Hardy MS 7th Grade Science Situation

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:For the poster asking why a teacher didn’t explain why they left- we often are not allowed to. The school wants to handle the messaging, or lack of messaging.
DCPS teachers have for years been telling people what is burning them out (IMPACT, unchecked student behavior, weekly new initiatives, 25 year old administrators who have zero management skills) We are finally just moving on from DCPS and taking action.
In a toxic organization good people leave first. Then you are left with bad actors and hostages. What you are seeing is the people who thought they were hostage, breaking out.

I left DCPS for a Big 3 private. I intend on helping as many dc teachers as I can to make the jump.

Does anyone get into teaching because they expect to be celebrated by bureaucrats? DCPS Central, sucks, we get it. Every engaged parent is doing their best to tell the city leadership that there is a real problem that needs to dealt with urgently. But intransigent administrators and inane bureaucracy isn't really a good excuse for not giving the students and parents a head's up that your heading out and/or hanging on for just a few more weeks to give the school time to get a new teacher on-boarded so that your students don't suffer months of learning loss. Teachers whose first instinct is jump to the defense of behavior such as this have anger issues that, in truth, should probably disqualify them from teaching.

OMG. I’m a parent, not a teacher, and it’s parents like you who are driving all the teachers away.

Anger issues? Disqualify from teaching? Are you for real?? You obviously are naive to not know that many schools don’t allow teachers to notify their students or families. The school wants to control the messaging.

It’s no secret that DCPS doesn’t support their teachers and it’s a toxic environment to work in. Some teachers have tried to stick it out but when you are miserable for so long, you reach a breaking point and leave for your own sanity.

Guess you missed the news that there is a nationwide shortage of teachers or missed the post in this thread from the science teacher. Sure stick it out for a few weeks or month until a new science teacher is on-boarded. So easy to find one.

I suggest you take your frustrations out on DCPS and not the teachers, unless of course you want to drive away even more teachers.

You are not making any sense. The teacher is free to quit without providing any notice in the middle of the term and leave their students without instruction for months, but would suffer some terrible sanction for sending a note to the parents in the process?

It is perfectly reasonable to acknowledge that DCPS teachers have it bad without condoning behavior that demonstrates total contempt for students and other teachers alike.

Parent here and not teacher. Yes the teacher can give 2 week or 4 weeks notice, whatever is in the contract.

It is the schools responsibility to notify families when the teacher will be leaving and come up with the plan going forward. It is not the teachers and frankly if I were a teacher, I would have no interest in notifying some of the entitled and demanding parents on here.

OK, so then how about they just notify the non-demanding parents. How do you do that, though? Is it demanding, in your eyes, to expect that when a teacher takes on a class for a school year that, absent extraordinary events, they will stick it out at least until the school can bring in someone to replace them?

You don’t get it. You can’t differentiate and it’s the demanding, entitled parents who constantly emails the teachers about every little thing that ruins it for everyone.

You also don’t understand that teachers like above just don’t decide out of the blue to leave. They have likely been miserable for years and have stuck it out fir the kids for YEARS and this was the breaking point.

Or it could be that it’s the kind of teachers who think it’s perfectly OK to quit in the middle of the term that ruin it for everyone? I really don’t get it. A teacher’s inability to ghost an annoying parent or two justifies them ghosting an entire class of students and causing them to lose months of learning? Seems that DCPS erred by not providing a module on how to ignore an email or block a sender.

If a teacher decides that teaching at a particular school, school district, or teaching in general is not for them, fine. Occupational mobility is a good thing. But just have the common decency to wait until the end of the school year or, failing that, the end of the term. Give a few weeks notice so that the school can make accommodations so that the students - even the ones with annoying parents - don’t have a teacher-less classroom for any longer than is necessary.

I guess we really did lose something over the pandemic. That being a sense of professional responsibility.

I won’t dignify your belligerent, head-in-sand reply with any further efforts to enlighten you. But please understand that YOU are the problem. YOU, and your refusal to see how much teachers are struggling, hurting, exhausted, and unsupported. No teacher wants to quit mid-year, but sometimes it’s necessary. Have a heart, Iron Lady.

This. Some people have no insight whatsoever or can’t see the big picture even when it was already explicitly said earlier in thread.

Singed parent, not a teacher

Also teachers do give notice and it’s the schools problem if they did not notify the families when the notice was given.

That is a question that can and will be asked of the school in this case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and am hanging on with my fingernails until the end of this year when I can quit. Here’s the problem: we have probably double the number of disruptive students as pre-pandemic, and I’d estimate that 50 percent of each pass struggles to focus. We can’t get nearly as much done as before because everything takes sooolo g, yet the expectations haven’t changed. Students, teachers, administrators and everyone needs more downtime now to recover and begin to heal. If we just keep pushing, pushing ahead, ignoring our gaping wounds, it will not end well. We need to recognize our collective trauma, acknowledge our need to rest/recover, and THEN move on, slowly. We lost about a year and I think we’ll need at least that long to pull ourselves back together and catch up developmentally, emotionally, and academically.

And who was it that was demanded that schools be closed for as long as they were?

[Anonymous]

. . . which is not to say that it is not appreciated how hellish teaching has become and what you are all going through.

But how - beyond the obvious, such as give DCPS teachers a contract and a raise and doing away with needless bureaucracy - do we fix this, practically? By giving up on the public school system?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and am hanging on with my fingernails until the end of this year when I can quit. Here’s the problem: we have probably double the number of disruptive students as pre-pandemic, and I’d estimate that 50 percent of each pass struggles to focus. We can’t get nearly as much done as before because everything takes sooolo g, yet the expectations haven’t changed. Students, teachers, administrators and everyone needs more downtime now to recover and begin to heal. If we just keep pushing, pushing ahead, ignoring our gaping wounds, it will not end well. We need to recognize our collective trauma, acknowledge our need to rest/recover, and THEN move on, slowly. We lost about a year and I think we’ll need at least that long to pull ourselves back together and catch up developmentally, emotionally, and academically.

And who was it that was demanded that schools be closed for as long as they were?

We demanded that DCPS have a plan before opening - which it did not! We also wanted to be safe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and am hanging on with my fingernails until the end of this year when I can quit. Here’s the problem: we have probably double the number of disruptive students as pre-pandemic, and I’d estimate that 50 percent of each pass struggles to focus. We can’t get nearly as much done as before because everything takes sooolo g, yet the expectations haven’t changed. Students, teachers, administrators and everyone needs more downtime now to recover and begin to heal. If we just keep pushing, pushing ahead, ignoring our gaping wounds, it will not end well. We need to recognize our collective trauma, acknowledge our need to rest/recover, and THEN move on, slowly. We lost about a year and I think we’ll need at least that long to pull ourselves back together and catch up developmentally, emotionally, and academically.

But this is all said from the perspective of an adult teacher in year X of a long career. What's another year to you? This isn't remotely realistic for a middle school student who has already missed 1+ years of school. EVERY middle school student -- who is, on average, about 6-12 months behind already -- is just supposed to stop... learning academic subjects for a year so that other people can recover from collective trauma? Just end up two years behind in terms of school work? And then "move on, slowly"? So plan to finish HS at 20? 21? Not only is that absurdly unfair & unworkable, but it will almost certainly lead to sky high drop out rates. That a teacher could think this is a possible solution is baffling to me.

[Anonymous]

+100!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and am hanging on with my fingernails until the end of this year when I can quit. Here’s the problem: we have probably double the number of disruptive students as pre-pandemic, and I’d estimate that 50 percent of each pass struggles to focus. We can’t get nearly as much done as before because everything takes sooolo g, yet the expectations haven’t changed. Students, teachers, administrators and everyone needs more downtime now to recover and begin to heal. If we just keep pushing, pushing ahead, ignoring our gaping wounds, it will not end well. We need to recognize our collective trauma, acknowledge our need to rest/recover, and THEN move on, slowly. We lost about a year and I think we’ll need at least that long to pull ourselves back together and catch up developmentally, emotionally, and academically.

But this is all said from the perspective of an adult teacher in year X of a long career. What's another year to you? This isn't remotely realistic for a middle school student who has already missed 1+ years of school. EVERY middle school student -- who is, on average, about 6-12 months behind already -- is just supposed to stop... learning academic subjects for a year so that other people can recover from collective trauma? Just end up two years behind in terms of school work? And then "move on, slowly"? So plan to finish HS at 20? 21? Not only is that absurdly unfair & unworkable, but it will almost certainly lead to sky high drop out rates. That a teacher could think this is a possible solution is baffling to me.

Teachers usually understand the maxim “go slow to go fast.” This holds true now more than ever. If students/classes don’t have a solid foundation of calm, order, and trust beneath them it is exceptionally difficult to progress. You can keep pushing but, like a bike with the chain off, all your peddling won’t get you anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and am hanging on with my fingernails until the end of this year when I can quit. Here’s the problem: we have probably double the number of disruptive students as pre-pandemic, and I’d estimate that 50 percent of each pass struggles to focus. We can’t get nearly as much done as before because everything takes sooolo g, yet the expectations haven’t changed. Students, teachers, administrators and everyone needs more downtime now to recover and begin to heal. If we just keep pushing, pushing ahead, ignoring our gaping wounds, it will not end well. We need to recognize our collective trauma, acknowledge our need to rest/recover, and THEN move on, slowly. We lost about a year and I think we’ll need at least that long to pull ourselves back together and catch up developmentally, emotionally, and academically.

And who was it that was demanded that schools be closed for as long as they were?

We demanded that DCPS have a plan before opening - which it did not! We also wanted to be safe.

well congratulations then

[Anonymous]

Any science teacher yet?

[Anonymous]

Dc is a 7th grader at Hardy. They have been doing really boring worksheets and watching online video for content. And grouchy other teacher sends home notes about kids knowing about assignments and basically should be self teaching and keeping track of things that are poorly communicated. I get people quit unexpectedly- but between this, the football and athletic director situation and reports of daily fights at school (can see them on TikTok often!) - think this principal and then the instructional superintendent (his boss) need to really understand and be accountable for stepping things up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dc is a 7th grader at Hardy. They have been doing really boring worksheets and watching online video for content. And grouchy other teacher sends home notes about kids knowing about assignments and basically should be self teaching and keeping track of things that are poorly communicated. I get people quit unexpectedly- but between this, the football and athletic director situation and reports of daily fights at school (can see them on TikTok often!) - think this principal and then the instructional superintendent (his boss) need to really understand and be accountable for stepping things up.

What would stepping up look like to you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dc is a 7th grader at Hardy. They have been doing really boring worksheets and watching online video for content. And grouchy other teacher sends home notes about kids knowing about assignments and basically should be self teaching and keeping track of things that are poorly communicated. I get people quit unexpectedly- but between this, the football and athletic director situation and reports of daily fights at school (can see them on TikTok often!) - think this principal and then the instructional superintendent (his boss) need to really understand and be accountable for stepping things up.

What would stepping up look like to you?

Np: How about the principal show up at the science classes for a few minutes everyday and personally oversee that they have a curriculum and that it is communicated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dc is a 7th grader at Hardy. They have been doing really boring worksheets and watching online video for content. And grouchy other teacher sends home notes about kids knowing about assignments and basically should be self teaching and keeping track of things that are poorly communicated. I get people quit unexpectedly- but between this, the football and athletic director situation and reports of daily fights at school (can see them on TikTok often!) - think this principal and then the instructional superintendent (his boss) need to really understand and be accountable for stepping things up.

What would stepping up look like to you?

Np: How about the principal show up at the science classes for a few minutes everyday and personally oversee that they have a curriculum and that it is communicated?

Or parents can show up and volunteer to fill the gap. I am sure many parents at Hardy are in the science profession right?

[Anonymous]

Are you serious? Nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dc is a 7th grader at Hardy. They have been doing really boring worksheets and watching online video for content. And grouchy other teacher sends home notes about kids knowing about assignments and basically should be self teaching and keeping track of things that are poorly communicated. I get people quit unexpectedly- but between this, the football and athletic director situation and reports of daily fights at school (can see them on TikTok often!) - think this principal and then the instructional superintendent (his boss) need to really understand and be accountable for stepping things up.

What would stepping up look like to you?

Np: How about the principal show up at the science classes for a few minutes everyday and personally oversee that they have a curriculum and that it is communicated?

Or parents can show up and volunteer to fill the gap. I am sure many parents at Hardy are in the science profession right?

You know, parents have day jobs. It would be nice if a qualified parent could get their TB test and background check completed and make the time.

But staffing the school is the principal’s responsibility!