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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^ yes I made a lot of errors typing that on my phone. Ironic as I’m discussing how sad the writing curriculum here makes me, I know. Oops.[/quote]

Not at all, doesn't bother us a bit! Anyway, welcome to our DC area, your experience confirms to me our schools here seem to be mirroring the bureaucracy found in DC politics.

I'm curious, when you mentioned the best school districts in MA, what were some of them, were they mostly in the Boston area? I.e I heard the ones in Lexington were really good.[/quote]

I have experience with Brookline and schools south of Boston, like Duxbury. They still do weekly spelling tests. The spelling lists come from a curriculum that’s purchased and teachers get a book full of appropriate lists for each week. They buy handwriting workbooks and use them in lower grades. They are assessed on how to write a paragraph in first grade, which can feel like a bit much to the first grade teachers, but many of the first graders can do it. It surprises me that my students here are much older and don’t really understand how to write a paragraph. There will be times where they will want to know how to write properly- resumes, college admissions letters, job cover letters. You can be very bright but come off as less intelligent than you are in your writing. I feel sorry if that ever holds any of these kids back, you know? I am not the smartest person alive, but I am thankful I learned how to write decently (if it’s something really important like a cover letter, I proofread a million times because I certainly am not perfect). I just feel sorry there is so much I expect my students to know and then I realize they were never taught this stuff in school and it blows my mind. I then try to teach it and am told not to. You’re just supposed to follow the guide and use the crappy FCPS approved recourses.

I recently realized that in MA the standardized state test tests students for writing in fourth grade and beyond. The math tests also feature short answer and essay questions. Learning how to write about your thinking in math is really stressed up there, starting in primary grades. Down here the SOL test is all multiple choice until there is a writing test in fifth grade, if I am correct. It makes me really upset if the schools don’t focus on writing mechanics, handwriting, or spelling just because the state tests don’t focus on any of that. These kids still deserve to be taught such things. They aren’t dumb for not knowing what to capitalize when they write or how to spell. What is dumb is the county refuses to teach such things. They really need to change the approach to teaching ELA down here in my opinion. There are a lot of really bright kids who excel in math and science, but there will come times where they need to show how smart they are in the form of writing and I’m afraid that will hold some of them back. I recently got an evaluation at work and it’s full of grammatical and spelling errors. I think anyone reading it will take it less seriously because it makes my admin look pretty careless and honestly not super intelligent (not saying they aren’t, but you wouldn’t know by reading an important document they created full of OBVIOUS errors...).

Writer’s workshop might seem more exciting than lessons on grammar and parts of speech, but really it’s just like a time for kids to write and they’re never really taught how to do so... it’s crazy to me. As a kid I liked learning the “boring” things like parts of speech. I know they still teach that stuff back home. I remember it being huge in the second grade classrooms I was in. They learned verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc. They also did tons of word sorts which further assisted with spelling. And of course they did spelling tests each week and teachers weren’t discouraged to not tell kids how to spell words they misspelled. Down here there seems to be this push to let kids spell things anyway they please.... that’s not going to be cute when they’re 18 and applying to MIT or Harvard with excellent grades but a very hard to read admissions letter. [/quote]

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