Why do one teacher have to teach four courses in elementary school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ELA, Math, science and Social study, that's a lot, isn't it?

It's pretty standard. Or sometimes they have one teacher do math and science and another do ELA and social studies.

Yes, departmentalizing makes planning and prepping easier. With the new ELA curriculum it will be much harder for grade levels to departmentalize because each ELA block needs to be 2 hours uninterrupted, and while it’s easy to make that happen once per day, it’s not easy to make that time block happen twice per day in any given grade level. There are pros and cons to departmentalizing, but as a teacher I’ve seen more pros than cons.

Of course you do. Departmentalizing IS the most teacher friendly. But it isn’t the most student-friendly, at least for the kid that struggles the most with building connections and trust. Who’s tracking any issues that the kid is having across the day? Who is building that positive relationship with the family? And you really think it’s developmentally appropriate for 7 year olds to be switching classes all day for academic subjects?

From a curriculum standpoint, it’s difficult to do any type of cross curricular project based learning.

I’ve been a public school educator for almost 30 years. I’ve mostly taught the upper elementary grades. I’ve done both departmentalized and self-contained classrooms. While departmentalized was easier on me, there was no real classroom community. I hated how some kids fell through the cracks.

But now the time has changed. With ~25 kids in one classroom, it does the students no good if we don’t start to make it easier for the teacher.

Agreed. When teachers don't have to teach every content area (including prepping lessons, resources and materials for both whole group and differentiated small group lessons for both reading and math), they have more time to do every other part of their job. Like others have said it also helps when the teacher actually has a personal interest and passion for the content areas they're teaching. Most teachers have a natural affinity for teaching certain content areas and do ok with the others but it doesn't have that same spark. I want my kids being taught by teachers who have that spark for the content area they are teaching.

[Anonymous]

The older the kids get, the more it makes sense. It makes no sense for younger ES kids, many of whom struggle with transitions and for whom the anxiety of the non-familiar is the most challenging part of school.
I totally disagree with PP that talked about a school community rather than a classroom community. Our ES has 750 kids—most little kids can’t build a community across that size. A classroom community is essential for small children to feel secure. The social stuff is the most important thing at the younger ages.

[Anonymous]

Where in the world do primary school students NOT have just one teacher? US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan--this is the standard global model. Hardly a failing on the part of MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where in the world do primary school students NOT have just one teacher? US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan--this is the standard global model. Hardly a failing on the part of MCPS.

Am I misreading you here, because Russian students certainly do not have just one teacher even in the primary grades. They have a homeroom teacher who follows them from year to year, but they absolutely switch classrooms for subjects.

[Anonymous]

That one teacher teaches all subjects,
English, math, science and social study was started when common core became the law of education. MCPS started to ask one teacher to teach all 4 subjects in a single classroom, all day. Before cc2.0, in ES, a teacher either teach math and scient or english and social study. The transition at beginning was painful. In my DC’s ES, the older female teachers were struggling to pick up math and science, especially the cc2.0 math, when very few adults understood it. Some young male teachers didnot know how to teach English because he wasnt trained to teach it at all. Many 3rd grade kids were laughing the teacher in their classroom because he misspell 50% of the words he put on the white board.

[Anonymous]

My only concern with this model is that it is harder to find decent math/science teachers, especially at the elementary level. There are many more reading specialists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where in the world do primary school students NOT have just one teacher? US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan--this is the standard global model. Hardly a failing on the part of MCPS.

Am I misreading you here, because Russian students certainly do not have just one teacher even in the primary grades. They have a homeroom teacher who follows them from year to year, but they absolutely switch classrooms for subjects.

I "think" PP was saying that those other countries do not have just one teacher -- but the wording is confusing.

[Anonymous]

Out of state mom here.
Dd7 had a wonderful year piloting 2nd grade block classes. One homeroom teacher for language, reading, social studies. Another teacher for math and science.

I was very worried (DH was not worried). It ended up being an awesome experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That one teacher teaches all subjects,
English, math, science and social study was started when common core became the law of education. MCPS started to ask one teacher to teach all 4 subjects in a single classroom, all day. Before cc2.0, in ES, a teacher either teach math and scient or english and social study. The transition at beginning was painful. In my DC’s ES, the older female teachers were struggling to pick up math and science, especially the cc2.0 math, when very few adults understood it. Some young male teachers didnot know how to teach English because he wasnt trained to teach it at all. Many 3rd grade kids were laughing the teacher in their classroom because he misspell 50% of the words he put on the white board.

This isn’t true.

#1: I had a child go through MCPS before CC. My former MIL and SIL also also taught in MCPS. Some schools departmentalized for grades 3-5, but most didn’t.

#2: ES teachers receive training in all subjects and must pass Praxis accordingly.

Invest in spellcheck and remove the beam from thine own eye.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ELA, Math, science and Social study, that's a lot, isn't it?

It's pretty standard. Or sometimes they have one teacher do math and science and another do ELA and social studies.

Yes, departmentalizing makes planning and prepping easier. With the new ELA curriculum it will be much harder for grade levels to departmentalize because each ELA block needs to be 2 hours uninterrupted, and while it’s easy to make that happen once per day, it’s not easy to make that time block happen twice per day in any given grade level. There are pros and cons to departmentalizing, but as a teacher I’ve seen more pros than cons.

Of course you do. Departmentalizing IS the most teacher friendly. But it isn’t the most student-friendly, at least for the kid that struggles the most with building connections and trust. Who’s tracking any issues that the kid is having across the day? Who is building that positive relationship with the family? And you really think it’s developmentally appropriate for 7 year olds to be switching classes all day for academic subjects?

From a curriculum standpoint, it’s difficult to do any type of cross curricular project based learning.

I’ve been a public school educator for almost 30 years. I’ve mostly taught the upper elementary grades. I’ve done both departmentalized and self-contained classrooms. While departmentalized was easier on me, there was no real classroom community. I hated how some kids fell through the cracks.

The research actually supports what this teacher with longevity is saying. I'm an educator too and also think relationships take priority and something gets lost and kids fall through the cracks when there's too much departmentalization. It barely works for sixth grade middle school students, let alone a 7-year-old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ELA, Math, science and Social study, that's a lot, isn't it?

It's pretty standard. Or sometimes they have one teacher do math and science and another do ELA and social studies.

Yes, departmentalizing makes planning and prepping easier. With the new ELA curriculum it will be much harder for grade levels to departmentalize because each ELA block needs to be 2 hours uninterrupted, and while it’s easy to make that happen once per day, it’s not easy to make that time block happen twice per day in any given grade level. There are pros and cons to departmentalizing, but as a teacher I’ve seen more pros than cons.

Of course you do. Departmentalizing IS the most teacher friendly. But it isn’t the most student-friendly, at least for the kid that struggles the most with building connections and trust. Who’s tracking any issues that the kid is having across the day? Who is building that positive relationship with the family? And you really think it’s developmentally appropriate for 7 year olds to be switching classes all day for academic subjects?

From a curriculum standpoint, it’s difficult to do any type of cross curricular project based learning.

I’ve been a public school educator for almost 30 years. I’ve mostly taught the upper elementary grades. I’ve done both departmentalized and self-contained classrooms. While departmentalized was easier on me, there was no real classroom community. I hated how some kids fell through the cracks.

The research actually supports what this teacher with longevity is saying. I'm an educator too and also think relationships take priority and something gets lost and kids fall through the cracks when there's too much departmentalization. It barely works for sixth grade middle school students, let alone a 7-year-old.

Another long time teacher (25+ years) who has taught in both departmentalized and self-contained settings. I agree, departmentalizing was MUCH easier on me, but often not better for my students. There are some benefits to focusing on and teaching only one or two subjects, you are able to focus more on that topic and plan more in depth lessons. However, you may have half the content to "learn", but you have double the students to learn. The content stays the same year to year, but the students change. What works for one group may or may not work for another group, so you end up changing anyway. With double the students, there are double the IEP meetings, double the parents and so forth.

The biggest reason I don't like a departmentalized schedule though is the lack of flexibility and the amount of wasted time in a school day. Time is lost due to transitions and we are tied to the clock. Lessons were frequently rushed so that we could switch classes. There is no spending that 5 extra minutes on a math problem to be sure everyone gets it, if it's time to change classes, you have to go, even if you haven't finished the lesson. When I was self-contained, some days math was 5-10 minutes longer, other days reading or science were 5-10 minutes longer. I had the flexibility to tweak my daily schedule based on my students' needs and what I was teaching. It was also much easier to have lessons with true integration. Students loved the integrated concepts and projects. It's still possible to do them in a departmentalized setting, but much more difficult. I find when working on a team that departmentalizes there needs to be more time spent meeting and collaborating, but often my teammates are less interested in doing so. Everyone wants to do their own thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ELA, Math, science and Social study, that's a lot, isn't it?

It's pretty standard. Or sometimes they have one teacher do math and science and another do ELA and social studies.

And very little science and SS is taught in public ES these days. I teach one of those in MS and an devastated by how little even the top students in 6th grade know. Unless they had a personal interest or their parents supplemented.

Or a second language, or social studies, or grammar, or spelling, or study skills, or critical thinking and logic skills. It is math and reading. math and reading. Total bore.

When you have hours of busy work while teachers take small groups it gets incredibly boring, incredibly fast. The worst thing 2.0 did was take away tracked math/science starting in 1st. At least there was some all class teachings. Now there is nothing. Even 4/5 compact math is getting watered down to include everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That one teacher teaches all subjects,
English, math, science and social study was started when common core became the law of education. MCPS started to ask one teacher to teach all 4 subjects in a single classroom, all day. Before cc2.0, in ES, a teacher either teach math and scient or english and social study. The transition at beginning was painful. In my DC’s ES, the older female teachers were struggling to pick up math and science, especially the cc2.0 math, when very few adults understood it. Some young male teachers didnot know how to teach English because he wasnt trained to teach it at all. Many 3rd grade kids were laughing the teacher in their classroom because he misspell 50% of the words he put on the white board.

This isn’t true.

#1: I had a child go through MCPS before CC. My former MIL and SIL also also taught in MCPS. Some schools departmentalized for grades 3-5, but most didn’t.

#2: ES teachers receive training in all subjects and must pass Praxis accordingly.

Invest in spellcheck and remove the beam from thine own eye.

Prior to CC, our ES departmentalized starting in grade 1. They had tracked math/science in the afternoon after lunch/recess. There were 4 classes: Math 2, Math 1 accelerated, Math 1, and Math K/1st. The kids worked on math problems, played math games as a WHOLE class, actually went to the white board and did problems to show the class, did science projects, and really cool experiments. All bases on their level. I volunteered and it was great. They unfortunately still had mixed abilities in AM and the dreaded 15min reading groups while most kids sat at desks reading books after getting their busy work done. Or even better, some kids didn't care to do their busy work and would disrupt others. The tracked classrooms always worked better. I worked in all 4 classes, wherever I was needed once a week. The lowest class only had 16 kids in it and worked so hard and caught up really well.

It is funny that another teacher talked about the wasted time of departmentalizing and moving classes, but since they move after lunch/recess, it never affected my DD's school. But now with CC, I see more time wasted changing reading and math groups. I also see a lot of time wasted as the class gets loud and the teachers need to stop their group to tell the rest of the class to quiet down. And that is with me there. They always say it is worse when they don't have a volunteer helping the rest of the class. They also place kids that speed thru their busy work to help other kids struggling. And most of the time, it doesn't seem to work out well. The struggling kid gets embarrassed or the the smart one just wants to play chromebook games and rolls their eyes at helping. I just absolutely hate the wasted day of changing small groups all day.

Get rid of the chromebooks and get get rid of small group rotations and it would be a much more productive day

[Anonymous]

I thought moving between different teachers and classroom helped my DS from grade 1-5. It is very hard for kids to be kept in same room and faced the same teacher for 5-6 hours and stay focused. When they rotated, there was something new to draw their attention.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That one teacher teaches all subjects,
English, math, science and social study was started when common core became the law of education. MCPS started to ask one teacher to teach all 4 subjects in a single classroom, all day. Before cc2.0, in ES, a teacher either teach math and scient or english and social study. The transition at beginning was painful. In my DC’s ES, the older female teachers were struggling to pick up math and science, especially the cc2.0 math, when very few adults understood it. Some young male teachers didnot know how to teach English because he wasnt trained to teach it at all. Many 3rd grade kids were laughing the teacher in their classroom because he misspell 50% of the words he put on the white board.

This isn’t true.

#1: I had a child go through MCPS before CC. My former MIL and SIL also also taught in MCPS. Some schools departmentalized for grades 3-5, but most didn’t.

#2: ES teachers receive training in all subjects and must pass Praxis accordingly.

Invest in spellcheck and remove the beam from thine own eye.

Prior to CC, our ES departmentalized starting in grade 1. They had tracked math/science in the afternoon after lunch/recess. There were 4 classes: Math 2, Math 1 accelerated, Math 1, and Math K/1st. The kids worked on math problems, played math games as a WHOLE class, actually went to the white board and did problems to show the class, did science projects, and really cool experiments. All bases on their level. I volunteered and it was great. They unfortunately still had mixed abilities in AM and the dreaded 15min reading groups while most kids sat at desks reading books after getting their busy work done. Or even better, some kids didn't care to do their busy work and would disrupt others. The tracked classrooms always worked better. I worked in all 4 classes, wherever I was needed once a week. The lowest class only had 16 kids in it and worked so hard and caught up really well.

It is funny that another teacher talked about the wasted time of departmentalizing and moving classes, but since they move after lunch/recess, it never affected my DD's school. But now with CC, I see more time wasted changing reading and math groups. I also see a lot of time wasted as the class gets loud and the teachers need to stop their group to tell the rest of the class to quiet down. And that is with me there. They always say it is worse when they don't have a volunteer helping the rest of the class. They also place kids that speed thru their busy work to help other kids struggling. And most of the time, it doesn't seem to work out well. The struggling kid gets embarrassed or the the smart one just wants to play chromebook games and rolls their eyes at helping. I just absolutely hate the wasted day of changing small groups all day.

Get rid of the chromebooks and get get rid of small group rotations and it would be a much more productive day

+1,000,000