CALENDAR: O days and new material

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup. I was told I can't even play review games because that would give some kids more learning opportunities than others. Nowhere is that written in the insane regulation. They gave us a lot of what-not-to-do and very little as far as suggestions for what we CAN do.

You must have missed the email where they told us we can share information about the holiday

Haha, yep!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup. I was told I can't even play review games because that would give some kids more learning opportunities than others. Nowhere is that written in the insane regulation. They gave us a lot of what-not-to-do and very little as far as suggestions for what we CAN do.

You must have missed the email where they told us we can share information about the holiday

Haha, yep!

You're right! My day is saved! /s

[Anonymous]

These O days are a total waste of time. Guess my kids will be missing school on those days.

Once again, the School Board is only good at keeping kids out of school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like you can introduce new content. You just can’t have it be the main or sole time that you do that content. Obviously, it would be crappy teaching to just address a concept or skill one time anyway. However, it sounds like you could do a fun activity that allows students to explore a new concept on an O day and then the next day, do a more rigorous activity that is the main lesson.

lol, clearly you haven't taught a high school math class. We have so many standards that it is literally a new topic every single day of the year or we don't get to it all. Most days I'm covering 2-3 standards. We review them throughout the year on warm ups and activities and every unit has a review day, but it is explicitly taught once. Our CTs have already gone through the pacing guides and AP documentation to figure out what we can cut out this year without doing too much damage, because we can't get to it all.

You have a deficit mindset.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup. I was told I can't even play review games because that would give some kids more learning opportunities than others. Nowhere is that written in the insane regulation. They gave us a lot of what-not-to-do and very little as far as suggestions for what we CAN do.

You must have missed the email where they told us we can share information about the holiday

Oh good. My kid is going to spend 15 days in AP Calc learning about cultural holidays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please, parents, complain to the school board. Teachers have been fussing over this since it was announced, and we've been told in no uncertain terms that we are NOT to advance the curriculum, NOT to move forward with AP/IB material, NOT to grade anything assigned (so good luck getting kids to do it), and to "figure out" how to fit the whole curriculum into 15 less days (11 of which are on the same even/odd designation, so one set of students is missing 11/90 or over 12% of teaching opportunities).

I am 10000% okay with kids taking off for whatever their family deems important--religious observances, family get togethers, extra curricular opportunities. The direction from gatehouse should have been that any excused absence gets at least 1 week (or 2, or 10, or whatever--with the rolling gradebook it doesn't really matter) to make up missing work with no penalty.

What really kills me is that we can't teach even if no kids are absent. WHAT. THE. HECK. Then it's not about not stressing out the kids who are out, it's about forcing teachers to limit their teaching. These are literally wasted days.

Where does it say that??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please, parents, complain to the school board. Teachers have been fussing over this since it was announced, and we've been told in no uncertain terms that we are NOT to advance the curriculum, NOT to move forward with AP/IB material, NOT to grade anything assigned (so good luck getting kids to do it), and to "figure out" how to fit the whole curriculum into 15 less days (11 of which are on the same even/odd designation, so one set of students is missing 11/90 or over 12% of teaching opportunities).

I am 10000% okay with kids taking off for whatever their family deems important--religious observances, family get togethers, extra curricular opportunities. The direction from gatehouse should have been that any excused absence gets at least 1 week (or 2, or 10, or whatever--with the rolling gradebook it doesn't really matter) to make up missing work with no penalty.

What really kills me is that we can't teach even if no kids are absent. WHAT. THE. HECK. Then it's not about not stressing out the kids who are out, it's about forcing teachers to limit their teaching. These are literally wasted days.

Where does it say that??

From FCPS communication to staff:

“Can classrooms where the holiday is not celebrated give tests or present new material?
No. Remember that teachers shall not survey classes at any time to determine how students identify religiously. The purpose of the religious and cultural observances is to acknowledge beyond traditional holidays and honor those who celebrate.”

Absolute garbage. Public school should not be forgoing academics to celebrate religion.

[Anonymous]

There should be an O day to celebrate the Tooth Fairy too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These O days are a total waste of time. Guess my kids will be missing school on those days.

Once again, the School Board is only good at keeping kids out of school.

No, the SB wanted to cherry pick holidays celebrated by a small % of the district and just give those 4 days off for religious reasons. FCPS lawyers basically said it's a lawsuit waiting to happen and so came up with O days. It is FCPS that made the ridiculous decision not to allow any actual teaching to happen those days rather than just saying "no assessments or special events with opportunity to make up assignments for a week". THAT would have been a 100% reasonable policy and sounded a lot like what they actually planned to do from the initial press release - the additional guidance teachers have posted is WAY more restrictive than FCPS initially implied in its announcement about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These O days are a total waste of time. Guess my kids will be missing school on those days.

Once again, the School Board is only good at keeping kids out of school.

No, the SB wanted to cherry pick holidays celebrated by a small % of the district and just give those 4 days off for religious reasons. FCPS lawyers basically said it's a lawsuit waiting to happen and so came up with O days. It is FCPS that made the ridiculous decision not to allow any actual teaching to happen those days rather than just saying "no assessments or special events with opportunity to make up assignments for a week". THAT would have been a 100% reasonable policy and sounded a lot like what they actually planned to do from the initial press release - the additional guidance teachers have posted is WAY more restrictive than FCPS initially implied in its announcement about this.

As someone who has kids that will be observing Rosh Hashanah on Tuesday and Yom Kippur next week, I was perfectly fine with them missing new work, provided that there was a way to catch up within a reasonable amount of time. With block scheduling, an 80 minute class spent not teaching just seems ridiculous to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These O days are a total waste of time. Guess my kids will be missing school on those days.

Once again, the School Board is only good at keeping kids out of school.

No, the SB wanted to cherry pick holidays celebrated by a small % of the district and just give those 4 days off for religious reasons. FCPS lawyers basically said it's a lawsuit waiting to happen and so came up with O days. It is FCPS that made the ridiculous decision not to allow any actual teaching to happen those days rather than just saying "no assessments or special events with opportunity to make up assignments for a week". THAT would have been a 100% reasonable policy and sounded a lot like what they actually planned to do from the initial press release - the additional guidance teachers have posted is WAY more restrictive than FCPS initially implied in its announcement about this.

As someone who has kids that will be observing Rosh Hashanah on Tuesday and Yom Kippur next week, I was perfectly fine with them missing new work, provided that there was a way to catch up within a reasonable amount of time. With block scheduling, an 80 minute class spent not teaching just seems ridiculous to me.

The SB needs to hear from people like you. The input that ample time to catch up missed new teaching - coupled with no assessments or big 1 time activities on the holidays - is what they need to hear in order to dial this back to reasonable and they need to hear it from peopel that have a dog in the fight on the relevant holidays.

[Anonymous]

If they're going to keep the "no new material" rule, then the LEAST they could do is let us alter our schedules to make those O days 7 period days instead of block days. Then we all see our kids for 45 minutes a class and can do work within the guidelines rather than killing 80 minutes with one group of kids while our other students on the other block day will get the lesson.

Here's an example of what it looks like now:

Monday - even
Tuesday (religious) - odd
Wednesday - even
Thursday - odd
Friday - even

In this situation, we see our even day kids 3 times and can teach content. The odd day kids we see twice but can only teach content on one of those days.

Here's an example of how to balance that issue:

Monday - even
Tuesday (religious) - 7 period day
Wednesday - odd
Thursday - even
Friday - odd

In this situation, you're seeing both your odd and even classes twice and on the non teaching religious day, you use that shortened class period to do whatever fits in FCPS' ridiculously restrictive guidelines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they're going to keep the "no new material" rule, then the LEAST they could do is let us alter our schedules to make those O days 7 period days instead of block days. Then we all see our kids for 45 minutes a class and can do work within the guidelines rather than killing 80 minutes with one group of kids while our other students on the other block day will get the lesson.

Here's an example of what it looks like now:

Monday - even
Tuesday (religious) - odd
Wednesday - even
Thursday - odd
Friday - even

In this situation, we see our even day kids 3 times and can teach content. The odd day kids we see twice but can only teach content on one of those days.

Here's an example of how to balance that issue:

Monday - even
Tuesday (religious) - 7 period day
Wednesday - odd
Thursday - even
Friday - odd

In this situation, you're seeing both your odd and even classes twice and on the non teaching religious day, you use that shortened class period to do whatever fits in FCPS' ridiculously restrictive guidelines.

This is an excellent idea!!!!!! Please pass it on to the board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they're going to keep the "no new material" rule, then the LEAST they could do is let us alter our schedules to make those O days 7 period days instead of block days. Then we all see our kids for 45 minutes a class and can do work within the guidelines rather than killing 80 minutes with one group of kids while our other students on the other block day will get the lesson.

Here's an example of what it looks like now:

Monday - even
Tuesday (religious) - odd
Wednesday - even
Thursday - odd
Friday - even

In this situation, we see our even day kids 3 times and can teach content. The odd day kids we see twice but can only teach content on one of those days.

Here's an example of how to balance that issue:

Monday - even
Tuesday (religious) - 7 period day
Wednesday - odd
Thursday - even
Friday - odd

In this situation, you're seeing both your odd and even classes twice and on the non teaching religious day, you use that shortened class period to do whatever fits in FCPS' ridiculously restrictive guidelines.

This is an excellent idea!!!!!! Please pass it on to the board.

Are there any high schools that have 7 period days? How does lunch work? As a teacher this idea is so much better, but we have 5 lunches at my school.

[Anonymous]

So I just looked at our schools high school schedule. I only see 11 O days during the actual school year and they are evenly spaced between odd and even days - 6 on one block schedule and 5 on the other block schedule. In fact, they switch pretty evenly so that several even days are not together for O days. Don’t get me wrong, I think this whole thing is stupid - especially with a kid in several AP classes - but I don’t see the disparity with even and odd days (or what we call Red and Silver days). Maybe our school divided the days up differently. 🤷‍♀️