...In addition son is color blind. It is noted on his emergency card, son has told the teacher and I did at conferences. Teacher still posts assignments in red - class work and green - homework. He also consistently does notes and examples on a light background with light colors so my ds cant see the difference. When he tells teacher he cant see them the teacher tells him he can't alter the background color because it hurts the teachers eyes. Ok but my kid cant see the materials and is relying on getting the info from peers. ...
Everyone's talking about the student's needs ... but it sounds like the teacher has special needs too.
Both need to be accommodated. The clear answer is, Let the teacher keep using the background color that works well for him ... but print out a copy of the Power Point -- we are talking about Power Point or Google Slides, right? -- so the student can have the print-out in black and white. OR send the Power Point to the student /allow him to follow along on a personal computer -- and he'd be free to switch the background color on that computer to whatever suits him.
Explain to the teacher that your son is having problems, and offer solutions.
Also, keep in mind that students tell us teachers stories about why they "can't do this or that" all day long -- if whining and excuse-making were Olympic events, my students would bring home gold for America. It may be that your son's teacher has heard so many excuses that he's kind of brushed this one off. It'd be wise to email teachers at the beginning of the semester, introduce yourself, and let them know that your son has a problem viewing things on the board -- and, at that time, give examples of what's worked well for him.
In high school, I don’t get involved unless my kid has exhausted all options.
I agree that the student should TRY to handle the issue himself first. As a parent, when a problem comes along, I'd like to hear TWO THINGS my student had done to try to solve the problem before asking me to step in.
I think 100+ emails a day is unrealistic. I highly doubt any high school teacher is getting that many per day from parents. It's 2018. It is unrealistic to have to play phone tag with a teacher. An email can be responded to in 1-3 minutes. I would think teachers would prefer email. If you are on the phone with them they will have your ear forever.
I probably average 50 emails on an average day, but that's not all parents.
... When my daughter was in 9th grade her teacher would write on the board in cursive- most of the kids couldn't read cursive and they told her that and she continued to do it ...
Thing is, kids do need to be able to read cursive, and it's not like it's really all that different -- an average kid who isn't atuned to cursive might need a little more time, but he or she shouldn't see cursive as a whole different ball game. They need to be able to tell time on an analog clock too.
But I ALWAYS made my kids deal with that by handing the teacher the graded homework and asking why it was listed a missing in P.S..
Perhaps this is coming across differently in writing, but this sounds pretty aggressive: "Here's my work. Why do I have a missing grade?" It sounds accusatory.
Speaking only for myself, I have over 100 students in a semester and well over 1000 grades in my Power School over the course of a semester. And Power School is far from user-friendly. Most often when a grade is missing, it's because the student turned the work in late -- and putting in one single make-up grade takes
almost as long as inputting a whole class' quiz grades. Because it's so labor-intensive, I sometimes do keep a list of late work that needs to be input later, and I save it 'til I have a chunk of time in which to work. I ask students not to discard classwork until they've seen it correctly in the computer.
Not sure how they did it, but with just a few exceptions, it seemed to be complied with. How do you deal with finals? Here, all grades are due the day after the last day of finals.
Two answers:
- Semester grades must be finalized /submitted to the office the week before exams, so during finals teachers are focused JUST on that one test. They aren't juggling tomorrow's lesson and make-up work and whatever else. It's easy to handle ONE TEST, even if it's a big one. Also, it's rare that students are absent for the exam, so make-up work isn't an issue. I don't think people realize the multi-tasking required in the classroom.
- I don't think we're unique in this: The state provides our exam and grades it. So, realistically, exams are pretty easy for teachers (preparation for exams is tough). We just hand out the state test, then wait for the state to send us the grades. It's not a good system, but it's a whole lot easier (from the teacher's end) than a regular test.