Seeking advice on Fairfax County Public High Schools

[Anonymous]

No it's not the kids, it's the teachers!

Anyone who doesn't believe me please take this dare. Ask your children tonight what they learned their FCPS classrooms today that was really new, fun, interesting, surprising, or amazing that is related to their lives or the world around us today.

Bring it on! Tell us about the high energy interesting lessons your children learned today. It a large county, there must be hundreds of great stories to tell about the inspired lessons your children learned today. Lessons that connected with their preexisting knowledge and inspired them to share that information with their parents and to ask additional intuitive questions. Anywhere from the Potomac to the Potomac share with us you hundred of stories the eye opening aw inspiring knowledge that was acquired by your child TODAY in FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So show me I'm wrong. Tell me about the last time your child came home from school excited about something brand new and exciting they had learned. Tell me about the last time they came home with an amazed look on their faces about something so strange, interestings and funny they couldn't wait to tell you about it!

Forget it! It doesn't happen!

FCPS teachers an not fun, interesting, or excited because they barely speak to the students and they have NO PASSION for the subjects they teach.

When I went to school every teacher in every subject claimed their subject was the most import one taught in school and everyday they tried to demonstrate how what they were teaching us impacted our lives. They connected every single subject with something in the 20th Century.

They could be funny, dramatic, silly, and serious, but they were always something.

I've admit I have long feared the Zombie Apocalypse. I've always known it would come, but not in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine it would begin with teachers in FCPS and then have the contagion spread world-wide by our own children once they leave for college. However, now that I think of it, it really is a masterful plan. Remove the joy of learning from teachers in an overrated school system. Infect the students who will attend the best colleges in the country. When they arrive they will be woefully unprepared, but gradually this will become the national norm.

The U.S. will lose its position of international dominance and gradually Finland grow to RULE the WORLD!

Man who masturbate only screwing self.
- Confucius say

Yes, lovely! Weak in content, mildly profane, enigmatic, no explanation and slightly threatening implying retailiation.

Typical teacher rhetoric from a FCPS classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No it's not the kids, it's the teachers!

Anyone who doesn't believe me please take this dare. Ask your children tonight what they learned their FCPS classrooms today that was really new, fun, interesting, surprising, or amazing that is related to their lives or the world around us today.

Bring it on! Tell us about the high energy interesting lessons your children learned today. It a large county, there must be hundreds of great stories to tell about the inspired lessons your children learned today. Lessons that connected with their preexisting knowledge and inspired them to share that information with their parents and to ask additional intuitive questions. Anywhere from the Potomac to the Potomac share with us you hundred of stories the eye opening aw inspiring knowledge that was acquired by your child TODAY in FCPS.

Something tells me you wo't accept anyone's posts if they did. shoo shoo shoo

[Anonymous]

Interesting. DC's teacher is actually very engaging, but little is taught during the day. Maybe it's hard to both make work engaging and get through a lot of subject material.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you want the smaller high school with lots of Foreign Service kids, I would choose Falls Church City schools as one of the previous posters mentioned. We are also Foreign Service but choose the McLean High School pyramid. We needed the AAP program for the younger years (which we've gotten to an extent but I'm not sure it's really that advanced compared to what we were doing overseas, but that's another topic). Love the neighborhood feel and although we haven't started at McLean High School yet, I've heard great things about it (although class size is probably larger that Falls Church City schools).

We're FS as well and we're running into the same problem. The FCPS curriculum is good, but not as advanced as the one we had overseas. But you have to remember, overseas expat schools are often of a selected population, cherry picked through entrance tests. Keep in mind our curriculum has to be adjusted to meet everyone low/high in the ability spectrum. It has to account for those who doesn't have early access to advantageous learning resources. I am not worried about the US place in the world. When you look out there in the world and look under the rug a bit, one often find nothing is ever what it seems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No it's not the kids, it's the teachers!

Anyone who doesn't believe me please take this dare. Ask your children tonight what they learned their FCPS classrooms today that was really new, fun, interesting, surprising, or amazing that is related to their lives or the world around us today.

Bring it on! Tell us about the high energy interesting lessons your children learned today. It a large county, there must be hundreds of great stories to tell about the inspired lessons your children learned today. Lessons that connected with their preexisting knowledge and inspired them to share that information with their parents and to ask additional intuitive questions. Anywhere from the Potomac to the Potomac share with us you hundred of stories the eye opening aw inspiring knowledge that was acquired by your child TODAY in FCPS.

Something tells me you wo't accept anyone's posts if they did. shoo shoo shoo

A million people live in Fairfax County and no one can pick up on my dare to ask their children to share a story about how they learned something today that they found to be interesting, unusual, and fascinating enough to make them want to ask you additional questions on the topic. No one had a single story about a teacher who told a wonderful and exciting story! No one's children had an experience today that made them laugh out loud.

Of course not! FCPS teachers are zombies! They the walking dead automatons of Northern Virginia.


FCPS teachers have no passion for the subjects they teach and as such they inspire no joy in the classroom.

I challenge the teachers of FCPS to work hard tonight to attain genuine mastery over the content you will teach tomorrow. Create engaging lessons where you will be engaged leaders. Find interesting and amusing facts about the content to share with your students. Be dramatic, humorous, and bigger than life. Stop just going through the motions and making belive.

Begin anew tomorrow, BE A REAL TEACHER!!!

[Anonymous]

Today, an FCPS Geosystems High School teacher taught the class about mining by having them 'dig' chocolate chips out of cookies. Some cool song about rocks played in the background .......or so I was told. Not sure if they were allowed to eat the cookie!

[Anonymous]

My fourth grader actually came home last week and told me about George Washington and the skirmish with the French that led to the French and Indian War. He was pretty excited to tell me about the cause and effect lesson they did in social studies. He kept going, "Because the French and British kept claiming land, they ran into each other. Because they didn't like each other they fought. Because the British wanted to win they spent a lot of money and went into debt. Because they went into debt..." That might not be exactly right, but he was really into telling me.

My sixth grader just said she sang the song about the water cycle that she remembered from third grade. She is intrigued about something she is going to do later this week with blue ice cubes.?.

I can ask again tomorrow if you'd like.

[Anonymous]

Well that what I asked for and if your kids had really good days today then that's great.

I especially love the George Washington story because it was such a catastrophic blunder, but yet he later became one of the most accomplished and esteemed men in our history. It's this great story of failure and redemption. It's history but the tale itself is timeless.

I'm less convinced about mining for chocolate chips in high school, I asked for stories of passion and joy of learning in FCPS classrooms and if chocolate chip cookies hooked the kids on learning today then I'm not in a position to be a critic.

If you love what your FCPS schools are doing - say so and give them credit. However, if you think like me that they are overrated and many if not most of their teachers lack passion then you should say that too. If not that dull monotone sound of students huddle together in groups with their heads low trying to make believe they are learning something today will continue indefinitely.

[Anonymous]

The water cycle song and blue ice sound like fun too. It's just my experience that too much work is just thrown at the kids in groups and FCPS teacher don't stand and deliver in front of their classes. Kids can learn facts from a book or a computer, but it takes a teacher to explain how the facts are connected and why the world of learning is fun and exciting.

The entire learning experience is connected, but kids wasting 12 years sitting in groups never learn how to connect the dots. This is why we need teachers and this is exactly what FCPS teachers are failing so dreadfully at accomplishing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The water cycle song and blue ice sound like fun too. It's just my experience that too much work is just thrown at the kids in groups and FCPS teacher don't stand and deliver in front of their classes. Kids can learn facts from a book or a computer, but it takes a teacher to explain how the facts are connected and why the world of learning is fun and exciting.

The entire learning experience is connected, but kids wasting 12 years sitting in groups never learn how to connect the dots. This is why we need teachers and this is exactly what FCPS teachers are failing so dreadfully at accomplishing.

You do know that you've basically hijacked a thread requesting some specific information with your rants, all of which you've posted before.

Way to go, loser.

[Anonymous]

Oh, please stop! You're killing me! Do you call your FCPS students "losers" also? Whats with FCPS teachers who are full of criticisms but they have no exciting lessons or experiences with students to share. The only thing they have to offer is to say in this case is that a person is a loser and will never succeed at anything in life.

Imagine this for a moment - this is a teacher telling a person they are a loser and they have no possibility of succeeding in life. FCPS teachers seem to be judgmental to the extent where they believe people have no redeeming qualities.

It becomes increasingly apparent why FCPS teachers refuse to teach. They believe their students are incapable of learning so they don't bother even trying to teach.

Clearly you don't have anything to say at all besides telling DCUM contributors to shut up and to go away. Rather than using insulting and exclusionary language you might actually be effective if you could address the question and dispute the facts that FCPS teachers are not very good because they are not engaged in teaching their classes

Use your words and prove me wrong!

[Anonymous]

Marshall or McLean.

[Anonymous]

OP here - thank you all who replied so quickly with your thoughts on specific schools in the FCPS system. We've been torn between Falls Church and Fairfax, partly because of choice and availability of good housing options. Honestly, I have two "middle of the road" kids and I'm looking for a solid school with teachers open to dialogue with well-meaning parents. Sounds like we should be able to find that in either case.

And thanks, too, to the folks who called out the Angry Ranters on my behalf.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - thank you all who replied so quickly with your thoughts on specific schools in the FCPS system. We've been torn between Falls Church and Fairfax, partly because of choice and availability of good housing options. Honestly, I have two "middle of the road" kids and I'm looking for a solid school with teachers open to dialogue with well-meaning parents. Sounds like we should be able to find that in either case.

And thanks, too, to the folks who called out the Angry Ranters on my behalf.

An anger ranter, I am not.

It is not ranting to passionately describe the reasons FCPS is an enormously overrated school system. In different schools they call it by different names, but in essence throughout the Fairfax County the students are placed in groups for 12 years to teach and entertain themselves. Your children have an international perspective and they are going to be board out of their minds sitting in groups with students who have never travelled beyond Great Falls discussing such topics as to how and why lint happens to accumulate in one's navel.

Middle of the road kids are the ones who fall through the cracks most often in FCPS.