Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:22:03 - Are you saying the administration is who is asking teachers to forego cases of unopened textbooks costing millions, and to instead fudge their own curricula using handouts and whatever other nonsense?

Yes, that is what I am saying. What teacher wants to spend hours making handouts? At my school we are not allowed to use text books and the admin teams boosts about how 'we do not have teachers manuals' or consumables for kids. What teacher wants to write curriculum?

Anonymous wrote:Well. At Deal they will basically tell your kid a set of open ended questions about an era in history and then your child to "just go find the answers on the internet". It's pretty ridiculous. I don't know how or why anyone is tolerating any of this. Get a textbook for the students. Parents would be willing to pay for it at Deal. It is an outrage that they don't use them for history or math. In english, they won't even let them take the novel home for review.

Anonymous wrote:17:29

Its me again! And I just want to clarify something. One of the very best things about teaching is the ability to be creative and resourceful to meet the needs of your students. I have always loved designing cool projects and fun lessons that are costumed fit to my classroom. And the sense of ownership that you take away, when the kids 'get' it- is one of the very best things about the job. So I am NOT advocating a teaching model where a teacher just shows up and spits out a canned lesson plan. As many PPs have said, a teacher is an expert- on her kids, and can tweak lessons to meet the needs of his/her kiddos. Not only is this an essential job function, but its also a blast. (Yes, I love my job!)

What I am NOT ok with- and what I do not feel comfortable with is designing a curriculum. I am great at knowing my kids and the developmental mind of my students, but I am not a math, science, reading, history, and writing expert. Do I write great lessons for my kids, sure I try to. But its a huge drain on time, when that same time could be used- better to differentiate a lesson that was already drafted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC attends a upper NW school that does not use text books. I may be an old fart ( 40ish) but I don't remember getting so many hand-outs when I was in school, during the stone ages. She is in 3rd grade and was given a packet to do over the Holidays. The math homework is pretty much a review from the last couple of months. It would help me , if I could refer to chapters that she has gone over already.Also, it seems that, all everyone is concerned about is the DC-CAS test.
Is this the norm for 3rd grade to 12th grade?

I have been following this thread a little bit and was confused if most people responding were talking about elementary, middle or high school. I have a child in DCPS elementary and another in middle. In middle school there are textbooks for each class. In elementary it is more common that students do not have textbooks but workbooks. Regarding math we've had two teachers who do not use Everyday Math but use a more traditional approach for math instruction.

16:38 is right on.

And that same teacher should be able to differentiate across reading levels that span 7 grades.

And address the learning needs of ESL students. They compromised 1/2 of my child's first grade class. And that teacher should be able to address the 6 different languages that all those first graders spoke at home.

And she should be able to do all this for 24 children without any sort of assistant.

Yeah, those teachers are so, so lazy.

I mean, did you see those lazy teachers at Sandy Hook? One was found lying on the ground. She must have been napping on the job.

Anonymous wrote:

I do not think it is good for teachers of any subject area to be making their own curricula at all. It seems a phenomenal waste of time and there is a risk that the teacher is not a good enough content expert to develop such curricula materials. There are tons of curricula resources out there.

I think that every teacher should be a good enough content expert to write their own curriculum, and adjust that curriculum to a variety of learners. That's the job of teaching. There may be tons of curricular resources out there, but not very many of those resources are good.

Anonymous wrote:

I do not think it is good for teachers of any subject area to be making their own curricula at all. It seems a phenomenal waste of time and there is a risk that the teacher is not a good enough content expert to develop such curricula materials. There are tons of curricula resources out there.

I think that every teacher should be a good enough content expert to write their own curriculum, and adjust that curriculum to a variety of learners. That's the job of teaching. There may be tons of curricular resources out there, but not very many of those resources are good.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:22:03 - Are you saying the administration is who is asking teachers to forego cases of unopened textbooks costing millions, and to instead fudge their own curricula using handouts and whatever other nonsense?

Yes, that is what I am saying. What teacher wants to spend hours making handouts? At my school we are not allowed to use text books and the admin teams boosts about how 'we do not have teachers manuals' or consumables for kids. What teacher wants to write curriculum?

Anonymous wrote:

I do not think it is good for teachers of any subject area to be making their own curricula at all. It seems a phenomenal waste of time and there is a risk that the teacher is not a good enough content expert to develop such curricula materials. There are tons of curricula resources out there.

I think that every teacher should be a good enough content expert to write their own curriculum, and adjust that curriculum to a variety of learners. That's the job of teaching. There may be tons of curricular resources out there, but not very many of those resources are good.

Anonymous wrote:22:03 - Are you saying the administration is who is asking teachers to forego cases of unopened textbooks costing millions, and to instead fudge their own curricula using handouts and whatever other nonsense?