Reply to Amplify Science is terrible...

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Amplify Science is terrible..."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree that Amplify has lots of issues.

However, my hot take is that DCPS providing a full science curriculum with units mapped out, resources ready etc is actually extremely valuable to science in DCPS as a whole. It’s a big improvement from years ago when there was essentially nothing for teachers to work off of except standards.

I admit it likely does not help the strongest science teachers in DCPS. However I think providing a full curriculum is a huge step forward for many newer science teachers, and will help many students learn science in classes with less experienced teachers. Science teacher is also a hard-to-fill position, so sometimes an inexperienced teacher might really need a curriculum to work off, and adjust as needed.

Before the flaming commences, yes there still needs to be improvements and the strongest science teachers need to be vocal with ways to adjust the curriculum. [/quote]

There was a (bad but not quite as horrible) curriculum before Amplify.

Nothing you said justifies picking Amplify.

What you said is DCPS's excuse for everything: We don't trust our teachers, so we'll centralize everything (even though we don't know what we're doing), and then all students can have the same bad experience. Equity![/quote]

That's not quite true, the curriculum before had Cornerstone assessments and a scope and sequence, but really no day-to-day materials or resources. So teachers had to create or find those on their own. And yes, having been a middle school teacher in DCPS for close to 20 years, I would say at least 50% of science teachers that I've known greatly benefit from having a pre-made curriculum.

Nothing stops a strong science teacher from supplementing Amplify materials with other resources. Literally no one checks science classes that they are on a specific activity within Amplify. Maybe some administrators pay lip service to "are you implementing Amplify?" so teachers need to do enough to be able to say yes, which basically just means doing the End-of-Unit tests. They do check more specifically for math, but really not for science from what I've seen.[/quote]

Saying you are a middle teacher seems like you aren’t a science teacher. I’ve been teaching science in DC for 18 years. This is the worst thing we’ve ever been given. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics