Increase Absenteeism in Midle/Upper SES students not due to illness?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

I’m sorry, I think have one or two of these a year is somewhat normal and maybe even a good thing. Most of my students recognize me a good teacher but I often think they become too reliant on me and won’t have the personal study skills to teach themselves in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

A secret that teachers know but most parents don’t is the really good teachers who do skills based, structured , direct instruction are the ones teaching the lower level academic / co taught classes. Our students need the skills so we have to do that kind of teaching and differentiation. The teachers who teach the upper level courses are often put there because there’s less for the kids to lose if they suck. It’s viewed as “they’re AP kids, they’ll be ok with the weaker teacher.” I am not saying all honors/AP teachers suck. But I will say most of the ones at the secondary level are a) men who b) aren’t good at direct, skills based instruction and c) think they’re cool because they teach on ~vibes~. The actual teaching you want your kids to get is happening in the cotaught classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

Omg this has to be the same class my kid is in. Is it AP World History??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

A secret that teachers know but most parents don’t is the really good teachers who do skills based, structured , direct instruction are the ones teaching the lower level academic / co taught classes. Our students need the skills so we have to do that kind of teaching and differentiation. The teachers who teach the upper level courses are often put there because there’s less for the kids to lose if they suck. It’s viewed as “they’re AP kids, they’ll be ok with the weaker teacher.” I am not saying all honors/AP teachers suck. But I will say most of the ones at the secondary level are a) men who b) aren’t good at direct, skills based instruction and c) think they’re cool because they teach on ~vibes~. The actual teaching you want your kids to get is happening in the cotaught classes.

Haha single female teacher alert. At my school I have had 3 students go through, one is still attending, and I will say the best teachers (non football coaches) at our school are the male teachers. I will say they did have one that was young and left the profession that matched your basis but most have been great. I never had to worry about fairness, passive aggressive, and or moodiness. They liked them a lot and I liked them on back to school night(yes I’m one of the few that still go). The one co taught class my oldest son was in was so dumbed down and so boring I made sure none of my kids ever took a non honors core class ever again. My son told me that the one teacher would walk around and do the problems for them, so if that’s what you mean by direct instruction then great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

As a math teacher I want to have 20+ assignments a quarter. Mostly low stakes short assignments every day with almost no effect to grade (40 assignments were worth only 10%) to make sure students know what skill they are missing to prepare for the quiz or test in the future. However, I am not allowed to do this anymore and if I make these same assignments ungraded the kids don’t do them or cheat even when it’s for them to know what skills that are missing.

Yes the big problem is the county is pushing the idea that the everyone needs to get the same education in every class. Which creates a cookie cutter classroom that leaks any creativity. Teachers basically have to break rules to do something creative or really do something to help their students. It’s sad, middle school is the worst, they basically just work out of workbooks even though most good teachers hate them. All about lowering the bar and helping the worst

Oh what planet? My child is in middle school in FCPS and we have never ever seen a workbook.

+1 Workbook? I've never seen a workbook in middle school.

Trust me! Ask your kids it may not be a traditional workbook but everything is already planned for the teacher. Each activity is planned out and some schools are forced to use them. They are some of the worse lessons you have ever seen

I am a middle school teacher. Our lessons are not planned out for us, at least not in three of the four core subjects, World Language, and at least five of the electives.

There are required standards, but that is a K-12, state-wide requirement. Standards are not lessons.

I think some middle schools are ysing HMB this year in English.

Do you mean HMH?

HMH is a set of texts based on a thematic unit. It is not canned lessons. It is not a workbook. It is not a canned curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

A secret that teachers know but most parents don’t is the really good teachers who do skills based, structured , direct instruction are the ones teaching the lower level academic / co taught classes. Our students need the skills so we have to do that kind of teaching and differentiation. The teachers who teach the upper level courses are often put there because there’s less for the kids to lose if they suck. It’s viewed as “they’re AP kids, they’ll be ok with the weaker teacher.” I am not saying all honors/AP teachers suck. But I will say most of the ones at the secondary level are a) men who b) aren’t good at direct, skills based instruction and c) think they’re cool because they teach on ~vibes~. The actual teaching you want your kids to get is happening in the cotaught classes.

Haha single female teacher alert. At my school I have had 3 students go through, one is still attending, and I will say the best teachers (non football coaches) at our school are the male teachers. I will say they did have one that was young and left the profession that matched your basis but most have been great. I never had to worry about fairness, passive aggressive, and or moodiness. They liked them a lot and I liked them on back to school night(yes I’m one of the few that still go). The one co taught class my oldest son was in was so dumbed down and so boring I made sure none of my kids ever took a non honors core class ever again. My son told me that the one teacher would walk around and do the problems for them, so if that’s what you mean by direct instruction then great.

DP.
I really wish all of you would just stop with the stereotypes. I’m taking a break from working and, to be quite frank, I’m wondering why I’m wasting my off hours considering this is how people talk about teachers.

That goes for both of you, the parent and the teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I’m a parent of two teens. You don’t speak for me. My children attend school consistently and they take their work seriously.

The home sets the tone.

False. Our home consists of one college professor and one public school teacher, and I assure you we have always taken school seriously. And yet we have one child who will not go anymore. We have friends with the same problem. Have fun patting yourself on the back for what is basically luck. Hope your children never have any mental health problems that your "tone" can't solve.

I'm curious what you think are the reasons for the school refusal and if any are valid. My older child did fine but my younger one wants to go to Vo Tech for Robotics for half a day during senior year. He has Physics PhDs and National Merit high scorers in his family - smart people who love school on both sides. Until this quarter he had a 3.8 unweighted in top rigor classes. He hates being in class with low motivation students and it seems to be too late for his parents (us) to turn his bad attitude around. We are constantly hearing stories of personal issues that teachers and other students are having that impact the class environment. It is very disappointing. We have loosely considered private school but it just gets access to richer kids, not better students, in our area. He refused to try for the grind magnet in our area because it's notorious for hours of homework only to place kids in the same colleges as our regular high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

Omg this has to be the same class my kid is in. Is it AP World History??

Yeah. DD is convinced she is going to get a 1 on her AP exam with how little feedback they have received this year. Completely relying on external sources for any test prep. The only silver lining is that it is one of her later exams, so she has a couple of extra days to prep for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

They really do! I have called parents to say their kid skipped class and they said “oh my child said you weren’t doing anything today.” Pardon? We did a bellringer, independent reading + response, a quick write with our vocabulary, a mini lesson and a partner speaking activity with our new skill. Your kid missed all that “nothing” and will now be utterly clueless when I give them a graph or chart with a technical text to analyze, interpret, and write about.

Parent here. If I were you, I wouldn’t take the extra time to teach that student what they missed. If they told their parent that you weren’t doing anything today, you can tell the parent that you actually did a lot and then have the kid face the natural consequence of his decision to skip class.

Another parent who agrees.

The issue is not the teachers, the parents or the students.

This is an issue manufactured by Gatehouse. First with covid learning.

Then the requiring computers for everything.

Then deciding that no zeros can be given, only 50% even if zero work is completed, and 50% is still a passing grade.

Unlimited retakes.

Extended windows of the entire quarter to turn in missing or late work.

Only 7 assignments and 2 tests allowed per quarter (because unlimited retakes required and no deadlines allowed to be enforced.)

Taking most of the study halls and turning them into stupid SEL lessons and constant surveys, instead of allowing students to use that time for extra help, research, homework or test retakes

Creating this absurd calendar that extends over a month past the final AP exams, with fewer than half the weeks 5 day weeks.

Etc. Etc.

There are sooooo many amazing teachers in FCPS, especially at the high schools. Unfortunately, the school board and Gatehouse are vonstantly working against them and doung their best to make actual learning and attendance irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

A secret that teachers know but most parents don’t is the really good teachers who do skills based, structured , direct instruction are the ones teaching the lower level academic / co taught classes. Our students need the skills so we have to do that kind of teaching and differentiation. The teachers who teach the upper level courses are often put there because there’s less for the kids to lose if they suck. It’s viewed as “they’re AP kids, they’ll be ok with the weaker teacher.” I am not saying all honors/AP teachers suck. But I will say most of the ones at the secondary level are a) men who b) aren’t good at direct, skills based instruction and c) think they’re cool because they teach on ~vibes~. The actual teaching you want your kids to get is happening in the cotaught classes.

Haha single female teacher alert. At my school I have had 3 students go through, one is still attending, and I will say the best teachers (non football coaches) at our school are the male teachers. I will say they did have one that was young and left the profession that matched your basis but most have been great. I never had to worry about fairness, passive aggressive, and or moodiness. They liked them a lot and I liked them on back to school night(yes I’m one of the few that still go). The one co taught class my oldest son was in was so dumbed down and so boring I made sure none of my kids ever took a non honors core class ever again. My son told me that the one teacher would walk around and do the problems for them, so if that’s what you mean by direct instruction then great.

Both of you need to stop with the stereotyping. My daughter has had good and bad teachers of both genders. Her best teacher ever has been female. So has the worst. The majority of her teachers have been female, so this does not surprise me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

A secret that teachers know but most parents don’t is the really good teachers who do skills based, structured , direct instruction are the ones teaching the lower level academic / co taught classes. Our students need the skills so we have to do that kind of teaching and differentiation. The teachers who teach the upper level courses are often put there because there’s less for the kids to lose if they suck. It’s viewed as “they’re AP kids, they’ll be ok with the weaker teacher.” I am not saying all honors/AP teachers suck. But I will say most of the ones at the secondary level are a) men who b) aren’t good at direct, skills based instruction and c) think they’re cool because they teach on ~vibes~. The actual teaching you want your kids to get is happening in the cotaught classes.

Haha single female teacher alert. At my school I have had 3 students go through, one is still attending, and I will say the best teachers (non football coaches) at our school are the male teachers. I will say they did have one that was young and left the profession that matched your basis but most have been great. I never had to worry about fairness, passive aggressive, and or moodiness. They liked them a lot and I liked them on back to school night(yes I’m one of the few that still go). The one co taught class my oldest son was in was so dumbed down and so boring I made sure none of my kids ever took a non honors core class ever again. My son told me that the one teacher would walk around and do the problems for them, so if that’s what you mean by direct instruction then great.

Both of you need to stop with the stereotyping. My daughter has had good and bad teachers of both genders. Her best teacher ever has been female. So has the worst. The majority of her teachers have been female, so this does not surprise me.

Obviously there is great and bad teacher of both genders and it is a little surprising for a teacher to say that about male teachers but she probably is in a situation thats frustrating. We have all been there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

A secret that teachers know but most parents don’t is the really good teachers who do skills based, structured , direct instruction are the ones teaching the lower level academic / co taught classes. Our students need the skills so we have to do that kind of teaching and differentiation. The teachers who teach the upper level courses are often put there because there’s less for the kids to lose if they suck. It’s viewed as “they’re AP kids, they’ll be ok with the weaker teacher.” I am not saying all honors/AP teachers suck. But I will say most of the ones at the secondary level are a) men who b) aren’t good at direct, skills based instruction and c) think they’re cool because they teach on ~vibes~. The actual teaching you want your kids to get is happening in the cotaught classes.

Haha single female teacher alert. At my school I have had 3 students go through, one is still attending, and I will say the best teachers (non football coaches) at our school are the male teachers. I will say they did have one that was young and left the profession that matched your basis but most have been great. I never had to worry about fairness, passive aggressive, and or moodiness. They liked them a lot and I liked them on back to school night(yes I’m one of the few that still go). The one co taught class my oldest son was in was so dumbed down and so boring I made sure none of my kids ever took a non honors core class ever again. My son told me that the one teacher would walk around and do the problems for them, so if that’s what you mean by direct instruction then great.

Both of you need to stop with the stereotyping. My daughter has had good and bad teachers of both genders. Her best teacher ever has been female. So has the worst. The majority of her teachers have been female, so this does not surprise me.

Obviously there is great and bad teacher of both genders and it is a little surprising for a teacher to say that about male teachers but she probably is in a situation thats frustrating. We have all been there.

I’m not frustrated, it’s just reality. They tend to coast on reputation. They curse at kids and the kids think it’s cool and funny. A science teacher at one school I taught at called all the kids “homos” because “you’re Homo sapiens.” They love to use stuff they made 10+ years ago and never changed. I made it clear it isn’t all male teachers and trust me there’s plenty of bad teachers who are women, but a lot of men at many high schools go to upper level courses where they barely teach and get away with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's a huge problem, and growing. Mostly school avoidance and mental health issues. No one is sure exactly what the cause is. I think the rolling gradebook and the required 7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter might have something to do with it - work just piles up and up and quickly becomes overwhelming.

7 assignments and 2 tests per quarter is not a lot of work. It's very little work.

The attendance is bad because of the crappy schedule and residual effects of how FCPS implemented covid computer learning and post covid computer learning and grading scales.

Ask any parent of teens

Fcps made consistent in person school and deadlines irrelevant for the current crop of kids. It will be like this for a few more years.

I am a parent of a teen. I am also a teacher. 7 assignments is much more graded work than we ever had when I was in school. We usually had one or two tests per quarter, and max one other thing to hand in. Maybe some small homework assignments that were stuck together into one grade. 7 graded assignments is actually a lot. As teachers, we sometimes have trouble getting them all in. When a student misses some school, they are almost certainly going to get far behind in assignments, and just getting them caught up becomes a major thing. There is no way a kid who missed a week or two of school can easily catch up in all their classes. So they start avoiding work and avoiding school, and the problem spirals. We watch it happen over and over.

We don't even want to give that many separate assignments.

7 assignments? My kids have anywhere from 20-30 graded assignments in private MS & HS per quarter, and usually a whole lot of quizzes and a few tests.

That seems unlikely. 30 grade assignments per class per quarter would mean a graded assignment almost every day, or at the very least every other day. For the teacher, that would mean grading nonstop, and even in private school there aren't enough hours in the day to grade that much work and also plan lessons and teach.

DP. Mine are in public in the Northeast and usually have more than 20 assignments per quarter. Quarters last 45ish days.

My ruby red states nieces have much more rigorous education than FCPS.

That's because the parents in red states know better and demand better for their kids.

As a parent of a kid taking APs in Freshman year and has 3 next year, I’m honestly confused by your view. My child has vastly more APs and elective selection than I did as a kid or my friend’s kids do who still live in my home county. They also have lots of quizzes, papers and graded assignments.

Parents of kids who don’t do schoolwork are convinced there’s no schoolwork . They also believe none of the teachers teach!

As a teacher it amazes me why these parents believe all these lies the kids tell them. You really think we are doing nothing, even one day? The honors and AP classes are really just made up of the kids actually doing the assignments and the regular classes are 50% of kids that don’t want to do anything and the other 50% do the work but want to have breaks while we help the kids who weren’t paying attention the first time or were absent.

My child is in all honors and APs. When I say her teaching team is terrible, it doesn’t literally mean that they’re sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day long.

In one case, it means that what the teacher does teach makes no sense. Then she gets mad when she asks the kids if they understand and they say no. Or the kids ask for clarification and she just yells at them for not understanding in the first place. The pacing of the class was also so off that they were done with the mandatory lessons by the end of February and moved on to optional material.

In another, the teacher spends more time on stories about his time as a youth than on lessons. Then the lessons are all crammed into shorter sessions and two weeks away from the AP exam, they are not done with all the units, so there is no time to review. Other teachers have been reviewing materials and giving their kids practice for the last couple of weeks.

In another, the teacher’s material is outdated and does not correlate with the syllabus. So what they learn and what they should learn are decoupled. When kids are concerned about their outcomes, he basically tells them how he screwed around all through HS and college and still turned out fine, and to not worry so much about grades.

In all these classes, my child and classmates are essentially teaching themselves the materials. So after getting home from school, they’re spending hours going over YouTube videos, calling each other to see if anyone else has figured out what’s going on, and then do homework and prepare for quizzes and tests. The amount of work this piles on when compared to the one well taught class is startling. She easily spends 10x the amount of time on her poorly taught classes as the well taught one, and has worse results to show for it.

A secret that teachers know but most parents don’t is the really good teachers who do skills based, structured , direct instruction are the ones teaching the lower level academic / co taught classes. Our students need the skills so we have to do that kind of teaching and differentiation. The teachers who teach the upper level courses are often put there because there’s less for the kids to lose if they suck. It’s viewed as “they’re AP kids, they’ll be ok with the weaker teacher.” I am not saying all honors/AP teachers suck. But I will say most of the ones at the secondary level are a) men who b) aren’t good at direct, skills based instruction and c) think they’re cool because they teach on ~vibes~. The actual teaching you want your kids to get is happening in the cotaught classes.

Haha single female teacher alert. At my school I have had 3 students go through, one is still attending, and I will say the best teachers (non football coaches) at our school are the male teachers. I will say they did have one that was young and left the profession that matched your basis but most have been great. I never had to worry about fairness, passive aggressive, and or moodiness. They liked them a lot and I liked them on back to school night(yes I’m one of the few that still go). The one co taught class my oldest son was in was so dumbed down and so boring I made sure none of my kids ever took a non honors core class ever again. My son told me that the one teacher would walk around and do the problems for them, so if that’s what you mean by direct instruction then great.

Both of you need to stop with the stereotyping. My daughter has had good and bad teachers of both genders. Her best teacher ever has been female. So has the worst. The majority of her teachers have been female, so this does not surprise me.

Obviously there is great and bad teacher of both genders and it is a little surprising for a teacher to say that about male teachers but she probably is in a situation thats frustrating. We have all been there.

I’m not frustrated, it’s just reality. They tend to coast on reputation. They curse at kids and the kids think it’s cool and funny. A science teacher at one school I taught at called all the kids “homos” because “you’re Homo sapiens.” They love to use stuff they made 10+ years ago and never changed. I made it clear it isn’t all male teachers and trust me there’s plenty of bad teachers who are women, but a lot of men at many high schools go to upper level courses where they barely teach and get away with it.

Okay I can’t defend you anymore. You are basing this on one teacher??. I will say that male teachers on average maybe have a more chaotic class that might be a little more fun for some students and that might make you upset but it’s not your style.

[Anonymous]

When the administration puts together a school calendar that shows they don’t care about education do you really thing that kids and parents are going to care?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When the administration puts together a school calendar that shows they don’t care about education do you really thing that kids and parents are going to care?

The parents wanted all of these days off. They started as observance days, now they are days off. As FCPS WE MUST show care and respect to every culture in our community.