Reply to Any programming or teaching differences at the Upper NW Elementary Schools?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a DCPS teacher who has taught in schools in 4 different wards, including Murch, I can tell you that there is really no programmatic difference in any DCPS elementary school.

Other than the extracurriculars, which are extra, the curriculum is virtually the same in every school. It's pretty anemic.  As a teacher, I try to enrich the curriculum as much as I can, by teaching more history, geography, literature, art, and science. But I'm limited by the mandates handed down by the central office and strictly enforced by my building leadership.  Perhaps there are some building leaders who give their teachers more freedom to teach a more enriched curriculum.

But I've also noticed that most DCPS parents really aren't that interested in curriculum.  They are obsessed with test scores, student demographics, sports, foreign language and feeding into Deal.[/quote]

As a parent who has had children in a charter, a highly regarded EOTP school and a JKLMM I can tell you that you are completely wrong. None of them used the same curriculum. We found that in both DCPS schools the leadership allowed teachers the freedom to explore ways to teach the topics. There were no heavy mandates in either one. There is a bit of a change this year with Common Core but nothing drastic coming down from central office.

I am surprised by your observation of parents too. Feeding to Deal was important to us (and why we moved) but at our current school I haven't heard parents talking about test scores or sports. What grades did you teach? It seems weird aster spending time with multiple kids in three different settings to have a completely different experience. [/quote]

Grades 3-6.  Could you elaborate on the differences in the curricula at the DCPS schools?[/quote]

I can only speak about grades 3 and 4. Those were the grades where we overlapped at differs schools. None of them used the same math curriculum. In face we had one 4th grade teacher who was allowed to put together he own math curriculum since she didn't feel her students would benefit from the just one curriculum. Even within the same school it has been interesting to see how different teachers implement the subjects. We have one 4th grade teacher that is really into reading and writing, doesn't really use the textbook. Her instruction is completely different from another teacher we had previously who used the textbook and emphasized reading over writing. I think the biggest thing I notice is that a teacher who feels tied to using the curriculum is not the strongest teacher. I mentioned to one teacher that I noticed the textbooks hadn't moved from the shelf in months. He replied with: I don't use them with the kids. I look at teacher's version but there are so many things I can do which are better than the textbooks. That child is now at Deal and doing really well. [/quote]

Oh good.  But I wasn't really talking about resources (textbooks). I was referring to the actual content of the DCPS elementary school program.  It's mostly skills and very little content.  And the sequence of the content makes no sense.  But that just my humble opinion.[/quote]

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