Reply to Half-days on Wednesdays!?

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Reply to "Half-days on Wednesdays!?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't understand the knee jerk rejection of it. Why would you "organize against" this without learning what it is and how it will impact you directly?

I also don't understand the obsession with "hours of instruction". If this year has taught me anything, it is that hours of instruction is a poor proxy for learning, and that kids need a lot more variety in their schedules in order to learn (including breaks and independent study time and opportunities to talk to their classmates in an unstructured way). I feel like a half-day on Wednesdays would be a great opportunity to not only provide teachers with professional development time (which they need and deserve -- who doesn't want their kids' teachers to be growing and improving?), but could also really benefit kids, especially those who need acceleration. But I could also foresee this being an opportunity for non-academic interest groups, literacy tutoring with volunteers, and other enrichment activities. Or just a break from academics to play and be active in aftercare.

Why is everyone automatically assuming this is bad? I don't get it.[/quote]

I agree with a lot of this. I’d be curious to know what the “acceleration” programming looks like—lots of parents have complained here that their kids are falling behind, and this could be an opportunity for them to catch up, with specialized attention and instruction. I’m not wild about the idea but I’m willing to hear more. I know my teacher friends are not going to be happy about more PD.[/quote]

Stop being naive. Who do you think is going to provide this specialized attention and instruction?  If DCPS wants to remedy learning loss they need to be increasing instructional time across the board, not decreasing it. [/quote]

Relax lady. Some of us have kids who haven’t suffered any learning loss this year. 
What I’m REALLY excited for is to see if the WTU and anti-WTU parents form some kind of alliance to defeat this idea. Strange bedfellows![/quote]

Ok so why are you posting here? Do you realize that by "acceleration" they mean "remediation"? They don't mean extra resources for your "advanced" child. Your kid will be going home, or to some kind of aftercare at noon. And yeah, would be nice to see a little more awareness that most/many kids suffered serious disruption and the idea of Wednesday's off is a kind of brutally tone-deaf thing for DCPS to be floating right now. Especially I'm sure for the families that were unable to get in-person seats for their kids.  [/quote]

If a child suffered from learning loss this year, wouldn’t they be one of the students who’d stay on Wednesdays for remediation and additional instruction? Isn’t that what parents want? [/quote]

No - what kids need is actual instruction by actual teachers, not whatever "acceleration" with "outside partners" they are cooking up.  And no, I don't think most parents want additional reduction in instructional time. The idea that the baseline for school has changed to "be happy with whatever you get" is very disheartening. [/quote]

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