Reply to Why do one teacher have to teach four courses in elementary school?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]ELA, Math, science and Social study, that's a lot, isn't it?[/quote]

It's pretty standard. Or sometimes they have one teacher do math and science and another do ELA and social studies.[/quote]

Yes, departmentalizing makes planning and prepping easier. With the new ELA curriculum it will be much harder for grade levels to departmentalize because each ELA block needs to be 2 hours uninterrupted, and while it’s easy to make that happen once per day, it’s not easy to make that time block happen twice per day in any given grade level. There are pros and cons to departmentalizing, but as a teacher I’ve seen more pros than cons. [/quote]

Of course you do. Departmentalizing IS the most teacher friendly. But it isn’t the most student-friendly, at least for the kid that struggles the most with building connections and trust. Who’s tracking any issues that the kid is having across the day? Who is building that positive relationship with the family? And  you really think it’s developmentally appropriate for 7 year olds to be switching classes all day for academic subjects?

From a curriculum standpoint, it’s difficult to do any type of cross curricular project based learning.

I’ve been a public school educator for almost 30 years. I’ve mostly taught the upper elementary grades. I’ve done both departmentalized and self-contained classrooms. While departmentalized was easier on me, there was no real classroom community. I hated how some kids fell through the cracks. [/quote]

The research actually supports what this teacher with longevity is saying. I'm an educator too and also think relationships take priority and something gets lost and kids fall through the cracks when there's too much departmentalization. It barely works for sixth grade middle school students, let alone a 7-year-old.[/quote]

Another long time teacher (25+ years) who has taught in both departmentalized and self-contained settings.  I agree, departmentalizing was MUCH easier on me, but often not better for my students.  There are some benefits to focusing on and teaching only one or two subjects, you are able to focus more on that topic and plan more in depth lessons.  However, you may have half the content to "learn", but you have double the students to learn.  The content stays the same year to year, but the students change.  What works for one group may or may not work for another group, so you end up changing anyway.    With double the students, there are double the IEP meetings, double the parents and so forth.

The biggest reason I don't  like a departmentalized schedule though is the lack of flexibility and the amount of wasted time in a school day.  Time is lost due to transitions and we are tied to the clock.  Lessons were frequently rushed so that we could switch classes.  There is no spending that 5 extra minutes on a math problem to be sure everyone gets it, if it's time to change classes, you have to go, even if you haven't finished the lesson.  When I was self-contained, some days math was 5-10 minutes longer, other days reading or science were 5-10 minutes longer.  I had the flexibility to tweak my daily schedule based on my students' needs and what I was teaching.   It was also much easier to have lessons with true integration.  Students loved the integrated concepts and projects.  It's still possible to do them in a departmentalized setting, but much more difficult.  I find when working on a team that departmentalizes there needs to be more time spent meeting and collaborating, but often my teammates are less interested in doing so.  Everyone wants to do their own thing. 
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