St Marys versus St Louis
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Anonymous
| Ok. Do the parents of these 8th graders who didn’t get into their school of choice feel that it was because of the “terrible middle school” that their kid didn’t get in? |
Anonymous
Not a middle school parent but the rumor is that there are serious behavior issues in the upper grades. |
Anonymous
| I don't know about all MS grades, but at least one has a bad mean girl problem |
Anonymous
Bingo. They need to EXPEL the troublemakers. But perhaps their parents donate too much money? |
Anonymous
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And they need to figure out how to hire and retain some excellent, experienced teachers.
Controlling a middle school classroom isn't the easiest thing in the world, but there are many people out there who have experience doing it. |
Anonymous
It has been mentioned several times there was a lack of instruction and academic rigor in the middle school this year. The lack of mentoring of teachers was highlighted as well, which emphasizes a problem with instruction. |
Anonymous
| Controlling a middle school class is easy (in private school). Any troublemakers get sent to the principal. Let him deal with them (ideally, expel them). It’s not the teachers’ job to be a prison guard — especially in private school, where they’re already paid less than public school teachers. |
Anonymous
| Now I understand that the teachers are leaving for better pay at public if they’re going to be in uncontrolled classrooms anyway. And I assume the principal can’t discipline because the behavior issues stem from powerful parishioners and the pastor won’t permit the principal to discipline them? |
Anonymous
But people just said above that they’re not blaming the middle school for any disappointing high school admissions. |
Anonymous
*No one answered that question.* But are you suggesting high school placement should erase the lack of learning during this past school year? 
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Anonymous
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Teacher exodus (including some retiring) has been a problem at other Arlington diocese Catholic schools as well. And the departing teachers are replaced with less qualified teachers, usually former aides who are switching careers.... very nice people but don't necessarily have the skills to handle a rowdy/ disruptive classroom, multi-task, plan lessons, etc. But you can't expect more if the diocese is paying them about $40k/year I think.
At DC's former diocese school, several teachers left (not sure if quit or fired) mid-year. A few years ago, my DC's teacher left on medical leave and her classroom was taken over by random unqualified substitutes. Needless to say, DC fell behind in Math especially due to several months of learning loss. We were mainly satisfied with Catholic education until the teacher exodus. We put DC into public for middle school. Teachers are experienced and very qualified (but we have to deal with the other ills of public and lots of iPad lessons)! Also to add, DC had too much religious instruction during his last year at diocese school--half of Friday lessons were spent in Mass, discussing Mass afterwards, and singing practice. Kind of a waste of day considering the teachers were behind in ALL lesson plans. |
Anonymous
Has the school communicated plans to improve instruction and/or hiring? Catholic schools are in a difficult position. They can't pay as much as public or even independent schools like SSSAS. It would be interesting to see HSPT and/or MAP scores this year. That will give an indication if and how much of an impact there has been on student learning. |
Anonymous
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St Mary’s (and other Diocese schools) should publish their aggregate MAP and HSPT scores online. Of course they’ll never do that. I wonder why. Let the data speak for itself.
Zero accountability. Zero transparency. |
Anonymous
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They just gave all the teachers a raise. Pay is still lower than public, though.
I think the problem is that they aren't proactive enough about hiring. St. Mary's is a good school, and it's the biggest parochial school in Virginia. This is a great place to live. The parish is very healthy with lots of families and full pews. It's more appealing than a lot of other Catholic schools, tiny ones, ones in the boonies, ones in dangerous parts of dangerous cities, etc. It shouldn't be that hard to find some good teachers to teach here. I think 20 years ago, it was easier to hire good teachers without as much effort. Someone retired, you brought in someone new. But now that there's a teacher shortage, the diocese still hasn't adjusted. They are used to doing it with lower effort and they haven't yet ramped up the effort to meet the need. They aren't out there hustling for talent, recruiting experienced teachers from other areas, figuring out how to do more training and professional development, etc. Instead, they are repeatedly surprised by the turnover and underprepared for it. And they hustle to fill the empty spots at the last minute with unimpressive last-minute candidates. And then they kind of hope that person will just figure it out and get better over time without much training or mentoring. A lot of these departing teachers go teach at other Catholic schools. Why aren't we hiring IN to the diocese in the same way? There are some very accomplished retirees from business, government, education who might be interested in teaching for a few years. The school needs some older more experienced teachers. There are some devoted Catholics with great skills who would like to help the diocese meet this need. But the hiring teams haven't thought of this, haven't broadened their horizons, haven't asked the parishes. Retirees might not be a perfect or a permanent solution. But if they are scrambling to hire unimpressive 23 year olds who leave anyway, they should clearly be casting a broader net. What about stay-at-home moms who are ready to go back to work now that their kids are older. Moms like this returning to the workforce are a great asset, and can be a better bet than first-time workers. Why aren't we putting the word out? At a minimum, we should be signing up moms from the diocese as substitutes and aides. It's not enough to just put up a job listing. We need to go recruit! And by the way, public schools are getting worse all the time. The best students are leaving, behavioral problems run rampant, the schools are becoming hyper-political, the parents are mad, the wokeness is oppressive, etc. MOST public school teachers would be unsuitable for Catholic school--we wouldn't want them. But some Catholic public school teachers with great teaching skills and experience are looking for a way out. Why not offer it to them? Same with the expensive private schools. They are also becoming extremely woke, and some teachers don't like it. They have more behavioral problems, more double standards, more pressure from above to push wokeism, weird and inappropriate educational content being pushed, etc. And the rich entitled parents are more demanding and disrespectful of teachers than ever. We should get the word out that Catholic schools are like some of these privates used to be before they went woke. And speaking of rich parents, there are more and more college graduates coming out who don't need to take the highest paying job available. If we recruit wisely, we should be able to get some very smart people to come teach. Again, it's not enough for us to just put a listing on the website and on a the bulletin board for parochial schools. We should reach out to the career services office of every college around here and some major Catholic universities around the country. Just get on their radar. We're hiring smart people who want to teach. If the career services offices don't know about us, they can't recommend us to their graduating seniors or their alumni. And in the short term, if we have an acute need, we might be open to college grads who want to teach for a year or two before grad school. And what about the current parents? Some of these moms really want to help the school, really want to spend more time inside the school. There are a lot of type A moms spending a lot of time overthinking class parties and teacher gifts and spending way too many hours doing it. Why not redirect some of that energy into instruction? Get some of these experienced, motivated, organized parents involved in solving the teacher shortage. At least get some of them on the substitute teacher list. And finally, stop pretending hiring is not an issue. Neither administrations nor rectors nor the diocese want to publicly admit that they are struggling with this. But by playing coy and not admitting that they have a need, they are missing the chance to let great parents and parishioners and community members help them solve this problem. |
Anonymous
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Re: instruction, the school should have a meeting with this guy:
"The principal—along with master teachers—regularly shadows the other teachers in the classroom to give them coaching and feedback so that they may grow in the art of teaching. Peter Crawford, headmaster of St. Jerome Institute, an independent high school in Washington. DC, explains: The idea is to create a community of teachers who are all invested in growing and improving in the art of teaching. Regular observations and conversations about our classes help us to maintain that attitude of being lifelong students of the craft of teaching." |