As a teacher, I build much stronger relationships with the students I have all year rather than just one semester. I wish I had all my students for the full year. Teenagers take a while to build a relationship with. I teach juniors and it is also much easier to write strong recommendations for students I have taught for a full year versus one semester

Fwiw I went to a big three and they did this with all of our English classes and many of our social science classes and sometimes our science classes. It’s not a bad thing necessarily. It means you get exposed to different teachers and get to experience more teaching styles.

A lot of time let’s say they had a seasoned science teacher and a less experienced one. You’d swap at the semester so that everyone would get to have the more seasoned teacher half the time.

English classes were different topics, like college.

Some history and government classes were single semester.

Anonymous wrote:The main reason is because of scheduling conflicts, usually related to electives. The student signed up for dance second semester, which only meets 6th period, which is when the student's AP Chem class was meeting. So the student's AP Chem moves to the only other section period 2, which knocks another course to a different period.

Don't trust the 2nd semester schedules! They can change as class sizes change throughout the first semester and additional sections are created as others collapse.

I agree. At this point, the 2nd semester schedules are at best a rough draft. They won't be finalized until January.

Anonymous wrote:It's stupid especially for students that have no semester changes in classes.

It's just another messed up thing MCPS does to help kids pass every single class. Inflated grades and change of teachers

It's a shame that some posters are so jaded that they see conspiracies and incompetence behind every issue. The county is far from perfect, but you have to be able to discern real grade inflation, like how B+A=A and A+B=A, from non-issues like scheduling.

Someone above raises a good question about how schedules change from semester to semester even if a student is taking the same courses. (1) OTHER students are forced into that class making it overcrowded and other students have to be removed. (2) Rebalancing class sizes when at the end of the first semester, one class is at 31 students and another is at 20. (3) A section is collapsed. If your kid is in one of six sections of Honors English, and the school collapses one of them to create an additional Regular English section, lots of students will switch.

Anonymous wrote:It's stupid especially for students that have no semester changes in classes.

It's just another messed up thing MCPS does to help kids pass every single class. Inflated grades and change of teachers

You're stupid

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s how MCPS solves the problem of offering more courses than they can staff or find a classroom space for. Is it developmentally appropriate for this age group? Probably not. For those that argue that it prepares them for college, then why not just switch to a 4x4 block schedule so a child can complete an entire course with the same teacher and focus on 4 classes per semester. There is even a modified 4x4 block with a 5th period that meets for less time year round. MCPS is stuck in the mindset of “this is what we’ve always done” yet they claim to be so innovative.

Huh? It doesn't even solve that problem.

4x4 is also really bad for AP students. You take a course Aug-Jan and then have to remember it all until May.

Tell that to all of private school kids taking AP exams without even taking the AP course. Heck, even some public school kids take the test without taking the class.

They are still take a full year of the course before the exam. They just don't have the exact AP curriculum...similar to kids taking IB classes flowed by the AP exam. Very different then waiting months to take the test.

Anonymous wrote:It's stupid especially for students that have no semester changes in classes.

It's just another messed up thing MCPS does to help kids pass every single class. Inflated grades and change of teachers

How would changing teachers help kids pass?

It's stupid especially for students that have no semester changes in classes.

It's just another messed up thing MCPS does to help kids pass every single class. Inflated grades and change of teachers