Reply to I have a freshman at Poolesville smacs program AMA

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How much does a kid have to love math to tolerate having a longer school day than everyone else?[/quote]

The Long day is brutal, you have to REALLY love math. Kids wake up at 5:30-6 am to take a 6:45 bus and many don’t get home until 5-5:30 pm. It’s ridiculous that the hardest program at Poolesville is the one with the longest day. Many kids don’t go to bed until like 1 a.m. almost everyday, not just several times a quarter before a big test/project. It’s almost everyday on very little sleep.[/quote]

DP. The lack of sleep is true. I didn’t understand why then , but now I realize it’s Bc in many classes the kids have to teach themselves material and learn on their own Bc the teachers are really lacking in that teaching department. [/quote]

Really? The teachers aren’t good? Everyone I know really likes it. I don’t have a Poolesville  kid, but i do have a couple that went to Blair’s SMAC and their teachers are fantastic. I’d be surprised if Poolesville’s aren’t also good. [/quote]

I can’t speak about Blair’s smac prgm. But Poolesville teachers have a reputation of being good teachers not Bc they teach the subject matter well, but bc the kids study like hell and sleep late in the night to study and others cheat on tests, and all of them get good grades and so teachers are given credit for that. But many of these smacs kids will be successful wherever they go.[/quote]
NP here. I’ve had two kids go to PV in Global and SMCS and can confirm that the teachers aren’t particularly amazing. They are just like any HS - a mix of mostly good teachers with a couple of amazing ones and a few disorganized ineffective ones. Kids do well because they work together to problem solve and are just enthusiastic about learning. The virtual year really exposed how poor at instruction some of the magnet teachers actually are. They just gave out complex worksheets, tossed kids into zoom breakout rooms for 40 minutes, and hoped something constructive happened. During the initial shutdown, the math teacher just posted a link to the Openstax textbook, said here are a bunch of worksheets and the two unit tests, good luck. Didn’t even attempt to provide instruction or guidance. No slides, no videos, no pacing. It was ridiculous.

Other families in my neighborhood have had similar experiences with poor teaching over the years. The cohort of kids is great, but a 45 minute commute, long days, and difficulty accessing friends and activities outside school hours, makes PV a poor choice IMO compared to the local HS AP/IB program.[/quote]

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