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<p>I wonder if any of the students who post on CC will stay on through their own kids’ HS and college years!</p>
<p>The worst thing I ever did as a helicopter parent was: Starting too late!</p>
<p>re: zero for paper lost by teacher…</p>
<p>I saw a zero in the place on the computer grade book where I was SURE my 8th grade daughter should have had at least a 90 on a paper I had watched her put into her notebook, and swore she had turned in later that same day. </p>
<p>I contacted the teacher by email; she swore it had not been turned in. Two weeks later she finds the paper among papers from another class. She sends me an email saying she would not deduct points for a late paper, but NOT TO LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!!! What??? SHE lost the paper! I ratted her out to my good friend, the principal 
I have a helipad in her office.</p>
<p>Thanks Kei, I just want to reiterate that it was her essay. The question was a generic “what challenge have you overcome” type of thing and she had it saved on the computer so it was just a little thing. That scholarship made it possible for her to attend, so it was worth it. Of course, she didn’t go back year 2 after hospitalizations, but that’s another story.</p>
<p>In the more literal sense, after my son had a life-threatening head injury, I took up the habit of walking around behind him with my arms out to protect him. There are photos and video of me hovering. It’s a little excessive.</p>
<p>Mom2 - wait, a sec. Your H got into Harvard, but your MIL threw out the acceptance letter?!?!</p>
<p>Did he end up going to a school closer to home like M wanted? What type fo school did he end up going to? How does he feel about what his M did? Did he ever talk to her about it?</p>
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<p>LOL. I know that teachers have to develop a lot of survival strategies…lines like that may work with the kids, but not with US.</p>
<p>We’ve had a couple of instances of classes where S1 turned in papers, GOT THEM BACK WITH GRADES, but showed up as zeros on the electronic gradebook. First level hovering is that I’d go through the backpack with S and find said assignments. Since he never emptied his backpack, we were easily able to locate the work. We organized it and he goes in to see the teacher. I hovered at home with follow-up questions to S. I avoid launching my helicopter’s direct email access to the teacher unless S is getting flak.</p>
<p>S2 got a D on a semester exam last year after getting As in the class first and second quarter. Teacher refused to re-run through the Scantron. We then got involved by email. S asked if they could sit down together and see what happened (there were two versions of the exam, so we figured S might have filled in the wrong exam code.) Lo and behold the teacher’s manual answer key (which was correct) did not match the Scantron key. S had to show the teacher the problem. S had a high B on the exam. We have always wondered how many other kids were hosed by that.</p>
<p>Our hovering policy is that we will get involved only after the kid has made an earnest attempt, has a legitimate cause of action/concern, and if he wants us to help him advocate.</p>
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That’s our policy too. we have generally found with our kids that the teachers are usually right. The only time we ever had to get into it on behalf of D1 was with a teacher who gave her a terrible grade on a project that was a large part of the grade (junior year). D couldn’t resolve it, so we went in and spoke to the teacher. Turns out the teacher, who was in her first year, hadn’t learned the names of the kids yet and thought mine was someone else.</p>
<p>It’s rather amazing to me that some teachers don’t consider grades and the student. If the student is a C student and gets an A or an F on a test, then I’d want to know if there was an issue in grading or something else at work. If a B student got a 20/100 on a test, I’d want to know why. In any kind of research, you think critically about results. Does this make sense? If not, I’ll recheck the data.</p>
<p>Oh, do I agree with Missypie and BCEagle on the grading issues. S1 was the A+ kid; S2 not anywhere close. It was very easy to tell when electronic grades were incorrect with S1. With S2, I was never sure if it were bad grade input or him. He had a real ditz brain for business math (I had the teacher 25 years ago; he wasn’t exaggerating). She lost so many papers I couldn’t take it anymore. It could have been a productive class, but she made it worthless. I let him drop it at semester.</p>
<p>Still, though, I have been beyond amazed at the amount of grading errors in our school in the 5 years we have had electronic grade accessible. I really think a great deal of it is sloppiness and carelessness on the part of the teacher(s). I wonder how many errors occurred in manual gradebooks, but no one could tell without access to them.</p>
<p>One teacher had my PE star D with a F in PE for the 6 weeks. These teachers actually “signed off” manually on the final report card grades. It was one of those things that would have jumped out to anyone, but nope, never questioned. 91 and 96 test grades entered as “1” and "“6”. Again, a quick glance over the grades entered would have revealed this. One time, the grades were way off and the teacher had inserted someone new in the class into the manual gradebook, but the electronic book alphabetized the names, so everyone below the A’s in the alphabet had someone else’s grades. So on. and on. and on. Sorry if I sound bitter, but mistakes like these can have huge consequences, val/sal, merit scholarship cut-offs, getting into AP and foreign language classes/ college aps.</p>
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<p>I totally agree. When Son was applying for colleges (and thus, merit money) he was in the top 20.6%, just missing the top 20% cutoff. Two years of a few mistaken grades here and there could have definitely made the difference. You can tell yourself, “well it should even out because teachers probably make mistakes on everyone’s grades” but you know that the top of the class kids know don’t assume that a C is a correct grade.</p>
<p>I agree with you also about the “quick glance.” Yes, teachers work hard and often grade papers late into the night. But many of these grades do stick out like a sore thumb. It’s like when my secretary hands me a document with a glaring mistake (e.g. the font changes in the middle of the document). It shows that not only did she not proof the document, she did not even LOOK AT the document.</p>
<p>We just got the ability to view grades online this year, when my youngest child is a Senior. Both my kids say that’s a good thing, and they’re probably right. With my older one I’d have been online every week obsessing over his grades!</p>
<p>I sort of inadvertently did two things that could have been huge helicoptering moves, but that wasn’t the motivation behind them, so I don’t know if it counts… </p>
<p>Years ago, the parent organization at the high school was begging for someone to be Treasurer, so I volunteered. 3 years later, I was the only person left on the board whose kid wasn’t graduating, so guess who ended up as President? For the last 3 years I’ve asked at least twice each year if anyone else wants to take over but the response has been: [silence, crickets chirping]. So this year my youngest is graduating, and someone else has FINALLY stepped up. In the meantime, I’ve been on a first name basis with every Principal we’ve had, and we’ve gone thru several. </p>
<p>A year later, I went to the district’s central office and applied to be a substitute secretary. They sent me for a “temporary” assignment to fill in for a seriously ill employee of a district-wide dept that happened to have its office in the h.s. The person I was filling in for died, and I was hired to replace her.</p>
<p>So now I work in the high school (although I report to the central district office, not the principal) and I’m the head of the parent organization. I’m on a first-name basis with a ton of teachers, guidance counselors, secretaries, etc. </p>
<p>But I didn’t do it so I could hover over my kids! It just happened! I swear… and the fact that I’m considering leaving now that my youngest is graduating… another coincidence. I swear. ;)</p>
<p>And I have never used my position to lobby for my kids for anything. I go thru the same channels as everyone else (basically email) if I need to contact one of my kids’ teachers. I’ve never tried to influence a teacher either. (one of my Parent Org board members tried to pull the “I’m an officer of the Parent Org” card on a teacher, when the Principal told me about it I let the woman know that was totally unacceptable!) Once I emailed a teacher after D was upset because “no one” in her class finished an overly-long test. I requested that he give the students more time the next day to finish the test. This was a teacher I’d never met. The teacher said to have D come see him. When she did, he told her she could have more time to finish, but only because I asked and I work at the hs. D told him no - it wasn’t fair for her to get more time if everyone else didn’t get more time, too. Eventually he gave in and the whole class got 20 more minutes the next class to finish the test.</p>
<p>*Mom2 - wait, a sec. Your H got into Harvard, but your MIL threw out the acceptance letter?!?!</p>
<p>Did he end up going to a school closer to home like M wanted? What type fo school did he end up going to? How does he feel about what his M did? Did he ever talk to her about it? *</p>
<p>Yes, it’s true!</p>
<p>H ended up going to Purdue, which is about 2 hours away from home (I think).</p>
<p>Yes, my H did ask her about it, but keep in mind that my H didn’t find out about it until MANY years later. His mom just said, (with a big smile on her face), “Oh, I love you so much that I didn’t want you to be that far away.”</p>
<p>*I contacted the teacher by email; she swore it had not been turned in. Two weeks later she finds the paper among papers from another class. She sends me an email saying she would not deduct points for a late paper, but NOT TO LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!!! What??? SHE lost the paper! I ratted her out to my good friend, the principal I have a helipad in her office. *</p>
<p>That teacher is pretty stupid to put such a thing in writing. Amazing.</p>
<p>You’re nicer than I am. I wouldn’t have just gone to the principal, I would have confronted her about the illogic of the email. I would have asked her, “how is my child supposed to make sure that YOU never lose her homework again???” And, if she wouldn’t retract her words, I would have passed that email around for everyone to see what a moron she was. LOL</p>
<p>Missypie,</p>
<p>I agree with you completely. While we don’t want to grade monger, a few fractions of a point can make a big difference at the end.</p>
<p>Truth or dare? I admit that I write up “talking points” for my son’s graded book discussions in English. He has a hard time with class participation.</p>
<p>*I totally agree. When Son was applying for colleges (and thus, merit money) he was in the top 20.6%, just missing the top 20% cutoff. Two years of a few mistaken grades here and there could have definitely made the difference. You can tell yourself, “well it should even out because teachers probably make mistakes on everyone’s grades” but you know that the top of the class kids know don’t assume that a C is a correct grade.
*</p>
<p>There is a sweet mom that pm’d me awhile back about her kid’s missed scholarship opportunity. He had the high ACT, but his GPA (school will not weigh) was 3.498, and the high school refused to round it up to a 3.5 so he could get the scholarship at the college.</p>
<p>Now, there probably were some homework/test/quiz/essay assignments that might not have received proper credit at some time in his high school career. The domino effect of such possible mistakes might have cost this family tens of thousands of dollars. </p>
<p>Yet, someone might call the student (or parent) a “grade monger” for asking for a correction of a few points.</p>
<p>Yes, they do call the student (and/or parent) a grade monger in such situations, especially if the grade they earned is an A+ instead of an A. There were several teachers in our school who, on principle, (not sure <em>what</em> principle) said they would refuse to give A+…even if the student had 100%. Luckily, we had a principal who forced the issue and got standardized percentages/grades, e.g., 98.5-100 A+, so on down the line, into the handbook. Our school had several teachers who thought a “B” was a great grade, and appeared rather resentful at giving A’s.</p>
<p>Phew, 2 done with HS, 1 to go…</p>
<p>The parents on here are great and I totally understand where you’re coming from; a few missed assignments/mistaken grades can affect a letter grade on a report card, thus affecting the GPA and often affecting merit scholarships. These things are important, as most of us aren’t made of money. </p>
<p>And, I don’t consider it grade-mongering IF it is done by the student bc it is the student’s grade. But frankly, if the student doesn’t care enough or is too scared or can’t figure out (after discussing it at home) how to get problems taken care of at school, then maybe they deserve to live with the issue. Before anyone goes into ‘how horrible/difficult some teachers are’ – I understand that as I went through the same system not all that long ago. Also, saying that my kid is ‘only’ 15 and doesn’t know how to address this with a teacher (or elevate it to a GC etc.), keep in mind that everyone in his/her grade are 15-16 – it’s not like your 8 yr old is out there and doesn’t know how to take cues from the 15 yr olds. </p>
<p>While the sentiment is great, where will it stop? What will prevent you from calling deans/advisors in college? What will prevent you from calling his boss, when he doesn’t get the plum assignment at a professional job, is made to work long hours, or gets a bad performance review – after all, then he will ONLY be a 22 year old dealing with colleagues in their 30-40s and bosses in their 50s, so how will he handle it?? Will he go into meetings with bosses with ‘talking points’ from mom and dad because he is so shy that he can’t come up with what to say on the spot?? Just a thought; I know it won’t be well received here, but I can’t tell you how many young, ivy league educated attorneys I see who don’t know how to function without constant advice at the age of 25 because that’s what they’re used to from mom and dad.</p>
<p>There were several teachers in our school who, on principle, (not sure <em>what</em> principle) said they would refuse to give A+…even if the student had 100%.</p>
<p>I had a teacher once say to me in regards to refusing to give an A+ for a 100%… “Only God is perfect.” :::eyes rolling:::</p>
<p>The funny thing was that altho this was a Catholic school, this teacher was not Catholic. Thankfully, the principal set her straight on that. An A+ at the school gets bonus GPA points.</p>
<p>While the sentiment is great, where will it stop? What will prevent you from calling deans/advisors in college?</p>
<p>This is my older son’s 3rd year in college, and my younger son’s 1st year. Maybe we’ve been lucky, but college profs don’t seem to have some of the weird grade hangups that *some * K-12 teachers do (Most K-12 teachers don’t have this hangup, but some do).</p>
<p>I think profs understand that top grades are important …for grad school, med school, law school, etc. College profs understand that THEY wouldn’t be where THEY are if they hadn’t gotten good grades. The fact is some K-12 teachers graduate with B to B/C averages, so that may be the difference.</p>