few seconds, she would have realized this is a middle schooler doing a science project:

(I'm not suggesting my kid is stupid, I'm saying that's pretty typical for her age.)

Be a little less lazy than your eighth graders, lady. And maybe don't automatically assume they're cheating.

At least she ended up giving my daughter 100%.

49 comments

It's a mistake and it's now corrected and you've received an apology. Celebrate the good grade and discuss the importance of perseverance and maintaining your composure when standard communication fails. It's totally fine to take time to vent when shit goes wrong, then regroup and make a plan to correct the issue. That's how we learn to deal with difficult situations. Glad it all worked out for her.
- This is my take too. Bad situation, and stressful middle part, but reasonably good resolution. How you and your daughter move forward is a good way to refocus your pent up frustration.
  I hope the vent helped! It sounds like part of what's bothering you is that you expected better. That's reasonable, but I hope you regain some confidence in her school and the teachers. The apology from the teacher is direct, takes responsibility, and restores the grade. That's pretty good!
  They can't undo the stress from the miscommunication, and they can't promise it won't happen again, but the systems for catching these kinds of mistakes seemed to have worked. That's pretty good too!
  (For context only, I'll add that I have two kids who did online public school during the worst of the pandemic, and are back in person now. We've had problems similar to this one in every format, almost every year. So, that doesn't change anything that you experienced, but I have some idea of how bad it feels, and what it takes to move on. You can do it!!)
  
  I work in public schools and online teaching sucks!! I almost quit so many times during covid! Ridiculous administrative requirements on multiple platforms that don't talk to each other. It's nearly impossible to maintain good communication. We currently use one called Parent Square. I have to subscribe to each school that i serve in order to get a notification that someone from that school has messaged me. Subscribing to a school means that I also get every notice about free school lunch sign up, fire drill, Red ribbon week pajama day, etc. I currently serve 13 schools. That means I get 13 emails everyday about shit that means nothing to me. About half the time it sends those twice, so on those days I get 26. This is so I can be notified when I get a message from a parent or teacher - which happens maybe once a month. Online teaching can turn good teachers into sort, delete, reply technicians.
- I mostly agree.
  What isn't present, and should be, is the teacher addressing how they will be avoiding recreating this situation going forward. How they address for next time is more important to me than an apology.
  Ymmv, but to me that's the part that's missing. And I get the venting.
  
  They will avoid it. They don't have to justify it, though.
  
  What isn't present, and should be, is the teacher addressing how they will be avoiding recreating this situation going forward.
  Then it's not a full apology.
  I regret the outcome of my decisions
  I understand the connection between what I chose and how they affected others
  These are the changes I will make.
  In any order, but it needs to have all three.
- Ugh reading OPs post made me unreasonably angry, but your comment really is correct. Just hard when you're steaming mad and frustrated.

I had a teacher accuse me of cheating on an essay in fifth grade. It was a teacher I really liked up until that point, too, so it really hurt. I don't remember anything about them now, so I must have written them off for it, lol.
I think you've done well by being in her corner and helping clear up the situation. I wouldn't have been able to advocate for myself without them because I was hurting too much just trying to process the situation. I remember my parents were very angry with that teacher, but they had my back. If that weren't the case, it would have destroyed me. Sorry you had to go through that & thanks for being a good dad.
- I once had a professor post-facto accuse me of plagarism because he found my paper "online."
  On my own web site.
  Which had my name at the top.
  
  This had her name at the top! So I guess the teacher thought she just put her name on it?
  
  Did you put the paper online before or after the assignment?
  I don't know that "plagiarism" is the right word for it, but this was something that my instructors in college made sure we aware of. I'm in tech, and a lot of us had some portfolios already, so we were warned that if we recycled stuff from a previous project it would fail to meet our academic code of conduct and be scored as a zero.
  I'm not saying that's what you did, and again, I wouldn't exactly call it "plagiarism" either. You can't really copy yourself, y'know? But I could see how somebody who doesn't know better could get tripped up
  
  🤦
- Thank you!

- You are an amazing Dad with a great daughter who deserve a much better teacher than this craphead.
  Thank you. We got in a big fight with her last night because she refuses to eat healthily to the point that we're honestly concerned and I really felt like a failure as a parent by the end, so that's something that I needed to hear. You really helped me more than you could know.
  
  You care and that's obvious. One thing all parents learn is that we have no idea how to do things "right". As long as you keep caring to try and find that "right" things, then you can consider yourself a great parent.
  You also go above and beyond what most parents will do. So, thank you for advocating for your daughter's education.

I know online schooling can be frustrating. I earned most of my college degree and 2 certificates that way. Ultimately we're all human and even teachers make mistakes. There are also online teachers who bullshit their jobs and do dumb shit like taking cursory looks at assignments and half ass grading. I remember reading somewhere that these teachers will take on several classes and get paid per class and that some of them will work with multiple schools.
I'm sorry your daughter had to deal with that stress. You did the best thing your could which is follow up and keep ask about it and in the worst case scenario, escalate it. Usually these teachers also have phone numbers in their syllabus, don't be afraid to call them or to contact the school to get the number. I remember most online teachers only check their messages once a day and some of them won't check on weekends.
This will probably happen again at some point. Just follow up and contact the teacher. Any time I ever had issues the teachers were adults about it and apologized. Idk if this is with every online school but mine would send out surveys at the end of each class. If you get those make sure to fill them out with good and bad feedback. The positive thing about this is you are showing your daughter how to handle a real world problem like an adult and how to resolve a conflict with someone she has to work with.
- The positive thing about this is you are showing your daughter how to handle a real world problem like an adult and how to resolve a conflict with someone she has to work with.
  I tried to. Then I went to my office in the garage and ranted out loud about that motherfucking lazy-ass teacher. But she didn't have to know about that part.

As a professional in education policy, I'll let you know that K-12 is pretty terrible. It didn't work for me especially for exactly these reasons and by 9th grade I was burnt out and stopped doing all homework. Thanks to grade inflation, I still got Cs (they have me a C on a quiz I drew a doodle on instead of answering questions on a book I didn't read).
I still got a PhD, but it took community college (and transferred) and the slightly higher respect for me as a person helped tons. There are still shitty instructors at that level, but you have a better chance to avoid them if you navigate the system carefully.
In other words, you'll run into crap like this plenty but even in a worst case scenario, as long as your kid is still smart they'll ultimate have more chances. (Also don't forget internal motivation, validation from teachers is hit or miss but if they do something they like themselves that should also not be diminished).

Had a somewhat similar experience back in my high-school days some 15 years ago.
I went to a specialized school for kids with learning disabilities (ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, visual and auditory processing disorders, etc). I was an exceptionally smart kid doing college level work across the board, but i never did homework. Why bother? I struggled with organization, but i took every test they put in front of me and blew it out of the water, so I clearly understood the material.
With this understood, I was still not allowed to walk graduation with my classmates due to a "failure" to turn in an English research paper that was mandatory for graduation. My family had come out to watch me graduate from hundreds of miles away. I was mortified, especially because I was DAMN sure I turned that paper in multiple times (you were required to show drafts, I had done a first draft, a revision, and a polish). SOMEHOW, those papers never made it to the English teacher according to the school. But don't worry! I could take a $3500 summer class to finish the credit and still get a GED!
Well my dad, who drove out to CA from Texas, could smell the fish once he saw the net. He knew i almost never turned in homework, but I'd never fully blown off an entire assignment before. So he arranged a visit to see the school before he agreed to the summer courses. While he was there (the first Monday after the graduation ceremony none of us got to attend) he physically broke into the English Teachers desk and went through the papers. Tiny school, so there were only 20 students in my graduating class. Not exactly a gigantic number of students to sift through.
Long story short, while the school was freaking out about the 6 foot 5 troll rummaging through school property, he managed to find my paper. All three drafts of my paper, in fact. Before the school could get around to figuring out they should call the cops, my dad took my paper to the Dean and the school director and asked extremely pointed questions about exactly why we were being recommended a summer course to finish up my credits.
We were treated to a plethora of excuses and apologies, from the English teacher misplacing them to how their first graduating class had been "so hectic" that I just fell through the cracks. Again, 20 students in that graduating class. Between grades 9-12 and staff the entire program was less than 100 people. Really, what's losing track of one person out of 100?
My dad graciously agreed not to hunt down and eat anyone from the school in exchange for a full diploma. We reported them to the state, but as a charter school, it was basically a "private" institution and they could do whatever they wanted as long as they met the accreditation requirements.
We ended up just spreading what happened through word of mouth in the parent network. The Dean quickly found new work at a different charter program and the administration board was voted/bought out by the parents of a girl in the grade behind mine. Heard some years later that her dad ran the entire charter into the ground in 3 or 4 years and the charter ended up closing down and reopening in a new city. Also found out our history professor ended up spending some 8 years in a Thai prison for the kinda shit that gets you on government watch lists even when you come back to the US. Bunch of us former students got some very curious calls about him from some very serious federal people about 10 years after graduating.
All in all, I'd still spit blood on most of the staff involved some 15 years later. That kinda hurt never really goes away as a kid. If I were you, I'd push the teacher for a hand written apology or a zoom call face to face thing. Accusing a kid of not doing something in a serious situation isn't a whoopsie that just gets shrugged off. That's shit they carry with them for a long, long time.
- I (and my entire class for a semester) have a remarkably similar story for one of our classes under a particular teacher. Turns out, they couldn't be bothered to actually grade any of the papers, so they gave out zeros expecting kids to come in and correct them later. The worst part was that this was a teacher that many of us kids had liked and respected beforehand. We did all learn a very important lesson about CYA, trust but verify, and personal backups that year.
- I'm really sorry to hear that and it really sucks.
  If it makes you feel any better, I majorly disappointed my professor father by dropping out of high school, getting a GED (perfect score), then going to college and dropping out of college, so he never saw me in a cap and gown. And then to add to the burn, my wife ended up with two masters degrees.
  
  Nah. I never cared much for my dad. He was always someone for me to look at and think "this is what I don't want to be" growing up. We were almost carbon copies, except I understood what ADHD meant. Impulse control wasn't a concept my dad ever embraced.
  Imagine the worst behaviors of a hyperactive socially awkward teen and scale them up to a 45 year old man with disposable income. I saw him drop $1500 on a Damascus folding knife only to figure out minutes later that now his wife's car payment would bounce, all while loudly complaining about how expensive it is to come out to CA even though he did every other year anyways. Not to see me, his only biological child, but to go camping at a specific campground he almost died at as a teen being stupid on a motorcycle.
  The best one was he won box seats to the last 49er game at candlestick park through some radio contest. Whole big thing all expenses paid for 3 people. Did he bring his wife? Did he bring his kids, adopted or biological? No. He brought his mother, who hated his kids, and his stepfather, who hated him. Lmfao
  Sorry bastard ended up shooting himself. Cold as it is, best thing I ever got from the man was an excuse not to work one day of the year. I always take the day to do something for me and something for a random stranger. He'd hate that shit.

Maybe something to the teacher about how distressing it is to receive a 0 on an assignment, and you would hope mext time that would only happen after the teacher verifies its warranted?
- Nah, I already responded to her apology and just said thank you and I understand. No reason to escalate things.
  
  You're pissed off about this enough to be ranting to Lemmy about it. Clearly, there are still unresolved issues!

I mean your kids going to be submitting assignments directly to an AI education engine by the time she graduates, so either appreciate what you've got now, or alternatively, just hang on a bit longer, cuz things are gonna change.
- Please don't make me angrier.

- She's doing fine now thankfully.

By the way they act online, nothing about this is suprising.

Having a few teachers like this growing up, I am now also pissed knowing what that shit feels like.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
(Those who can't teach, administrate.)
- Hi there, I just want to take a moment to tell you to go fuck yourself.
  Also, OP, that's such a shitty situation. I'm really sorry the teacher didn't do their job properly, and also glad that they noticed and apologised for their mistake. Hopefully, they've learnt their lesson a bit and are more effective in checking assignments in the future.
  Well done to your daughter on what looks like a great assignment.
  
  To the teacher's credit, when she did read the whole thing, she agreed that it was really well-done.
  I don't know, maybe it was just a really bad week for her or something.
  
  I'd like to second that "go fuck yourself," but I won't because they don't deserve the pleasure.
  I've been around educators pretty much my entire life. My Dad was an instructor for the local electrical workers union, my sister is a special education teacher for K-3 children, my Mom teaches photography as a side job, I currently work with a man who was a marine corp instructor for network administration, and I've worked with at least five other people who were educators in some capacity either currently or in the past. All of them were masters of their field.
  Saying that people who choose to teach their craft to others only do so because they are in some way incompetent is thoroughly disgusting and this fuckstain should be ashamed.
  
  Via.

49 comments