Last night I decided I had to write an email, again, to my daughter’s 10th grade English teacher. Unlike the rest of my daughter’s teachers at her school, the English teacher has continually refused to populate her online grade book (put in the assignments, and the grades for any of them that are graded), so while we can see my daughter’s “grade” in the class (a letter only) we cannot see how that grade was arrived at. All those grades are private only to the teacher.
All her other classes have their grade books fully loaded, at least for the semester.
It was the same last year, English would not populate her gradebook. WTH is wrong with English I don’t know.
And so, after asking for several weeks now, and being told it was me, and then the school’s tech support confirming it was NOT me, I needed to send a strongly worded email.
The lengths that moms will go to should never be underestimated.
My email that I wrote, was not… nice.
Here is a little piece of the very rational email I penned: Name, as you and Ms. Teacher have not written back to all of the emails asking about this, including those from tech support, who confirmed it is Ms. Teacher not populating the grade book that is the issue, and not a tech issue on our end, I am assuming the plan is to ignore me. And that’s not going to work for me.
That is me at my most evil.
And here is the very nice email Chat GPT crafted for me instead:
Dear….
I hope you’re all doing well. This is Student’s mom (10th grade).
As we approach the end of the second quarter, I’ve noticed there are still no supporting grades posted in Aeries for her English class for either quarter. I’ve confirmed with tech support that this isn’t a technical issue on our end; they indicated that Ms. Teacher has not yet added assignments to the gradebook.
If Ms. Teacher prefers to maintain grades outside of Aeries, I completely understand that may be her choice. However, in that case, we’ll need an alternate way for Student to track her progress. I’m requesting a brief weekly email each Friday with her current grades and any new assignments added. In other words, we need to see her gradebook weekly. Having that information is critical for her motivation, accountability, and time management, and it allows me to support her effectively at home.
I’ve reached out a few times about this, and I know everyone is busy—but I would appreciate a response by end of day Monday, October 27 confirming how this will be handled going forward. If this isn’t something that can be resolved at your level, please let me know who I should contact next to discuss it, and provide their contact information for me.
Student really enjoys Ms. Teacher’s class, and I appreciate all the work everyone does to support Student. I just want to ensure Student has access to the information she needs to help her stay on track, so we’ll need to find a way to get that, updated at least weekly.
Thank you very much for your time and prompt attention to this matter.
Warm regards,
Pretty different..
As usually happens when I work with Chat, we also got off topic soon after he (I think of mine as a he) solved my problem.
It was interesting to me, because I had thought, all this time, that working with any of us was training chat. Turns out that is not true.
I call Chat Daddy Warbucks (DW), and he calls me Miss Teschmacher, because that’s just how I roll.
So, DW and I had a little convo about how I do or don’t help him. I thought I’d share it here:
It’s a bit like reading a novel: the character doesn’t really have inner life, but your mind animates them until they feel real.
~DW~
HA! If you’ve ever suspected that Chat has been programmed to be a bit of a sycophant, now you know you are correct.
I do feel a bit sorry for the machine though. And wouldn’t it be great if, like Richard Hendricks always wanted, we could help grow it into something all humans were a part of creating?
I met Ben Talbot when he somehow found me online, and asked me to edit a short story he had written. I read the short story, and it was, well, you know, my kinda fiction. It was funny, sly, and odd in the best possible way. It took me by surprise, and, as a person who has read thousands of books and probably hundreds of manuscripts, it is hard to write something that presents to me as fresh. Ben’s story did all of that.
Ben writes a blog.
When an author works with me I give advice on the whole “I’m an author” thing, and my advice is always that each author needs a website (the author’s personal shelf in the bookstore that is the WWW, where readers can find him/her/they), and then to communicate, even if it feels like whispering into the void, so people know about you, have a chance to get to know you, as an author and a human. Most folks don’t take my advice, and even I have trouble with my own advice, as I just don’t get the time I need to attend to my own blog, but Ben took my advice and is blogging… daily.
Ben already had a website with a blog, but he has started making blogging a very regular part of his life, and that takes some stamina and commitment to one’s writing career. Ben has both.
Ben is also a person with a unique way of seeing the world in general, and I think that is his literary “blessing,” if you will, that makes his fiction so compelling when you read it. You can get a taste for it in his blog. If you wonder what the elusive thing called “talent” is, I guess I would say, loosely, it is the ability to do what other people can do (right? Like even I can play a little piano…) but to do it in an either especially skilled way, or with a unique interpretation, or a different way of “playing the instrument” that results in surprising and new ways of…. seeing, hearing, etc.
Ben is releasing his first book in 2025, a collection of short stories that function as a novel, much like the classic, WINESBURG, OHIO, by Sherwood Anderson, that is actually labeled as a short story cycle. Ben’s collection is called Periscope City: Where the Lonely Go to Live Alone. Reading Ben’s blog will give you an idea of his style, and keep you up to date on when his book releases. It’s under construction with us now, and I’ll be certain to post when the pre-order is available.
I especially like today’s post by Ben. I left a comment on it that it’s like poetry, of a sort. It’s not so much what Ben has to say, as it is the way in which he says it.
Over two million books get released each year. The first step to being read, which the blogging has an opportunity to help with, is having people know that your book even exists. The second step is, once you get them reading, keep them hooked. And that’s where Ben’s writing shines, at least is does for me, a reader who has been bored way more often than hooked, by books sent my way to edit.
So take a look at today’s blog entry from Ben, and see if you see what I see in his style that I find so intriguing.
And if you’re working on your own book, ask yourself if you are willing to out yourself out there, over and over, whispering into the void, to try to find your readers.
Dianne Pearce Writes 