<p>I’d like to get some opinions of this.
My S (junior in a huge public hs) told me one of his favorite teachers made an announcement in class today. He doesn’t want anyone to ask him for a recommendation letter, instead, in the last week of school, he will hold a lottery for anyone who wants a letter from him and the winning 6 kids will get a recommendation letter from him.
Now I know that teachers are not obligated to write letters, but doesn’t this feel wrong? What if the “winners” are not kids he knows well or respects? I’m sure some of the kids that believe he thinks well of them, are wrong. By doing it this way he’s forced to write the “winners” letters, not leaving himself open to say no to a kid he doesn’t feel comfortable writing a letter for.
Am I naive in thinking that teachers do refuse to write letters for the kids they don’t know well enough, or don’t have anything positive to say about?</p>
<p>Now I’ve heard everything…</p>
<p>That is just wrong and lazy in my opinion. My DD requested rec letters from her AP Calc/Ap Stats teacher and her AP Eng teacher. Both of these teachers are highly regarded and I know many students request letters from these teachers every year. My D was accepted at H and Y and if she could not have gotten recs from these very important teachers I doubt she would have those acceptances. She had each teacher for three years. I would speak to administration immediately. It is expected that 8th grade teachers write a lot of recs. Our students do fill out a form and submit a resume with each teacher rec request. Good luck!</p>
<p>I’m not a parent and if one of my teachers had done that in HS, I would not have been pleased. However, there is something to be said for the fact that the people who will be asking a particular teacher for a recommendation are people who feel that the teacher will write them a decent letter, thus a lottery system won’t hurt the winners because they presumably would have received decent letters regardless.</p>
<p>How much is he charging for the lottery tickets? ;)</p>
<p>Only six? .</p>
<p>The teacher is not being compensated to write these letters. Setting limits without showing favoritism is appropriate. I don’t know how many teachers the school has nor how many seniors and how many need letters, but I can see the logic behind the guy’s strategy.</p>
<p>If the student-teacher ratio is 30:1 (for instance - I think that’s pretty typical for a public high school?) then I think it’s really lame that he’ll only write 6 unless only 20% of students go to a college which requires a recommendation letter be written. </p>
<p>For most schools do the recommendation letters have any influence really? I thought it was just an issue of getting one. It’s a check-mark which says you’re serious about applying to their school, not a benchmark for admission. At least not at most school. Why bother spending time on it, tell kids he has a template he’ll fill the students name in and send it out.</p>
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<p>They can have a large influence at the top-50 schools. In the top-20 it had better be customized with supporting details that says you’re one of their best-ever students. State colleges in our state, including the flagship, don’t WANT recommendations, so I’d guess only a small sliver of colleges expect them. However, since one recommendation nowadays get sent electronically to multiple schools, it says nothing to the school about how interested you are in THEM.</p>
<p>Yuk. I’d like to know how many he’d have to write if he accepted all requests from students he knew well enough to recommend. If it’s 200 or 1000 (every junior in a huge school), I can see the need to come up with some way to limit the load.</p>
<p>If he’d otherwise have to write 30 or 50… I’m not so sure. It’s junior year; he can write over the summer. That’s not all so heavy a load. I know that some of the best teachers in our small public take on loads like that.</p>
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<p>Okay. I think at my school (public - state flagship) it’s just a check-mark for your application to be complete and isn’t really a factor for admission, and at most of the other schools in the state they, like the schools in your state, don’t want these letters. I figured that most of the country would be the same way, but maybe it’s just a special case here. I think most people in my high school only needed teacher recommendation letters for one or two schools. </p>
<p>As such, I think it would have been ridiculous for a teacher at my school to do this.</p>
<p>At my D’s school, the guidance counselor wrote the letters and some applications requested a letter from the GC. My D also had one from her French teacher. That was two. </p>
<p>I agree that the teacher in the original post could easily create a template and use that for multiple letters, but this would devalue his letters if every year, the same schools received his duplicate letters… better to write six good ones with a personal touch…</p>
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<p>You forgot the whole reason teachers become teachers… for the summers off duh!</p>
<p>/sarcasm</p>
<p>My son goes to a smallish public with 250 students per grade. I would guess that the most popular English teacher probably writes at least 20 letters of recommendation. I think that most of the Junior core subject teachers write at least 10 apiece. Six is pretty stingy. The majority of the colleges that my son applied to wanted one to two letters of recommendation, plus something from the guidance counselor. </p>
<p>The way our HS had it set up, is the teachers would give one letter to the guidance department and they would send that out if the student checked it off on the form.</p>
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<p>That’s like saying I’m not being compensated to mentor my replacement. This is exactly the kind of attitudie that is driving people crazy with the teachers these days. They are compensated for writing the letters, as anyone in any career is compensated for every professional act they do. Teachers are not hourly employees.</p>
<p>I don’t know the size of the school, or the number of seniors who apply to college, but 6 seems like a very small number of recommendations for a teacher teaching a main subject in top class. But, I’m also not surprised, since they aren’t “compensated” for writing the letters. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Writing letters is part of the job imo. I expect my teachers to put in an eight hour day just like the rest of us and for the most part I think they do. A high school teacher who teaches 6 classes of juniors I suppose could theoretically have 200 letters to write, but given that most students have a dozen teachers they might choose for 2 letters, I doubt that any teacher is that overwhelmed. Just as an example my older son had letters from Latin and physics teachers while younger son had letters from history and math. No overlap there.</p>
<p>Another example of how teachers unions have become too strong.</p>
<p>We have a similiar situation in our HS with one of 2 APUSH teachers (they alternate years, as it’s a 2yr program, so you get same guy for 2 years, then he starts over with new group of sophomores). He tells the kids sometime in Jr year that he will only write a handful of recommendations, as he will only write letters for kids he really ‘knows’. My understanding is this is <10, however he has close to 100 kids in APUSH. He’s considered a fabulous teacher, but for kids that are planning to major in history or something similar this is a real kick in the teeth. How can he not get to know kids after having them daily for 2 years? (My D had the other teacher).</p>
<p>What the heck do teachers unions have to do with this? This is ONE teacher taking a lazy, selfish, and unprofessional stance. </p>
<p>Writing letters of recommendation is part of the job. We’ve occasionally heard here about a teacher who said they would write X number, first come, first served, but IIRC the number was always quite high: like 30. I don’t even approve of that, but six is simply ridiculous, and to make it a lottery is even more ridiculous, since a letter from this person would really make a difference for some students, and make little or no difference for others. </p>
<p>For top schools, refusing to provide a recommendation may severely impact the kid’s chances of admission.</p>
<p>I would take this to the administration, pronto.</p>
<p>Thanks for the comments everyone.
I will not take this to administration as this is an Honors class and at the moment my son is looking at an A+.
I have told my son not to enter the lottery and instead to ask some teachers that are taking this process seriously.<br>
To give some more info, this is a very popular teacher & as he teaches an H class I’m sure he gets lots of requests for letters.
I would not have an issue if he just told them he is going to write a limited number of letters (although 6 seems stingy), it’s his lottery system I’m objecting too.
It’s a shame, he’s had a great relationship with my son, and from what I understand some great class discussions. It would have been a great letter if this teacher approached the process appropriately.</p>