<p>Are you people effing kidding me? I spent half a year teaching. That was plenty. Teachers don’t even have a chance to effing PEE let alone check their email. You emailed and expected the teacher to respond in the same day? Jeez. Teachers have to get to school around 7 AM to be ready to stand in the hall to monitor kids passing. They do this between each class. Then they are on stage (teaching) for 50 minutes. Then monitoring. They get to check email perhaps after school; perhaps at lunch (their oh say 15-20 min. break but they have to PEE sometimes as well as eat let alone chat with peers). Preps? Hah. Fill out paperwork for LD kids and do a bit of grading. I spent all day Sunday in the library grading papers. Teachers simply do NOT have the time to spend bopping back and forth between email and CC. Sorry for the snarkiness but jeebus xmas give a teacher a break.</p>
<p>I don’t expect same-day email responses. I hope the kids’ teachers are actually instruction, not checking email. I usually give it 2-3 days and am loath to contact the teachers unless my S is getting nowhere in trying to resolve the issue. Last year when S2 was having the stress migraines, I did let teachers know what was going on and how he was doing. Many of his teachers replied to me in the evenings when they clearly were not at work, which I appreciated greatly.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the teacher and their responsibilities. For example, at our school, the teachers are not required to monitor passing periods. Almost all have a conference period, department heads have two conference periods. I interact a lot with teachers in my responsibilities as president of the parent association – I’ve had e-mails returned about school issues during conference periods, etc. Mostly it depends on the teacher. Since many are on their computers to enter grades, etc. during conference period, it’s not always hard to check their e-mail. I know my daughter checks e-mail regularly because her principal uses e-mail to communicate with the faculty and her partner teacher might be sending her an instructional document or communicating via e-mail. It’s actually faster and more efficient than walking across the hall (which is hard when you have kids to watch) and having a conversation.</p>
<p>Every teacher at this school has a 90-minute planning period every day, though I know that’s not the case everywhere.</p>
<p>It went about as we expected. We got some much-needed clarification that helped explain why ds is borderline failing. I’m not sure whether ds will stick it out or move to the lower-level class.</p>
<p>crossposted w/mimk – yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I can’t believe a teacher would go all day and not check e-mail. It’s critical, really.</p>
<p>Hugcheck LOL 
Now THERE is someone who understands things! Conference period? Ha - chuckle - taken up with meetings and checking agendas for notes and taking sick kid from Art class to nurse and talking to counselor and Impact meeting and calling CPS and, arggg better run and pee before it’s time to pick up the kids again! :eek:</p>
<p>Just to clarify – I am talking HS here. I don’t think any teacher there needs to take a sick kid to the nurse. ;)</p>
<p>One of the reasons I always went to Meet the Teacher Night was to find out how teachers liked to be contacted. (Though I can’t remember actually contacting any when it comes down to it!) Some gave out school e-mails but warned us they didn’t check them too often, others gave private e-mails and one guy swore the only way to get in touch with him was to call the department office and have them leave a note in his box.</p>
<ol>
<li>“reasonable” is hard to define. If I understand correctly, the teacher had an email waiting on him the very morning of the day you wanted to meet?
I wouldn’t think that unreasonable, knowing the real meaning, but I do think it is very little notice, and is not unreasonable that the teacher may have liked, expected, needed, the courtesy of more advance notice. It is fair to assume the teacher isn’t chained to a desk, and may not have time/desire to check email every 30 minutes.
Wharfrat in post 18 mentions a good, 24 hr policy. Youdon’tsay hoped for a response in about 7 hrs.</li>
<li>No, I would not just show up as if I somehow had the expectation that on 7 hrs notice, and no response, I expected the teacher to be there.</li>
</ol>
<p>I thought I’d add that the 24 hr. policy does not apply on weekends obviously.</p>
<p>I would not expect email responses from teachers the same day. I once had a kid in trouble and spent over a week trying to track one of the teachers down. No email response and no phonemail response (turns out she used neither, but both were active so misleading). Finally I had to call the office and have them leave a not in her mailbox. </p>
<p>For emails where I really want a response, I put a “?” in the subject line. Sometimes I keep the original subject then add the questions, “blah blah… today ok???” That helps catch attention of people skimming subject lines.</p>
<p>Your timeline is wrong, yh. And he’d already said that he COULD be available; I just wanted confirmation more than an hour before the supposed mtg was to start as it takes 30 minutes to get there.</p>
<p>I expect a wide variety of response times when I send an email out there online.
MANY professionals are NOT sitting in front of computers with easy access to email. If a teacher is able to check once a day that would be satisfactory IMHO.</p>
<p>I work in a clinical laboratory with access to my employer provided work email on shared terminals throughout the lab. I check emails maybe twice a day.
I think it’s different with employees working all day at their own dedicated computers.</p>
<p>I took a second look at your OP. Maybe I am still mis-reading it, but isn’t it correct you sent an email the evening before the day you wished to meet? Doesn’t that mean it was prob waiting on him the very morning of the day you hoped to meet? Is my timeline off?</p>
<p>I don’t know when teacher read the email saying you wanted to meet that day. Do you?
It might be premature to jump off a ledge because he didn’t acknowlege your desired meeting time if you don’t even know if/when he got the message.</p>
<p>Do you interpret “could meet any day but Friday” as if teacher said “I will be expecting you today. I will clear my calendar in case you show up.” ? Like some others here, I think more notice would have been more appropriate, and like some others, I’d want a response before I’d choose to just show up, esp if I lived 30 minutes away. Put it another way- Why WOULDN’T you want the certainty of knowing teacher is expecting you? Gee, if you don’t want the certainty, why email at all? Why not just show up and expect a meeting? That is what I feel the biggest advantage of allowing more time; it allows time for a response.</p>
<p>If I am mistaken about the timeline please help me to see it more clearly.</p>
<p>No, I didn’t interpret it as “will be expecting you today.” He implied that today would be fine, and dh was available, so we e-mailed that we’d like to meet today. The delay in his response was irritating because he set up the expectation that today was fine but then wasn’t timely in confirming that it was fine. How was I to know? The timing issue has less to do with how long it took to respond but how much time we were given that, yes, that time was fine. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>Thank you for add’l information. I see now that I did have the timeline correct, but you feel irritated that he didn’t respond as quickly as you hoped.</p>
<p>Many others here have addressed their experiences with teachers, and their expectations for responses. I don’t need to repeat verbatim that almost all here have said responses typically take longer than your expectations.</p>
<p>Here’s something I see though a bit differently than you do, youdon’tsay.
Suppose on a Thursday I inquire with a mechanic when he could replace my car’s starter. He responds he could do it Friday. I make no committment at that moment yes or no. Then the next contact I send is an email after hours Thur eve, when I tell him I’ll be there at 3 p.m. for the repair, to take him up on his work schedule based on his comment that he could do it Friday. I don’t know if or when he may receive that email. As I see it, he’s had short notice that I am going to take him up on his offer to work on my car. I understand he once told me he “could” do it then, but I also understand he got no confirmation from me until the very day I expected the repair. My mechanic isn’t a secretary chained to his desk- available to check email on the spot. I don’t know when he might read my response. Maybe he had 7 hrs notice, but maybe 7 minutes! For whatever reason, I did not book the appt when he told me of his availability. From my personal experience, not knowing when he reads his email, I know he may have the time available, or, he may have slotted in something else because I delayed in my response. I can hope he’s still available, but I cannot expect that he still is. So in my life, if I say I could meet with someone at a certain time, unless I specify I will “hold” time for them while awaiting a response, then I feel there is an implied expectation of a response before I consider myself promised. Yes you did respond, and no, I don’t think a same day response is ridiculous. But given the experiences shared by many here, I think it is short notice and I’m not surprised you didn’t get a response as quickly as you hoped. Did you ever stop to think that maybe the teacher thinks YOU failed to respond in a timely way? You received his email at 2:30 but sent no response until evening. Maybe if you had sent one back at 2:31 he’d have been right there to confirm. Maybe you didn’t respond as quickly as HE hoped?</p>
<p>Here’s a use for e-mail I witnessed in a classroom. Some months ago, I had a meeting near my daughter’s school and offered to bring her lunch. She invited me to come a little early and observe part of her fourth period class. (She teaches in an inner-city charter school.) At the end of class, she asked a few students to stay – each had issues that needed addressing. Apparently, one young man (this is middle school) was not behaving appropriately and wasn’t owning it. Her laptop was still hooked up to the overhead projector and I saw her switch to her e-mail program – so did he. She opened a new e-mail, and put in the assistant principal’s address, told him she was going to alert the AP to this issue and, boy, did that get an immediate result. He became tearful, asked her to give him one more chance, etc. and admitted what he’d done. I guess she could have picked up the phone, but there was something quite dramatic about that e-mail on the screen while they were talking.</p>
<p>This is the reason my husband hates email and refuses to get a smart phone. He’s been in business for himself for many years and had seen the change in people’s expectations since the advent of email.</p>
<p>He says there is now the expectation that one will get an immediate response to an email (never mind that you’re not in the office and can’t check your email). His clients will send him emails about very complicated tax issues and expect him to respond immediately with a full-blown answer. He almost never responds by email - instead will pick up the phone and call them. Most of his clients know they will get a quicker response if they phone him.</p>
<p>OTOH, I’m a big fan of email and am intimately attached to my smart phone. I think it saves a lot of time. Plus I can think about my response, whereas, phone calls make me feel put on the spot.</p>
<p>At my son’s school the teachers were very clear at parent’s night about the best way to reach them. Some said email, some said phone. Almost all said that even though they try to check their emails and voice messages through out the day, it might take them 24 hours to get back to you. I thought that was more than reasonable.</p>