Reply to Is FCPS "cheating" my kids out of the minimum instruction required by the state?

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Reply to "Is FCPS "cheating" my kids out of the minimum instruction required by the state?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Fairfax County residents should be more concerned with the lack of instruction taking place throughout the school day in FCPS classrooms than twenty minutes lost in transit.

FCPS uses Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies where actual teacher instruction has been removed from the classroom. Students are given assignments and a final assessment due date. They are then left to work alone or to work in groups to teach themselves the required content and skills.

This works well if your children are very smart, popular, socially-adept, self-starters who easily share and copy the work of other students.  If this is your family situation then these teaching models are perfect for your children.

However, if your children need and want genuine and authentic student/teacher/mentor relationships with their classroom teachers you will be sorely disappointed with the instruction they will receive from their FCPS teachers.

When your children return home from school and they begin their homework, please ask them what did their teachers teach or explain to them about the subject matter they are working on. You'll usually find the teacher gave the assignment without first teaching anything whatsoever about the material.

My children want to know and like their teachers. They want to learn from their teachers. They want to communicate with their teachers. They want to bounce their ideas off their teachers and during the learning process, they want their gradual lesson mastery validated by their teachers, but this is no longer available in the FCPS schools.  Schools which have adopted Flipped Classroom and Project Based Learning teaching methodologies have eliminated regular classroom student/teacher communications.

It's pretty sad. Their teachers have become distant, detached, and disengaged. It's strange, it's as if their teachers are no longer present in their classrooms. Teachers claim they are present to answer questions, but what they don't realize is by failing actively teach their students they have gradually lost their abilities to communicate with them at all.

Because teachers are not driving the dialog, they find themselves unable to answer essentially basic questions when they are asked. Eventually, they begin to act as if students' questions are troublesome and annoying.

It's sad for the students and the teachers can't feel good about it either. [/quote]

Maybe that's why so many people think the missing 40+ hours is no big deal?  -- b/c the kids aren't really get a lot out of school anyway -- I hate to think that way b/c I know teaching can be a tough job.  But, I have to wonder why a week and a half of school is so disposable?  Maybe we really should be putting more in the curriculum? [/quote]

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