Are Teachers Being Asked to Write More Recommendation Letters Than Ever?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the growing burden of recommendation letter requests on teachers as academic competition intensifies.
Key Takeaways
- The 'rat race' is expanding - As college admissions and scholarship competition increases, students need more letters from more teachers
- This is an uncompensated burden - Writing quality recommendation letters takes significant time that isn't reflected in teacher workload
- Schools should set reasonable boundaries - Without limits, the demand for letters will continue to grow unchecked
Transcript
I think teacher recommendation letters might be an example of one of those rat race dynamics that I talked about in my last video.
In a lot of competitive situations, the stakes keep going up.
The bar keeps getting raised for what's required to get into a club, to get a scholarship, to get into a college.
Like there are all these things now that you have to have a teacher recommendation for.
And I'm curious, is that taking up a lot of your time in your context if you're a teacher are you being asked to write more and more recommendation letters for students i can see how teachers are looked to as excellent judges of character as good references like they're good people to ask if you want to know about a student ask a teacher but i feel like this is one of those things that's just more work for everybody and not necessarily beneficial for the student or really worth the trouble for for educators even though I know teachers have a lot of valuable information to provide.
So let me know what you think.
Are you being asked to write more recommendation letters for students?