Piney Branch Elementary—do you like it?

[Anonymous]

So glad to read that she’s moved on. I’d ruled out CES for my youngest child based on our experience with this teacher in 4th, but now I’ll consider it if she gets through the lottery.

[Anonymous]

No skin in this game but if the kids wrote a 10 chapter autobiography and wrote 2-3 pages per chapter AND this was spread out over the course of a couple of months it doesn’t seem unreasonable for an enriched/accelerated class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No skin in this game but if the kids wrote a 10 chapter autobiography and wrote 2-3 pages per chapter AND this was spread out over the course of a couple of months it doesn’t seem unreasonable for an enriched/accelerated class.

Can’t remember exact time frame (it’s been a while) but more like a couple of weeks (max of three) and in addition to multiple in-depth daily assignments and lengthy homework and book reports at the same time. It wasn’t about depth of learning but instead voluminous fast paced busy work that skimmed over interesting stuff in the interest of producing more reams of paper (and draining any joy of learning from the children).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No skin in this game but if the kids wrote a 10 chapter autobiography and wrote 2-3 pages per chapter AND this was spread out over the course of a couple of months it doesn’t seem unreasonable for an enriched/accelerated class.

It really wasn't but some people love to complain and feel victimized.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What do you mean by problem teachers in RLA? Is RLA reading/language arts?

I think PP means the 4th grade CES teacher who did her best to destroy any love of learning and joy for life in her students.

She was a demanding teacher that had high expectations of the students which isn't opular. However, my children learned a lot in her class .

High expectations in this case = excessive volume, quantity over quality

I know she didn't hand out A's like candy so a lot of parents were upset.

I know she expected 9 and 10 year olds to write 25-40 pages typewritten ten chapter + assignments (longer than anything they produce in high school) so a lot of parents were upset.

I know she expected kids to write ludicrously detailed and highly specific book reports every week but write them on a t-shirt they designed or on a dodecahedron they built or on a cereal box or some other ridiculous time consuming build at home design so a lot of parents were upset.

I could go on.

Is she still there?

No she was promoted and they're exaggerating. My kid did once write a 5 page paper for her but most were 1-2 pages.

I’m absolutely not exaggerating. 25-40 printed pages, for one ten chapter assignment, many were 10,000 words or more. Other assignments were often 5-10 pages. Virtually nothing was 1-2 pages and the volume was relentless. Fortunately she is no longer there because she destroyed kids.

I absolutely respect your child's decision to write a 25 to 40-page paper. That's really impressive for a 9 or 10-year-old. I had two of my kids go through that class too. Both only wrote 1-2 page papers since it was sufficient for the county's CES curriculum which is standardized. Once they may have gotten to 5, but that was their choice. They got by with straight A's.

My kid was at the lower end of that range (she “only” wrote about 25 pages!). Many others wrote much longer papers and it WAS required because the rubric detailed 10 chapters with specific requirements for each chapter that were impossible to meet without at least a few pages per chapter. There was no way to get around it without producing an excessively long assignment and the entire class to my knowledge did. And this assignment wasn’t even an outlier. I’m sure your kid produced the same but perhaps you’ve blocked it from your mind?! There were also fiction writing assignments that for some were close to rivaling this one in length, but those were at least somewhat due to the kids own motivation and desire to write novels, not the requirements of the assignment.

I remember the fiction writing assignment. My kid wrote 2 pages for that one. I remember helping them with it even.

Just for laughs, I found this in their google drive. It's all of 782 words and was one of their longer pieces. Also, they got an A+.

The point is just because your child choose to write 12345 pages it wasn't required and wouldn't have impacted their grade.

I even asked her about it at the time and she assured me quality mattered more than quantity.

I’m pretty sure the PP was talking about the autobiography and she’s correct. 10 very specific chapters and dozens of pages, topped with photos and illustrations. Agree that it wasn’t possible to complete in 3-4 pages.

There were also several fiction projects. Which one are you referring to? I don’t recall the fiction projects being comparable in length.

No she literally said "fiction" which is very different than an autobiography.

It's funny how people feel so strongly about the teacher. the 4th grade teacher is still one of my kid's favorite teachers ever. We thought the autobiography was a great assignment - and the year my kid was in it the teacher printed them out and spiral bound them as mementos. Also the Greek Myth assignment was favorite for my kid. Seriously - my kid loved her and still talks about how much the class was one of the most best classes ever.

Yes! Our kid pulled out the autobiography earlier this year and was reading through it. It was such a cool snapshot of life. Our kid is in 9th now, but still talks about that CES class.

How long was it?

I found my kids. I'd completely forgotten about this one. They managed to pull it off in 13 pages, but there's a lot of blank space for all the chapter headings and subheadings. A lot of these assignments were memorable and fun. It really helped DC grow a lot that year.

It was a tough class, but I also felt my kids grew so much that year. Mostly just grateful they had a teacher with high standards and expectations because it's so rare these days.

We felt the same. They were definitely some trying assignments but DC learned so much!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No skin in this game but if the kids wrote a 10 chapter autobiography and wrote 2-3 pages per chapter AND this was spread out over the course of a couple of months it doesn’t seem unreasonable for an enriched/accelerated class.

It really wasn't but some people love to complain and feel victimized.

Sounds like she found the thread!

[Anonymous]

I think the reason why there are such differences of opinion on the 4th grade teachers was because of the way the class was literally separated into two sections. One section was given a lot of As, easy grading and easy assignments. The other section was given hell.

I don't know why the parents with the kids in the easy class were treated so special, but someday I hope it becomes public knowledge. It was wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the reason why there are such differences of opinion on the 4th grade teachers was because of the way the class was literally separated into two sections. One section was given a lot of As, easy grading and easy assignments. The other section was given hell.

I don't know why the parents with the kids in the easy class were treated so special, but someday I hope it becomes public knowledge. It was wrong.

I don’t know about that but one of my issues with that teacher was her very obvious favoritism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the reason why there are such differences of opinion on the 4th grade teachers was because of the way the class was literally separated into two sections. One section was given a lot of As, easy grading and easy assignments. The other section was given hell.

I don't know why the parents with the kids in the easy class were treated so special, but someday I hope it becomes public knowledge. It was wrong.

Everyone got the same assignments for reading and writing. There were two groups of vocabulary words. If there was a difference, it wasn't significant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the reason why there are such differences of opinion on the 4th grade teachers was because of the way the class was literally separated into two sections. One section was given a lot of As, easy grading and easy assignments. The other section was given hell.

I don't know why the parents with the kids in the easy class were treated so special, but someday I hope it becomes public knowledge. It was wrong.

I don’t know about that but one of my issues with that teacher was her very obvious favoritism.

Never noticed that. I went to observe some group projects in class and felt she favored kids whose work was of higher quality at least when awarding prizes.

[Anonymous]

I agree it was a challenging class, but I also felt this helped my child grow tremendously that year. As an earlier poster said, many parents complain about the lack of rigor in MCPS but, when faced with it, aren't happy either. My only gripe about this class was completing five assignments over Thanksgiving. This was the first challenging class, and at age 9, I still had to be a little involved. This meant we spent most of our weekend doing work for this class. It was a little ridiculous, but aside from this, I felt the class was overall a positive experience.

[Anonymous]

The original poster asked about PBES overall and got a thread full of comments about one specific teacher. I have had two kids in PBES and both had really good experiences. TPES was warmer and more kid friendly, but our experience with the 504 team was much better at PBES. I don’t see PBES as a “weak link” at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The original poster asked about PBES overall and got a thread full of comments about one specific teacher. I have had two kids in PBES and both had really good experiences. TPES was warmer and more kid friendly, but our experience with the 504 team was much better at PBES. I don’t see PBES as a “weak link” at all.

Me too. I've only had one kid there but all 3 teachers they had were excellent. Maybe it's a dice roll, but I liked them better than their teachers at TPES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the reason why there are such differences of opinion on the 4th grade teachers was because of the way the class was literally separated into two sections. One section was given a lot of As, easy grading and easy assignments. The other section was given hell.

I don't know why the parents with the kids in the easy class were treated so special, but someday I hope it becomes public knowledge. It was wrong.

Everyone got the same assignments for reading and writing. There were two groups of vocabulary words. If there was a difference, it wasn't significant.

That's not true. Kids had different books for book reports, grading rubrics were the same but grading standards weren't, that type of thing. But if you were a parent of a kid who got special treatment, I'm sure you'd rave about the program as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the reason why there are such differences of opinion on the 4th grade teachers was because of the way the class was literally separated into two sections. One section was given a lot of As, easy grading and easy assignments. The other section was given hell.

I don't know why the parents with the kids in the easy class were treated so special, but someday I hope it becomes public knowledge. It was wrong.

Everyone got the same assignments for reading and writing. There were two groups of vocabulary words. If there was a difference, it wasn't significant.

That's not true. Kids had different books for book reports, grading rubrics were the same but grading standards weren't, that type of thing. But if you were a parent of a kid who got special treatment, I'm sure you'd rave about the program as well.

Given the several posts claiming their child “grew tremendously” in her class I suspect it’s a single person. When my child attended the parents banded together to complain as a group about that teacher.