Your Relationship with the Teacher

[Anonymous]

As an afterschooler (meaning I homeschool my child outside of school hours), I am trying to figure out the best way to coordinate with my child's new teacher on my daughter's education. It is most important to me that she learns logic and critical thinking skills, her own cultural history, and explore her own interest in natural science and astronomy (which she loves), all of which are things that are not taught in the public school curriculum. I also want her to practice writing (true writing), research and science (I am a scientist myself). But I foresee homework being a big problem, and I also don't want to overlap with the work I will be giving her along with the teacher.

I should also say that she is not attending a good school, its test scores are very low, the teachers are not the best, there is a high percentage of FARMS students, etc. and I feel compelled to fill in those gaps and ensure she doesn't get "left behind." We cannot afford to move into a better district or better school zone right now. And homeschooling completely is also not an option.

Have any of you approached the teacher with your afterschooling plans, and have they worked with you in coordinating your curriculum, activities, schedule etc.? I want to ask for the teacher's curriculum plans and schedule for the year (this is not posted on our county education website like other counties), but last year I got a lot of pushback from the teacher, who seemed to be almost secretive about it and annoyed. (I think she felt I did not trust her and seemed insulted). So I generally just taught her different things based on the homework she got, and had to do a lot of prodding to get info from the teacher each month on what they were learning about.

What is your relationship with your child's teacher when you are educating your child at home? I don't want to step on any toes, but then again, I don't want to play around with my daughter's education either because of hurt feelings.

[Anonymous]

Eliminate all thought of coordinating with the teacher. They won't understand, and above all, they are not experts, YOU are. Elementary school teachers are kind and nurturing, but they're often not the brightest or the most academic-minded people.

No coordination is needed anyway! Elementary school is the only time that homework does not count towards grades, and elementary school grades are not important unless you are preparing your child for a magnet test in 3rd grade or 5th grade. Look it up on the MCPS website, this might be of interest to you if you're in a crappy cluster. There are workbooks on Amazon to help prepare your child for the modified Cogat test MCPS gives (there's also a Raven's advanced matrices added in 5th grade). If your child works on math and reading at home, there is no reason they won't have MAP scores that are several grades above grade level every year, as well as straight As.

So you can ignore the homework if you wish, teachers will rarely complain that it's not finished.

I "afterschooled" (great term, by the way!) my first child because he was GT/LD - gifted, talented and learning disabled, and our otherwise excellent elementary could not really cater to all his needs. I just created my own academic curriculum, as well as occupational and physical therapy activities after school and on weekends. My children also go to their native language school on weekends and have quality music lessons.

[Anonymous]

What school system doesn't provide the standards publicly available for parents on their website?

It is inappropriate and way overstepping to ask the teacher for a detailed schedule of what she is doing when so you can "afterschool" your child.

[Anonymous]

I'm 13:16.

I wrote as if you were in MCPS. They have curriculum standards on their website, with examples.

You don't need to know in detail what the teacher is doing, OP, because you want your child functioning at a much higher level anyway. You can start doing all 4 operations, and look at various workbooks to see what kind of progression there is. I recommend Beast Academy books for math, and reading and writing books from The Critical Thinking Company's website.

[Anonymous]

So basically you want the teacher to provide the framework for what you’re choosing to do with your child after school?

Are you in MCPS? There have been detailed guides/newsletters to inform parents of what their child is working on each marking period.

As for your assertion that the teachers at your school “are not the best”, you seem misguided and judgmental. I wouldn’t want to do your job for you either with that condescending attitude.

[Anonymous]

Hire a tutor, OP. You essentially want the teacher to do the prep work for you to tutor your kid after school. That’s not the teacher’s job. Imagine if parents of all 20 something kids in the class had that expectation.

[Anonymous]

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/2.0/parent-newsletters.aspx

[Anonymous]

This isn't their job, OP. Do what you do at home but please leave the teacher out of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Eliminate all thought of coordinating with the teacher. They won't understand, and above all, they are not experts, YOU are. Elementary school teachers are kind and nurturing, but they're often not the brightest or the most academic-minded people.

No coordination is needed anyway! Elementary school is the only time that homework does not count towards grades, and elementary school grades are not important unless you are preparing your child for a magnet test in 3rd grade or 5th grade. Look it up on the MCPS website, this might be of interest to you if you're in a crappy cluster. There are workbooks on Amazon to help prepare your child for the modified Cogat test MCPS gives (there's also a Raven's advanced matrices added in 5th grade). If your child works on math and reading at home, there is no reason they won't have MAP scores that are several grades above grade level every year, as well as straight As.

So you can ignore the homework if you wish, teachers will rarely complain that it's not finished.

I "afterschooled" (great term, by the way!) my first child because he was GT/LD - gifted, talented and learning disabled, and our otherwise excellent elementary could not really cater to all his needs. I just created my own academic curriculum, as well as occupational and physical therapy activities after school and on weekends. My children also go to their native language school on weekends and have quality music lessons.

Wow. You're terrible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hire a tutor, OP. You essentially want the teacher to do the prep work for you to tutor your kid after school. That’s not the teacher’s job. Imagine if parents of all 20 something kids in the class had that expectation.

OP here:

I think you've misunderstood my post. I am not asking the teacher to do anything more to show me what she is teaching the kids throughout the year. That could be a monthly or quarterly calendar showing the themes she is teaching each month or 2-weeks or whatever across subjects. That's really it. My daughter's 1st kindergarten teacher sent me exactly that the summer before her school year started and that was it. It was one Excel spreadsheet about two pages long. I was able to coordinate different things I wanted her to learn during the best weeks to reinforce what she was already learning or fill in gaps. But that was a charter school, and since then, the two other teachers she's had (in public school) has been much more evasive.

I would be doing the prep work after that, as I have always done. Its just harder to do when you are teaching something the teacher has already covered 3 months ago, or something the teacher is waaay behind in teaching, etc.

To others, I am not talking about standards (those are already listed online, plus they don't tell you when or if the teacher actually plans to teach around them--teachers have latitude in that regard). Montgomery and Howard counties do great jobs at providing the schedule and topics they are learning about throughout the year, other counties do not have that.

[Anonymous]

OP, please feel free to make as many of these insane posts as possible. I think it helps for others to see the inappropriate and bizarre demands that some MCPS parents make of teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Eliminate all thought of coordinating with the teacher. They won't understand, and above all, they are not experts, YOU are. Elementary school teachers are kind and nurturing, but they're often not the brightest or the most academic-minded people.

No coordination is needed anyway! Elementary school is the only time that homework does not count towards grades, and elementary school grades are not important unless you are preparing your child for a magnet test in 3rd grade or 5th grade. Look it up on the MCPS website, this might be of interest to you if you're in a crappy cluster. There are workbooks on Amazon to help prepare your child for the modified Cogat test MCPS gives (there's also a Raven's advanced matrices added in 5th grade). If your child works on math and reading at home, there is no reason they won't have MAP scores that are several grades above grade level every year, as well as straight As.

So you can ignore the homework if you wish, teachers will rarely complain that it's not finished.

I "afterschooled" (great term, by the way!) my first child because he was GT/LD - gifted, talented and learning disabled, and our otherwise excellent elementary could not really cater to all his needs. I just created my own academic curriculum, as well as occupational and physical therapy activities after school and on weekends. My children also go to their native language school on weekends and have quality music lessons.

Wow. You're terrible.

PP you replied to. I agree I made a generalization (after 8 years of dealing with elementary school teachers) and that a few are wonderful. However none of them will take kindly to what OP wants to do, and who can blame them? They're working hard, and OP is basically telling them that it's insufficient.

So my advice is to not involve the school or teachers at all. Some of us have had to supplement/enrich/afterschool our children for various reasons, and we've just done it ourselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm 13:16.

I wrote as if you were in MCPS. They have curriculum standards on their website, with examples.

You don't need to know in detail what the teacher is doing, OP, because you want your child functioning at a much higher level anyway. You can start doing all 4 operations, and look at various workbooks to see what kind of progression there is. I recommend Beast Academy books for math, and reading and writing books from The Critical Thinking Company's website.

OP here:

I AM NOT IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY.

But I am confused as to why you expect MCPS to provide quarterly standards and schedules on their website, but are shocked that I would like that same information at my school. The teacher has this information, even if the county does not provide it online. Also, yes, MD has its standards posted online, but that doesn't tell me when and in what progression the teacher has chosen to teach these standards. Teachers have wide latitude in that department.

I simply want to coordinate my scheduling with theirs. That is all.

Why is this a problem that a parent would like to know what a teacher is going to teach their child for the year? I would love for an actual elementary school teacher to reply with why sending a 1-2 page calendar/list/schedule for the year (presumably they already have this planned out) would be difficult or inappropriate, especially given the state of public schools and the obvious need for parental involvement and supplementation.

I have a PhD and I have taught on the college level, so I know what goes into planning a curriculum and you must have a schedule and progression. We were required to give each student a syllabus, a road map of sorts for what is going to go on in the course, what they are going to learn and when. I shouldn't have to wait until after the fact to find out what is working and what is not throughout the year, especially when our time is limited and will have to compete with assigned homework. Again, this school has a very low ranking (in the 500s) and so the students are obviously not doing the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Eliminate all thought of coordinating with the teacher. They won't understand, and above all, they are not experts, YOU are. Elementary school teachers are kind and nurturing, but they're often not the brightest or the most academic-minded people.

No coordination is needed anyway! Elementary school is the only time that homework does not count towards grades, and elementary school grades are not important unless you are preparing your child for a magnet test in 3rd grade or 5th grade. Look it up on the MCPS website, this might be of interest to you if you're in a crappy cluster. There are workbooks on Amazon to help prepare your child for the modified Cogat test MCPS gives (there's also a Raven's advanced matrices added in 5th grade). If your child works on math and reading at home, there is no reason they won't have MAP scores that are several grades above grade level every year, as well as straight As.

So you can ignore the homework if you wish, teachers will rarely complain that it's not finished.

I "afterschooled" (great term, by the way!) my first child because he was GT/LD - gifted, talented and learning disabled, and our otherwise excellent elementary could not really cater to all his needs. I just created my own academic curriculum, as well as occupational and physical therapy activities after school and on weekends. My children also go to their native language school on weekends and have quality music lessons.

OP here:

The bolded I did not realize. And thanks for the suggestions. I have generally just created my own schedule for the year based on the Howard county curriculum, which they do a great job of posting each standard and when during the quarter they will be visiting each topic. But last year it got a little overwhelming for my daughter because she felt like she was having "double school." For instance the teacher had a much different progression for teaching phonics patterns than I did, so she was repeating a lot of things either with me or the teacher. I know that if the teacher and I were better coordinated (meaning I plan my supplementation around the teacher's schedule), she would have less stress and extra work to do, and I can skip over certain things that I knew the teacher was teaching and she had a handle on and focus on the gaps/tough areas for her.

Kindergarten year at her first school she and one other girl was literally segregated from the rest of the class because they were advanced, and it was great that the teacher worked with me to make sure she was not bored. I even volunteered in her classroom a few times and the teacher was very appreciative of my involvement with them (making sure they were learning on their level), not annoyed by it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm 13:16.

I wrote as if you were in MCPS. They have curriculum standards on their website, with examples.

You don't need to know in detail what the teacher is doing, OP, because you want your child functioning at a much higher level anyway. You can start doing all 4 operations, and look at various workbooks to see what kind of progression there is. I recommend Beast Academy books for math, and reading and writing books from The Critical Thinking Company's website.

OP here:

I AM NOT IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY.

But I am confused as to why you expect MCPS to provide quarterly standards and schedules on their website, but are shocked that I would like that same information at my school. The teacher has this information, even if the county does not provide it online. Also, yes, MD has its standards posted online, but that doesn't tell me when and in what progression the teacher has chosen to teach these standards. Teachers have wide latitude in that department.

I simply want to coordinate my scheduling with theirs. That is all.

Why is this a problem that a parent would like to know what a teacher is going to teach their child for the year? I would love for an actual elementary school teacher to reply with why sending a 1-2 page calendar/list/schedule for the year (presumably they already have this planned out) would be difficult or inappropriate, especially given the state of public schools and the obvious need for parental involvement and supplementation.

I have a PhD and I have taught on the college level, so I know what goes into planning a curriculum and you must have a schedule and progression. We were required to give each student a syllabus, a road map of sorts for what is going to go on in the course, what they are going to learn and when. I shouldn't have to wait until after the fact to find out what is working and what is not throughout the year, especially when our time is limited and will have to compete with assigned homework. Again, this school has a very low ranking (in the 500s) and so the students are obviously not doing the best.

PP you replied to.

The problem is not you, it's:

1. The school system that is not organized in the way you expect. Same grade teachers get together to plan weekly, they don't have their stuff planned out for the year. Remember these are little kids we're talking about, their learning speed is not predictable, plus there may be snow days, special events at school, drills, etc, that derail the curriculum, so teachers adjust every week. The teacher cannot give you specifics at the beginning of the year, and if you taught little kids, you'd know that.

2. The teachers. When you explain that you want your child to learn more/better, what they hear is that they aren't good enough. How do you think that makes them feel? They're not going to fall over themselves to help you.

3. Plus, as I tried to explain, you don't need the teacher's input because you should expect your child to be well beyond what they're teaching. You can do it all by your little PhD self! Sometimes these pesky diplomas get int the way of your critical thinking, don't they?

Since you're so rigid about this, you can request information from the Principal on what each grade is going to learn, so you "support" your child. Hopefully they will point you to a resource site. But please don't tell them you're afterschooling. That's not going to be appreciated.