Reply to No Textbooks in Elementary School; All of FCPS, or Just Schools Near Me?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's weird that people think the lack of textbooks says something about the curriculum in FCPS.  I taught there.  It wasn't like, hey we have no books, teach what you want.  It was more like, hey, teach the full SOLs for 4th grade social studies and don't forget all the FCPS POS points, and oh, by the way, we don't have any textbooks or resources for you so you'll have to find all the information online at the VDOE website and then make all your own handouts.  [/quote]

Most teams have a planned year long curriculum already with units and materials and specific lessons they do. They should share it all with the new teachers when they arrive but they often don’t. Some don’t like to share since they had to create it themselves first and put in the work and time. They feel it is too easy then for the newbie. They want the newbies to pull their weight. The poor new teachers are often left on their own inventing the wheel even though there is an established team.[/quote]

Yeah I taught in VA and it kind of killed my desire to ever teach full time again. I came from a state where I worked as a para, sub, and student teacher in schools where teachers were provided with curriculum for every subject. They had pacing guides but also teacher edition books to go with the guide. Students had textbooks and workbooks. I constantly had VA admin questioning why I wanted to teach if I liked having a set curriculum to follow or if I believed in practices they considered inappropriate like spelling tests, dictation, or reading aloud as a class. I’m sure they didn’t mean to make me feel awful and I think they were probably just trained to believe those things are outdated, despite many schools still using those resources and methods.

I’m currently subbing between corporate jobs and the school district I’m in does Friday spelling tests and dictation, and they have textbooks and workbooks. They do supplement with TPT and Super Teacher Worksheets, but they are allowed to and aren’t expected to spend hours after school creating and copying resources for their students. It seems like they have a better work life balance. I still don’t think I’d ever the to teach full time again though. Observations gave me awful anxiety. I felt like I was always being ripped apart for not doing things the way they wanted them done in VA but I hadn’t seen things done that way before, even while working as a para in veteran teacher classrooms outside VA.

I think collaborative learning can be great, but sometimes students working quietly as a class or independently isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When you make everything a game they seem to start to find those activities to be boring rather than engaging. A lot of kids can’t focus when everything is collaborative or a game bc many kids become very distracting during such activities. Not every student can handle everything being a collaborative activity or a game.

But I’m sure a lot of people think I sound awful and outdated anyway and are glad I’m not teaching. I’m only subbing and following the directions left to me and they often involve things like reading a story from class anthologies and then answering comprehension questions. I remember doing that stuff as a kid and I can’t say it ever hurt me to be expected to stay in my seat and work independently. Centers can be great, but I don’t think the whole school day should be moving from center to center. You know not every student stays on task and the teacher cannot devote every second to keeping those few kids on tasks when they are only one person and are expected to meet 1:1 or in small groups during centers.

I’m not sure why older teachers would want to help new ones burn out, but I’ve seen it. When new teachers are provided with a curriculum and resources to follow it helps a lot with work life balance. There is still planning and supplementing to do, but nowhere near as much as when a teacher is just given a pacing guide and then needs to create their own lessons and resources for everything on that guide. It’s strange to me that some people prefer that, but to each their own. [/quote]

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