Remove Gray as Senior English Teacher

To:  Terry Howe, Principal

We the undersigned believe that Mrs. Gray should be immediately removed from her position as Senior English Teacher and Head of the English Department at King George Secondary for the following reasons:

1. She does not teach us to do things properly. She teaches us to number sentences and circle and underline various words. What if someone tries this on the provincial exam? They'll lose serious marks. This is not the way you are supposed to write essays. Her teaching us this has left us unprepared for university writing and may trip many of us up when we are evaluated on our writing

2. In spite of the fact that you are not supposed to, she often posts marks with names beside the grade, rather than the student number. Laziness is no reason to not follow rules. There is a reason no names are included on mark sheets.

3. She's lazy. I and many others have a strong suspicion that the reason she forces us to follow her asinine format which includes the numbering of sentences is so that she doesn't have to actually read the essay to mark it.

4. She refuses to mark anything not written in black ink. The class is called "English 12" not "Write in Black Ink 12." What colour we write in is immaterial. The fact is, it is her job to mark our work. Just because we write in blue pen, doesn't mean that our ideas or thoughts are not valid and deserve a zero. Writing in black ink is nowhere in the English 12 curriculum. If we decided to write in neon green, it doesn't matter. We are not being evaluated based on the colour we choose to write in.

5. She falsely states the if you write in blue pen on the provincial examination, they will refuse to mark it. I do not know whether she is deliberately misleading or is simply ignorant. Either is unacceptable.

6. She teaches outside the curriculum. According to Mr. Henderson, while this is considered acceptable, it is NOT acceptable to evaluate students on things not included in the curriculum.

7. She hasn't taught us anything new. Due to an anomaly in the scheduling, some of the 2008 graduating class, including me, had Mrs. Gray as an English teacher in grade ten. She quickly taught us her ridiculous essay format, among a few other things. Since then, we have not done anything new in her class. For the past two years, we have not learned anything new apart from Shakespeare and Lord of the Flies which are not part of the curriculum.

8. She doesn't teach. She gets us to read books. She has us read plays out loud in class. But she doesn't actually teach us anything. We write essays and tests and she marks them.

9. She plays favourites. Blatantly. Even as one of the people she likes, I can see quite clearly that she is heavily biased against some students. I feel that this is extremely unfair to them and should not be tolerated.

10. She is widely disliked. (Source:http://ca.ratemyteachers.com/ShowRatings.php?tid=78955&type=0)
While this alone may not be reason to fire her, it must be considered as a contributing cause.

11. She is inconsistent. There was an incident around Christmas break this year involving two students who I will call A and B. We had to write an essay in class as part of an evaluation. A missed that class without a valid excuse, and was nagged for weeks to come in and write the essay. Finally, Mrs. Gray permitted A to take the essay home with her and bring it back to class completed the next day. B, on the other hand, had a valid excuse for missing part of the class and wrote the essay. However, because he missed a portion of the period, he did not have time to finish the final copy. The rough draft portion of the essay was finished, and Mrs. Gray could easily have taken into account his lack of time to write and marked his rough draft as the final copy, but he still received a very poor grade. In fact, it was lower than A's.

11. There was an incident very recently involving me and another student. We had to write an essay in class. Both me and the other student showed up slightly late. She was about five minutes late and I was about fifteen minutes late due to overcrowding on the buses. Upon arriving at class, I found the door closed and locked. I knocked repeatedly, but she did not respond. I gave up and went to the community centre to review Physics.
The other student, on arriving, also found the door closed and locked. She knocked and when there was no response knocked again, looking through the crack in the door. She saw Mrs. Gray look up, noticing the knocking, then look back down. She came back every ten minutes or so and knocked again. Finally, near the very end of the class, she happened to be there when Mrs. Gray was opening the door. Mrs. Gray promptly asked the student what she was doing and why she was not in class. The student replied that she had been trying to get in for a very long time and that she saw Mrs. Gray look up and notice the knocking then ignore it. Mrs. Gray let her in to attempt to write the essay, in spite of class almost being over. Mrs. Gray also gave her the wrong essay format and when the student double checked that that was what she was supposed to be writing, Mrs. Gray confirmed it. At the end of class, when the student went to hand in what she had managed to complete, Mrs. Gray looked at it, told her that she did the wrong format, and informed her that she was getting a zero for the essay.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Remove Gray as Senior English Teacher Petition to Terry Howe, Principal was created by King George Seconday Students and written by Caleb Grant (calebgrant@gmail.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.