Is FCPS "cheating" my kids out of the minimum instruction required by the state?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our FCPS elementary has the exact same bell schedule as last year with the exception of full day Monday. 8:40-3:20.

Why are some schools changing times and other's are not?

No school is changing the time of its tardy bell except for Bailey's. Many people are quite confused about what is really happening which is that schools are advertising their start of the "instructional day" 10 min earlier than last year. But the tardy bell, the one that teachers go by to start the day, has not changed in any elementary school (again, except Bailey's).

Ravensworth Elementary's principal said they're changing the time of their tardy bell to 10 minutes earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course they are counting time before the bell as instructional time when it clearly isn't. No one says otherwise.

It may or not be a big deal but it's dishonest. But to bureaucrats, ethics is situational. It's a small lie, it isn't a big deal, there are other days off, you know the lines....

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County residents should be more concerned with the lack of instruction taking place throughout the school day in FCPS classrooms than twenty minutes lost in transit.

FCPS uses Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies where actual teacher instruction has been removed from the classroom. Students are given assignments and a final assessment due date. They are then left to work alone or to work in groups to teach themselves the required content and skills.

This works well if your children are very smart, popular, socially-adept, self-starters who easily share and copy the work of other students. If this is your family situation then these teaching models are perfect for your children.

However, if your children need and want genuine and authentic student/teacher/mentor relationships with their classroom teachers you will be sorely disappointed with the instruction they will receive from their FCPS teachers.

When your children return home from school and they begin their homework, please ask them what did their teachers teach or explain to them about the subject matter they are working on. You'll usually find the teacher gave the assignment without first teaching anything whatsoever about the material.

My children want to know and like their teachers. They want to learn from their teachers. They want to communicate with their teachers. They want to bounce their ideas off their teachers and during the learning process, they want their gradual lesson mastery validated by their teachers, but this is no longer available in the FCPS schools. Schools which have adopted Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies have eliminated regular classroom student/teacher communications.

It's pretty sad. Their teachers have become distant, detached, and disengaged. It's strange, it's as if their teachers are no longer present in their classrooms. Teachers claim they are present to answer questions, but what they don't realize is by failing actively teach their students they have gradually lost their abilities to communicate with them at all.

Because teachers are not driving the dialog, they find themselves unable to answer essentially basic questions when they are asked. Eventually, they begin to act as if students' questions are troublesome and annoying.

It's sad for the students and the teachers can't feel good about it either.

I am an FCPS teacher and I don't know what you are talking about. We do not use either a flipped classroom or a project-based model, with the exception of the 5th grade global awareness technology project, which accounts for a small part of the overall social studies curriculum in 5th grade. There has been no elimination whatsoever of regular student/teacher communications. This is the most bizarre thing I have read in a long time about FCPS schools - are you sure you're writing about FAIRFAX, and not another county starting with F?

+1. This is crazy talk! I've been teaching in FCPS for ten years and haven't heard of this!

[Anonymous]

Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodology is absolutely without question being used in Fairfax County Public Schools.

For those of us suffering through it, it is worse than no instruction at all.

[Anonymous]

Your kid is also going to lose instructional time walking to lunch, specials, recess, and the bathroom. Those things should be eliminated too to ensure maximum instruction time.

[Anonymous]

One of the biggest time wasters at our school is breakfast in the classroom. All of the teachers HATE it! Food dropped on the floor attracts bugs and mice. Sour milk smell from milk dumped down the sink. Yuk! Our school allows students in at 9:00 and sometimes milk is just being delivered to the classrooms at 9:20. For the older grades, if they want breakfast, they come to the cafeteria and eat it at 8:45. If only we had enough supervision for this to occur for the younger students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the biggest time wasters at our school is breakfast in the classroom. All of the teachers HATE it! Food dropped on the floor attracts bugs and mice. Sour milk smell from milk dumped down the sink. Yuk! Our school allows students in at 9:00 and sometimes milk is just being delivered to the classrooms at 9:20. For the older grades, if they want breakfast, they come to the cafeteria and eat it at 8:45. If only we had enough supervision for this to occur for the younger students.

Ugh. I'm glad we don't have to deal with breakfast at our school.

[Anonymous]

"Flipped classroom"? don't assume all know what you're talking about.

DD started doing real well in math when she adopted the approach of reading a chapter ahead. She had read the chapter and was able to ask her questions when the teacher taught it. Is this what the hubbub is about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax County residents should be more concerned with the lack of instruction taking place throughout the school day in FCPS classrooms than twenty minutes lost in transit.

FCPS uses Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies where actual teacher instruction has been removed from the classroom. Students are given assignments and a final assessment due date. They are then left to work alone or to work in groups to teach themselves the required content and skills.

This works well if your children are very smart, popular, socially-adept, self-starters who easily share and copy the work of other students. If this is your family situation then these teaching models are perfect for your children.

However, if your children need and want genuine and authentic student/teacher/mentor relationships with their classroom teachers you will be sorely disappointed with the instruction they will receive from their FCPS teachers.

When your children return home from school and they begin their homework, please ask them what did their teachers teach or explain to them about the subject matter they are working on. You'll usually find the teacher gave the assignment without first teaching anything whatsoever about the material.

My children want to know and like their teachers. They want to learn from their teachers. They want to communicate with their teachers. They want to bounce their ideas off their teachers and during the learning process, they want their gradual lesson mastery validated by their teachers, but this is no longer available in the FCPS schools. Schools which have adopted Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies have eliminated regular classroom student/teacher communications.

It's pretty sad. Their teachers have become distant, detached, and disengaged. It's strange, it's as if their teachers are no longer present in their classrooms. Teachers claim they are present to answer questions, but what they don't realize is by failing actively teach their students they have gradually lost their abilities to communicate with them at all.

Because teachers are not driving the dialog, they find themselves unable to answer essentially basic questions when they are asked. Eventually, they begin to act as if students' questions are troublesome and annoying.

It's sad for the students and the teachers can't feel good about it either.

I am an FCPS teacher and I don't know what you are talking about. We do not use either a flipped classroom or a project-based model, with the exception of the 5th grade global awareness technology project, which accounts for a small part of the overall social studies curriculum in 5th grade. There has been no elimination whatsoever of regular student/teacher communications. This is the most bizarre thing I have read in a long time about FCPS schools - are you sure you're writing about FAIRFAX, and not another county starting with F?

+1. This is crazy talk! I've been teaching in FCPS for ten years and haven't heard of this!

The flipped classroom poster shows up from time to time and posts these long nonsensical diatribes on various fcps threads. No one exactly knows what that person is talking about. I think they are just making things up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Flipped classroom"? don't assume all know what you're talking about.

DD started doing real well in math when she adopted the approach of reading a chapter ahead. She had read the chapter and was able to ask her questions when the teacher taught it. Is this what the hubbub is about?

Flipped Classrooms reverse the order of learning. Instead of teachers introducing, explaining and reviewing new material in the classroom. Then reenforcing it with homework in the evening, everything is reversed. New materials are introduced to students in lectures the students watch on their computers via YouTube for homework. Then the following day work which traditionally would have been done as homework is done in class without any additional teacher instruction. Students are told to raise their hands if they need help, but the students are reluctant to admit they are clueless to the extent they can't even ask intelligent questions so the kids just sit and suffer in their ignorance.

It's a ridiculously failed experimental teaching method used in Fairfax County Public Schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Flipped classroom"? don't assume all know what you're talking about.

DD started doing real well in math when she adopted the approach of reading a chapter ahead. She had read the chapter and was able to ask her questions when the teacher taught it. Is this what the hubbub is about?

Flipped Classrooms reverse the order of learning. Instead of teachers introducing, explaining and reviewing new material in the classroom. Then reenforcing it with homework in the evening, everything is reversed. New materials are introduced to students in lectures the students watch on their computers via YouTube for homework. Then the following day work which traditionally would have been done as homework is done in class without any additional teacher instruction. Students are told to raise their hands if they need help, but the students are reluctant to admit they are clueless to the extent they can't even ask intelligent questions so the kids just sit and suffer in their ignorance.

It's a ridiculously failed experimental teaching method used in Fairfax County Public Schools.

In reality, the teacher is able to provide more support to students in this scenario. Rather than teaching, and giving the kids homework, and then checking homework and moving on, with flipped classrooms the teacher can spend class time working with small groups or even one on one with any kids that didn't understand or need help.

Teachers don't ask kids to "raise their hands" and just sit back. They go from group to group, student to student, looking at their work on whatever activity or project is taking place and provide lots of support as needed. It may be that this one teacher didn't quite do what she was supposed to do, but the flipped classroom premise actually provides more teacher support than traditional lecture, homework, lecture....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Flipped classroom"? don't assume all know what you're talking about.

DD started doing real well in math when she adopted the approach of reading a chapter ahead. She had read the chapter and was able to ask her questions when the teacher taught it. Is this what the hubbub is about?

Flipped Classrooms reverse the order of learning. Instead of teachers introducing, explaining and reviewing new material in the classroom. Then reenforcing it with homework in the evening, everything is reversed. New materials are introduced to students in lectures the students watch on their computers via YouTube for homework. Then the following day work which traditionally would have been done as homework is done in class without any additional teacher instruction. Students are told to raise their hands if they need help, but the students are reluctant to admit they are clueless to the extent they can't even ask intelligent questions so the kids just sit and suffer in their ignorance.

It's a ridiculously failed experimental teaching method used in Fairfax County Public Schools.

Which FCPS does this?

[Anonymous]

Flipped sounds great (for me, actually). And for anyone with an IQ over 120. You try to understand the material, then the teach explains and reinforces what you know.

Sure beats busy homework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Flipped sounds great (for me, actually). And for anyone with an IQ over 120. You try to understand the material, then the teach explains and reinforces what you know.

Sure beats busy homework.

I think "flipped" could work if it was used in conjunction with video lectures where someone is SHOWING how to do something (like Khan academy or other videos). That way kids wouldn't be on their own to figure out math lessons from books... then it would make a lot of sense to use the classroom time for working through problems. In theory, it could be good... but it just depends on how the teachers implement it.

But, this is totally off point of the original thread -- which I started -- so far, there has only been one person who claims to have calculated the hours of instructional time -- and according to him/her, the total hours (excluding the new extra 20 min.) is more than 990 -- but that would only hold true if there were less than 7 snow days. At that point -- based on the numbers that PP provided, the instructional time would dip below 990. If that is, in fact, the case, then I'm not bothered by it. But, I'd like to hear the superintendent or school board or someone who did the accounting explain why they are now using the walk to/from the bus as "instructional time." I guess, in the big scheme of things, the kids lose at least a week of "instructional time" during the final week of school b/c the teachers literally stop teaching. This past June, my kid was shown a movie in her homeroom, then the next day she was shown the SAME movie in her Adv. Math class! My 2nd grader was shown a full length movie in the morning and ANOTHER full length movie in the afternoon! WTH! So, I probably shouldn't worry about losing 20 min. per day --- but when added to a full week (or more) that is not spent on anything educational, I can't help but feel that kids (all kids, not just mine) are being cheated by FCPS (which is skating by on the fact that many kids come from highly educated families and therefore they do pretty well on tests.)

Like another PP said, we don't want our administrators to be dishonest in how they are meeting standards. Do it right, or don't do it at all.

[Anonymous]

Dishonesty is exactly the problem in FCPS. Administrators are dishonest about how they meet VA State instructional hours and the types of instruction they are using.

Any number of instructional hours or teaching methodologies are fine for students with IQs over 120. High achieving students will succeed regardless of the quality of instruction they receive. Such students can achieve in spite of poor instruction. Unfortunately, average typical students are penalized when their hours of instruction are dishonestly reduced by counting transit time or by marginalizing students by using failed methodologies like the Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning.

If there was transparency in FCPS and parents knew how little instruction was taking place in their children's classes they'd be outraged!