Teachers does your admin lack an understanding of...
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Anonymous
I'm not in FCPS or LCPS, but my principal would basically say to keep the morning meeting on paper, but to include some intervention within the morning meeting "for more bang for your buck". So essentially--make it look like you're doing a morning meeting to meet SEL needs for when central office reviews the master schedule, but really provide more academic instruction/intervention so kids can score better on tests. |
Anonymous
I share in the PP’s frustration when it comes to trying to balance instructional time. For example, last year I had two classes. On paper (not accounting for any transitions) the master calendar provided 2 hours and 15 minutes with my morning class and 2 hours and 25 minutes with my afternoon class. The morning announcements and meeting accounted for 30 minutes of the morning which really left that class with 1 hour and 45 min for LA and Social Studies. That wasn’t nearly enough so we moved the switching of classes later which really just shorted the pm class. At CT meetings the instructional coach and reading specialist seemed to be concerned with us not keeping up with the pacing guide, but we can only do what we can in the time we have. We also hear that students are more than a test score, but then admin’s (school based and above) actions and expectations don’t always match their words. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
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In short, Responsive Classroom (RC) is an approach to the social curriculum that teaches kids to be independent and caring members of a learning community through structures such as morning meeting. When kids misbehave, there are logical consequences. Teachers use language that promote kids taking responsibility. Teachers spend a lot of time getting to know their kids and their developmental needs. There are no “prize boxes” or sticker charts or “red-yellow-green card charts” or similar extrinsic reward systems.
PBIS stands for Positive Behavior Intervention System. A school sets up a way for staff to recognize positive behavior. The goal is to recognize 4 positive behaviors for every 1 negative behavior. The recognition might be a ticket or “school bucks.” It’s an extrinsic reward system. And there’s a system for recording misbehavior so that staff can look at the data frequently to make adjustments for the problem areas. At my Title 1 school, we are fully implementing RC. AND we have a system for documenting “big deal” misbehavior. Kids are not sent to the office (unless it was something huge like a fight, which has not happened to my knowledge), but instead our admin works closely with teachers to come up with appropriate consequences. It works pretty well and i feel very supported by my admin when there are behavior issues. I’ve been in a school that does PBIS with all the tickets and will never go back. Kids turn into “barking seals.” They do something positive for someone and then expect a reward ticket. With RC, we teach kids that we do positive things because we’re part of a community. |
Anonymous
Exactly. I’ve seen kids spill something on the floor on purpose when they think no one is looking and then want a ticket for cleaning it up. I wish our school would move away from PBIS. It doesn’t truly change behavior and the perception from most kids is that the ones who usually aren’t making good choices get rewarded more often than the ones who regularly make good choices. |
Anonymous
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I teach in LCPS and often if you give a kid or the whole class any kind of complement they will say “Do I/we get a (school-mascot-themed token, which goes toward a bigger reward).
RC is so much better! |
Anonymous
| To the principal PP: why do you think there is a drastic uptick in mental health needs? Is it changes in the student demographic or a change happening to the usual cohort? Thanks |
Anonymous
Anxiety is huge, especially in high performing middle & upper middle class schools. I have colleagues whose elementary students perseverate over a test question for an hour. It’s not a shock. Just come here to DCUM: there’s an entire forum dedicated to AAP where parents can come to perseverate themselves on test scores and GBRS and work samples. All of this just trickles down. In my Title 1 school, I see more kids struggling because they have parents who have their own untreated mental health issues. Add in poverty, lack of access to health care, and you have a huge mess. |
Anonymous
In my experience as a teacher, a lot of the anxiety and pressure that these kids are dealing with that leads to these mental health issues is because of the parents. It is really not hard to see when you read the school boards here. Parents are intense, never satisfied, always pushing. They don't value letting their kids try and fail so they can learn that not being perfect is okay. They storm in and want to control everything so the kids don't have resilience. They act like Radford is worse than a death sentence so the kids kill themselves to go somewhere better because god forbid they just settle for JMU and have a fun college experience. If a teacher has fun with kids and tries to build rapport to at least give them one safe, low pressure environment, the parents freak out about the teacher being "inappropriate" or "not a master teacher." |
Anonymous
First of all there is nothing wrong with Radford and yesterday some idiot FCPS teacher was desparging George Mason which has Nobel Prize winners on their faculty. The reason FCPS students are under so much pressure is because they are required to educate themselves. Every parent in Fairfax will tell you their children had to educate themselves and the pressure on their children is psychologically devastating. Parents and students in Fairfax universally testify that classroom instruction is bordering on non-existent. If a kid can't master blackboard which is usually not up-to-date and if they are not excellent self-starters and self-educator they are dead. Fairfax has educated families and a number of students who are self-started, but for average kids they are learning nothing in Fairfax high schools. They maybe hiding it from their parents, the other kids and probably to themselves as well, tens of thousand of our children are dying inside and the principals are too lazy and too self-consumed to see it and to rescue these children. The reason you need master expert teachers is to make every class interesting. Academics and learning are both fun, but it must be made relevant, fun and applicable. The practice of teachers not being experts and only being one ahead of their students must end. In FCPS thousands of students are intectually dying in their classroom and their principals don't give a damn. FCPS teachers go into their classrooms and fake it everyday of the week and if a parent complains you spread the word in the teachers lounge and from that point on that kid will never get a grade higher than a "C". If the teacher can't report misbehavior, humiliate or put a target on the kids back they'll destroy their GPA. It's mind boggling how many incompetent mean girls and jocks paying job which primarily entail spending the majority of their teaching careers hanging out in the teachers lounge. |
Anonymous
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I taught long before Responsive Classroom or PBIS.
It sounds to me, that like everything else these days, we are trying to put accountability on caring. Well, here is a secret: you cannot schedule caring. You cannot teach caring--you must develop it and it does not come from one morning meeting. Everything has to be scheduled and structured in these program.s That is not the way kids work. For example, by devoting 30 minutes to Morning Meeting, you are putting stress on getting academics done the rest of the day. And, schools are judged on test scores. You are taking flexibility away from a classroom teacher. I can remember many occasions when something would come up during the day--maybe, even during math--that needed to be addressed. Sometimes, I might have even thrown my lesson plan out to adjust to a social need in the classroom. I knew I would be able to use a different time later to get the math lesson taught. But, by requiring teachers to use that time for that specific need, you are removing any opportunity to exercise their own judgment. And, of course, I always started the day off by talking with the kids. If someone came in upset, of course, I made an effort to find the problem. And, I might have given the class an assignment and taken the kid apart to talk with him. Or, asked him to help me with something (nothing helps a kid as much as feeling useful). I also had the flexibility on a beautiful day in a cold winter, to spend a little extra time outside. Or, to take a little nature walk around the perimeter of the playground. I don't think teachers today--or their students--get that opportunity. You cannot mandate caring. And, I cannot imagine counting 4:1 on positive to negative. Any one with any sense knows you should give more praise. |
Anonymous
What is your obsession with the teachers’ lounge? You’ve brought it up on at least six other posts. Most teachers don’t even use the lounges. They eat lunch in their classrooms to help kids or catch up on paperwork. I only go in the lounge to fill my tumbler with filtered water. The people I see in there each time are other lead-free water seekers or subs. Your fantasies about the teachers’ lounge seem fueled by bad late 20th teen movies. |
Anonymous
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Two of my friends with 15 years in left for other profits - a non-profit and real estate. One is married (non-profit); the other is single.
I'm looking forward to retiring, too, as I have 25 years in. There is life outside of teaching, I hear! And trust me when I say it's not getting any better until teachers take back the profession. |
Anonymous
Thank you for sharing this valuable insight and experience with RC and PBIS. I'm new to the K-12 system in the United States and have been overwhelmed with the insane, and unrealistic expectations of teachers and students in constraining, punitive learning environments. PBIS is the preferred method at my school, though I plan to incorporate elements of RC as it more closely aligns with my teaching, learning, and management philosophy.
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Anonymous
| The hardest part is that some of the admins barely had any classroom experience and were hired as administrators when they were still in their 20s. They are trying to put into practice theory from graduate classes. New perspective is always good but they do not value those of us that have been in classrooms for 20+ years. We are told we don’t like change. We are willing to change but they are not willing to listen to our experiences. We have seen the pendulum swing so many times. |