English class should not be art class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did you guys never read your kids picture books? Do you not understand the relationship between literature and art and reading comprehension? Brian development improving by using multiple modalities to learn something?

Relation not relationship. Must be an MCPS grad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to a private school that is known as pretty rigorous, and he has had art projects in English class. It is usually one of the options for wrapping up a unit on a novel - you can write a paper or create something that explores some theme in the novel and write an artists statement (essentially a short essay).

If the point of the unit is to read and analyze literature you can do that in other ways that just writing - discussion, essays, long papers, art. I believe English class should always include a heavy writing component, but there is still time for some other methods.

My husband who is now a professional writer told me yesterday that he never wrote in high school. Not a paper, not an essay. It was a rural school in the 80’s, but still I was gobsmacked. Did give me hope that my kid still has time to become a better writer than he currently is in 12th grade.

I went to a rural public school in the 80s. We wrote papers and essays in English class. I do recall reading Brave New World and analyzing Shakespeare in class.

[Anonymous]

Hey it could be worse. When my daughter was in 5th grade at an NYC private school, her math teacher brought her son in to play guitar for the students during class. I was oblivious to this until one morning when my daughter said to me, yay today I have math double period so Mrs ____’s son will be coming in to play guitar for us during second period so we don’t have to do work then!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid had an assignment to do an interpretive piece of art on racism for her English class. She is not an artist and was really worried that whatever she did was gojng to be more offensive than artistic so I told her I was okay with her just skipping the assignment and taking the zero.

I really wish English teachers would allow a writing alternative to anything that is an art assignment. Some people just don’t have an artistic bone in their body.

Do you really think the grade was going to be on the quality of her art skills? Such fear should not be encouraged. It's ok to do something that you aren't "the best" at; teach your kid some humility and try to do the assignment.

+1. Learners are not supposed to always be comfortable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But it teaches cReAtiVitY, OP, and enables school to reach the otherwise-different.

Ha. My son with special needs couldn't draw, color in, or use scissors to save his life. All the crafty activities were beyond his reach. He just wanted to analyze and write text. Somehow that happened less often than we thought possible in MCPS K-12! Apart from the English APs, of course. Those were solid.

Mine either... I mostly did them all with the child's input. They did the actual writing/work behind it and I made it pretty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey it could be worse. When my daughter was in 5th grade at an NYC private school, her math teacher brought her son in to play guitar for the students during class. I was oblivious to this until one morning when my daughter said to me, yay today I have math double period so Mrs ____’s son will be coming in to play guitar for us during second period so we don’t have to do work then!

We are talking about MCPS. Many teachers only give instruction a few minutes. For math, you need to teach them yourself or get a tutor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP what grade is your kid in? I have never heard of this and have a 7th grader. Please tell me it is not HS.

None of my kids have been assigned art projects in English class. My youngest is a senior. This sounds like someone just trying to bash MCPS.

+1. Never seen this happen.

+1 and DH has a ton of family in MCPS not one person I just texted has either

This is a MCPS troll

I suppose it's teacher-dependent then, because I am not that poster, and my kid definitely had ridiculous crafty things to do in English class (and Spanish class!) that had no bearing on actual English or Spanish instruction. This was/is at Westland middle school and BCC high school.

[Anonymous]

Are you talking about the book covers assignment?

[Anonymous]

The AP lit curriculum has been diluted until it is almost non existent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But it teaches cReAtiVitY, OP, and enables school to reach the otherwise-different.

Ha. My son with special needs couldn't draw, color in, or use scissors to save his life. All the crafty activities were beyond his reach. He just wanted to analyze and write text. Somehow that happened less often than we thought possible in MCPS K-12! Apart from the English APs, of course. Those were solid.

My kid also has the same challenges, and I had to have it written into his IEP that he could do a digital project for any class that required art projects. He had to do the work and generate the knowledge, but he didn’t have to hand draw, color, or stencil stuff for English or Social Studies - he could do clip art/font kinds of representations to meet the requirement.

[Anonymous]

This is why STEM is considered the only good track to go into now and the arts are laughed upon. It’s so sad.

Teachers SHOULD have an inter-disciplinary approach to education. It’s good for your child’s development to express themselves with different avenues of communication, including art. It’s okay for your child to struggle with something—that doesn’t make that thing “useless”—it just means your child has to work harder, or even accept that they’re not good at something. Humility is important, too.

School shouldn’t be one-dimensional, it should challenge students and engage all parts of the brain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why STEM is considered the only good track to go into now and the arts are laughed upon. It’s so sad.

Teachers SHOULD have an inter-disciplinary approach to education. It’s good for your child’s development to express themselves with different avenues of communication, including art. It’s okay for your child to struggle with something—that doesn’t make that thing “useless”—it just means your child has to work harder, or even accept that they’re not good at something. Humility is important, too.

School shouldn’t be one-dimensional, it should challenge students and engage all parts of the brain.

No. Stem people have said this for decades. I'm a humanities graduate who is 56 and morons like you were saying the same thing to me 40 yrs ago. It's not new and it's not based on anything tangible.

[Anonymous]

AP Lang teacher here who has assigned two "One Pagers" this year for nonfiction books we read. These include images and borders, but the kids are not graded on the quality of their art. They are graded on their choice of quotes, analysis, etc. We do a ton of essay writing in this class, but I need some way to motivate/hold them accountable for reading whole books beyond discussions. Writing another two to three page paper on an entire book would only result in a superficial analysis, and I don't have time to assign a longer paper. It gives variety to the class and many of the kids LOVE the opportunity to get creative. I understand that all don't like it, but when you give a variety of assignments, some will be happier than others all of the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why STEM is considered the only good track to go into now and the arts are laughed upon. It’s so sad.

Teachers SHOULD have an inter-disciplinary approach to education. It’s good for your child’s development to express themselves with different avenues of communication, including art. It’s okay for your child to struggle with something—that doesn’t make that thing “useless”—it just means your child has to work harder, or even accept that they’re not good at something. Humility is important, too.

School shouldn’t be one-dimensional, it should challenge students and engage all parts of the brain.

Bro my kid's schedule is 7 dimensional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:AP Lang teacher here who has assigned two "One Pagers" this year for nonfiction books we read. These include images and borders, but the kids are not graded on the quality of their art. They are graded on their choice of quotes, analysis, etc. We do a ton of essay writing in this class, but I need some way to motivate/hold them accountable for reading whole books beyond discussions. Writing another two to three page paper on an entire book would only result in a superficial analysis, and I don't have time to assign a longer paper. It gives variety to the class and many of the kids LOVE the opportunity to get creative. I understand that all don't like it, but when you give a variety of assignments, some will be happier than others all of the time.

So give them choices. Let the writers write and let the artists draw.