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The teacher should absolutely be reprimanded. I can't believe you think what she did was okay.
Yep, sure do.
What good is reprimanding the teacher?
School is out. Only the grandmother and parent thought daughter's story should win. We don't know and I highly doubt, everyone thought granddaughter should win.
This behavior of reprimanding a teacher is why so many qualified teachers are bailing on the profession.
People like you are going to reprimand teachers out of schools and you'll be left with one teacher per six classrooms and teacher assistants teaching all the classes.
I'd also tell you where you could stuff it and make sure it was known to every other teacher in contact with your child that you and grandma are a nightmare.
BlueHerons<------Friends with many teachers and school administrators.
Until the grandparents contact the school we'll never know. It might well have been a mistake on the part of the teacher but without malice. The teacher might have thought she was doing the right thing by editing her students papers.
Getting a 9-year-old to write a story is a good thing indeed. However, you shouldn't have to tell a child because her story "didn't flow" parts were removed.
Now the child can expect the grammar to be corrected yet she's the writer and the content should have been left alone.
But again this might have been a screw-up made by an inexperienced teacher.
School is out. Only the grandmother and parent thought daughter's story should win. We don't know and I highly doubt, everyone thought granddaughter should win.
This behavior of reprimanding a teacher is why so many qualified teachers are bailing on the profession.
People like you are going to reprimand teachers out of schools and you'll be left with one teacher per six classrooms and teacher assistants teaching all the classes.
I'd also tell you where you could stuff it and make sure it was known to every other teacher in contact with your child that you and grandma are a nightmare.
BlueHerons<------Friends with many teachers and school administrators.
This. Now that the economy has improved teacher shortages are starting to become a serious issue and attendance in teacher education programs has decreased significantly. A couple of years ago I was supervising student teachers and it was like watching rats deserting a sinking ship. It’s one thing to be required to pay for and obtain a greater than average amount of education for a profession that pays less than average when your job gives you emotional satisfaction, it is a whole new ball game to do it for a career in a profession that is treated like dog poop.
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Ah, this is a big time two-sided coin. On one hand, I understand the teacher shortage. It's a real live problem. I support teachers and, as a parent, I went out out of my way to make sure they knew how much I appreciate them. I chaired the Teacher Appreciation Committee for several years until my kids graduated. I admire anyone who takes on this profession. I was gutted when fabulous teachers left for a better offer elsewhere. I get it.
The other side of this coin is I cannot get past a teacher editing a student's submitted work. It matters not if anyone thought the student would win (I have my doubts as to who everyone was too). As this story is presented, I think it's a terrible thing for this teacher to have done. What we don't know are the actual rules for the contest, if the teacher sat down with the student and made edits, if the teacher told the students she was going to edit their papers, if there's a piece of the steps here the granddaughter forgot. There are (hopefully) details missing.
The profession of teaching needs to be elevated, paid and held to the appropriate standard it deserves to retain our amazing and dedicated teachers. It's a sad day when we don't want to upset a teacher who rewrites portions of a student's paper because it might upset them and cause them to leave.
Hopefully, it's all a big misunderstanding and teacher is in the clear.
This. Now that the economy has improved teacher shortages are starting to become a serious issue and attendance in teacher education programs has decreased significantly. A couple of years ago I was supervising student teachers and it was like watching rats deserting a sinking ship. It’s one thing to be required to pay for and obtain a greater than average amount of education for a profession that pays less than average when your job gives you emotional satisfaction, it is a whole new ball game to do it for a career in a profession that is treated like dog poop.
And logic like yours is why my wife and I paid big dollars to move our kids into private K-12 early on. That was the best decision we ever made. The effort moved our boy from an unqualified 2nd grade public school math teacher to one who was an engineer by education. Instead of saying, "no that's wrong you can't do it that way/show your work not matter what/I know you can do it in your head but it's still wrong etc." The private school teacher said things like, "as long as I can follow what you are doing keep going etc." The yield is our boy moved from being ready to give up on school totally to nth degree success. I'm convinced getting away from the "poor me" public school mindset was critical.
There is nothing in adult life as odd as people who are in the aggregate the least well educated among the educated.....who work roughly 75/78% as many days as other professionals.....who also can't be fired under normal circumstances crying about poor treatment. Public facing jobs are always tough.
Sounds like the teacher edited all the essays to hide the fact that the kids can't write well. It's a good lesson for your daughter though. At about your daughter's age my uncle taught me to play poker. We played for matchsticks. He had a big pile of matchsticks to start and I had a small pile. I said to him, "that's not fair, you have more matchsticks than me." He answered, "the only game in life that is fair is checkers."
I'd tell your daughter that what the teacher did wasn't fair, but I wouldn't make an issue of it with the school.
In the 7th grade I had a teacher that hated me. She summoned me and my Mom to her house after my Mom got home from work for a conference at the teacher's home. We had to take a bus to where she lived in the suburbs. When we were done with the meeting, on the way home my mom said "that teacher is a bitc*, but I don't ever want to be summoned to her house again, so make sure it doesn't happen again" and it didn't.
As others have suggested, I think you should ask the teacher why she edited a story submitted for a contest, changing the narrative and tone.
If you accept her explanation, then let it go.
If you do not accept her explanation, then mention it to the principal, the point being contest submissions should be unedited so as to not change the narrative and tone, then let it go.
School is out. Only the grandmother and parent thought daughter's story should win. We don't know and I highly doubt, everyone thought granddaughter should win.
This behavior of reprimanding a teacher is why so many qualified teachers are bailing on the profession.
People like you are going to reprimand teachers out of schools and you'll be left with one teacher per six classrooms and teacher assistants teaching all the classes.
I'd also tell you where you could stuff it and make sure it was known to every other teacher in contact with your child that you and grandma are a nightmare.
BlueHerons<------Friends with many teachers and school administrators.
Which doesn't address the ethical issue of a teacher editing work and then submitting it as the student's to a contest. How would this teacher address plagiarism if this student had submitted homework under their name that another student had written for them?
And I'm also bothered about the ethics of a profession that would threaten little kids as a weapon against their parents.
I'm having a hard time picturing a livid nine-year-old, except for how it reminds me of The Bad Seed. Which didn't end well.
Oh, I would have been livid at 9. And probably younger. Spitting mad. I've always hated having my stuff edited. Especially if I had written something i liked and was excited about, and then it was changed so I no longer liked it? Oh noooo. It wouldn't even have been about winning so much as, "You changed something I wrote? To something I wouldn't even want to be associated with??"
I think it's valid to ask why the story was edited... IF it was. If you have a copy of the story as submitted, why didn't you or your daughter recognize the changes before seeing the old version? Maybe the old version was a first draft that was cleaned up later in class and your daughter forgot that part.
Wrong as it might be for the teacher to edit it, if she did... it's unfounded, IMHO, to suggest the edits changed the outcome and you would have won if it hadn't been edited. You can't know that. Judging things like this is subjective opinion. Don't fill your daughter with sour grapes.
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