Anonymous wrote:Wow, to some of these comments. It's disgusting how entitled some people sound. Do you have any idea how hard your child's teacher is most likely working? You can't imagine how much some of you are asking of teachers. Weekly email reports?? Hilarious. Did you forget that teaching is not a desk job? Realty check: the majority of teachers spend a MINIMUM of 10-15 hours of personal (unpaid) time per week just to keep up with the job. You can't imagine the amount of time planning, grading, prepping, organizing, communicating with other staff, meetings, (did I mention TEACHING?) etc etc go into the demands of this job, especially with overcrowded classrooms which exasorbate behavior issues. Yes, in case it weren't obvious I am a teacher, and I speak with close to 20 years of experience. I can name on less than one hand the number of teachers who actually DON'T bring work home, and/or stay well beyond their duty day, and/or arrive early. To the commenter who complained that no reading took place in your child's classroom other than before report cards are sent, you surely misunderstood. Formal assessments only take place 3 times per year, as should be the case given that they take the teacher away from instruction and it is not necessary more frequently than that anyway. Reading instruction and guided groups should take place every day. And for the commenter who suggested 3 conferences including one with the reading specialist to evaluate your child, good luck with that. There is a special education process that you should look into because what you are suggesting is not how it works, nor should it work that way for good reason. Otherwise, we'd be wasting a lot of time formally evaluating children who would not qualify for an IEP. If your child's teacher had more time to communicate with you she would. Instead, it's probably her priority to get ready for the next day of lessons. You just can't imagine. The only time I ever have to communicate with parents is on my own personal time from home in the evenings. If she says your child is doing fine then trust that or otherwise ask for a parent conference (which you are perfectly entitled to and which a good teacher will call for herself if she feels it is needed), but know that your child's next lesson will probably not be as organized because of the planning time the conference costs the teacher. Yes, that's how it works.) Look on the MCPS website to investigate the specifics of the curriculum. Doesn't anyone ever wonder why it is such a high burn-out job in spite of the vacation and benefits? Yes I am disgruntled. Nobody gets it besides other teachers. The ones who manage to stick it out for the long haul do so because we love kids and have passion for the art of teaching. So try to show a little more respect, especially because something like 80% of the elementary teaching workforce today are in their first 5 years (meaning fresh out of college). If we want to increase the number of seasoned teachers, we need to make life a little less stressful for them, however possible.

Anonymous wrote:It REALLY pisses me off when every response to a parent complaint about the grade card being useless is met with a direction to just ask the teacher for further explanation. This means that every report card 20+ calls come in.

Anonymous wrote:It REALLY pisses me off when every response to a parent complaint about the grade card being useless is met with a direction to just ask the teacher for further explanation. This means that every report card 20+ calls come in. Its hard enough to align the work with the grading system. Its impossible to always hide the fact that it doesn't map to the curriculum. I have to explain that there isn't a category for this subject or activity so we've been instructed to put it here even though the label doesn't make sense. I have to explain that even though the grade card has no way to enter a grade into the future report periods, I will continue to teach and have assessments on that subject. If your child does great on it or is struggling then I can't put anything on the grade card but I'll contact you if she isn't proficient. It doesn't really matter so even if the child is not proficient on this there is no reason to waste time contacting the parent.

I have to explain to the parent of a kid that read levels ahead of everyone else in the class and scores off the Map R charts that Ps are just dandy. She is in such a high level that she can't get ES grades per the curriculum committee recommendation but I throw a few her way to appease the child, just not enough to average the grade up to an ES because I am instructed that ES is rare to non-existent on the grade card. I can give her some ES grades in math even though she isn't as strong as another kid who doesn't get ES grades. The other kid does work above grade level and scores off the chart on Map-M. We can't reward above grade level work because that's not allowed. I can reward someone who writes a lot about the on grade level activity. I have to appease parents while hiding that the system doesn't work for teachers either. Teachers want to get rid of ES because there is no fair way to assign it.

Don't get me started on the curriculum. I like having more freedom but its a disorganized mess. The curriculum office hides that they aren't done creating materials. It shows that the materials have been rushed out the door. I get blamed for the spelling mistakes and bad grammar that comes from MCPS. I get blamed for the curriculum not making any sense. I have to spend hours hunting for things that align with the new curriculum. There is no consistency among teachers because it takes so much work to pull this stuff together. Any complaint about the curriculum is just directed back as a teacher problem. Teachers are not the problem. We are suffering as much as you are suffering with this new curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:And knowing the teachers are overloaded is why parents don't contact the teacher. So then they don't know what's going on and can't help them creating more work for the teacher and the cycle continues.

Anonymous wrote:ANDDDD that's why you don't send your kids to public school.

Private all the way. Can't afford it? Scholarship!!

Anonymous wrote:

But what happens if a child falls behind, or gets sick for a week or two, or the parents just want to go over the material with their child again?
How am I supposed to do that if there's no textbook I can refer to? Do I request a conference with the teacher and ask her to provide the URLs of the sites she goes to?

2.0 materials from Pearson are copyrighted so the teacher can't give you a link. If the teacher is using something that is openly and publicly available she can provide it but this is less likely.

Our principal also does not allow work to go home if the child missed school. Some teachers ignore this rule but others are afraid. The principal's position is that the school is rated on attendance. If she allows work to go home, more families might take their kids out of school for vacation or home with a mild cold.

While I don't think parents should take kids out of school for vacation, this is a terrible reason to be obstructionist about connecting students and parents with the materials so the child can improve. Its also classic MCPS. The student's outcome is not the goal. Remember its always about what is best for MCPS not the kids.

But what happens if a child falls behind, or gets sick for a week or two, or the parents just want to go over the material with their child again?
How am I supposed to do that if there's no textbook I can refer to? Do I request a conference with the teacher and ask her to provide the URLs of the sites she goes to?

Anonymous wrote:

But what happens if a child falls behind, or gets sick for a week or two, or the parents just want to go over the material with their child again?
How am I supposed to do that if there's no textbook I can refer to? Do I request a conference with the teacher and ask her to provide the URLs of the sites she goes to?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The curriculum guides on the MCPS website are useless.

How so?

If you were designing the curriculum guides, what information would they contain?

I, for one, would site the workbooks that are being used in class.
Or is it classified information these days?

They don't use workbooks in my DS' class. The teachers go online and print out various worksheets from different websites. There's not just one workbook, or one website.

Anonymous wrote:Teachers in MCPS are totally overwhelmed. Our curriculum is hard to teach, and we get very limited resources that are ready-to-use (most things you'll see are teacher-made or printed off the internet). I admit that parent communication is one of the things I am weak in. But I'm grading and planning for hours every day. (BTW, I teach second grade, but it's been like this in the three other ES grades I've taught).

Request a conference and if you get no response, contact the principal and let him/her know what's going on. If the teacher is not doing his/her job, you have a right to say so. But let her know what you are looking for. I would hope that a teacher would respond to a conference request immediately. Do you get report cards and progress reports? Friday folder reports? Do you mind sharing what school this is?