Anonymous wrote: For example, I was there one day when the kids were lining up for recess (not her class) and the teacher said to get their coats. One boy said he didn't want his so she yelled to get his coat. He had on an undershirt and a long-sleeved shirt so he didn't get it. She yelled again and he said he'd be find without it (and granted it was about 50 degrees, not 20) and she screamed, "I am not ASKING you, i am TELLING to GO GET YOUR COAT NOW!!!!" Totally uncalled for , imo. Why not have him suffer the natural consequences of being cold if he chose not to get it. The point is, I find that the teachers there just want the children to jump and not have a mind of their own. I know that at times children can't be left to make their own decisions but that situation seemed over the top.

OP your story reminded me of a report from 1980 that someone posted on DCUM a while ago, Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work: http://cuip.uchicago.edu/~cac/nlu/fnd504/anyon.htm Read the section on "working class school". Apparently not a lot has changed since 1980.

Anonymous wrote:8-6?? I thought after 3 they go to aftercare, which is basically recess and playtime.

That depends. My child was in a EOTP school for a month before we moved her, where aftercare seemingly involved mainly neverending movies. So glad we are out and in a school we like.

8-6?? I thought after 3 they go to aftercare, which is basically recess and playtime.

The poor child.

I hear you OP. A couple years ago I attended a training at a EOTP DCPS that is somewhat well regarded in its area (Ward 7). I was horrified at how the children were being spoken to--and this was during the day, so it wasn't aftercare providers speaking that way. It felt to me like what I imagine prison must be like. I came away practically convinced that we as a society were just preparing poor children for prison. Not the kind of environment I'd find acceptable for my child, sad that it's acceptable for so many others.

OP, my kids are not in school yet, so I might be wrong, but are there private aftercare centers that can take your daughter? Can you afford them?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8-6

Holy crap - that's your problem right there: your child is putting in a 10 hour day. You are an adult and you would find 10 hour days unsustainable. It's unreasonable to expect that of a 6 year old.

If there is a lot of yelling at the school, then it's a low-quality school. However, that's a secondary issue. Find a better school, but more importantly, find a better life. You are asking too much of your child.

8-6 is a long day but it's fairly standard (or only a little longer) for an elementary school kid who has aftercare. HOWEVER, there is a huge difference between a 6-yr old who spends those 10 hours in a nurturing, happy and stimulating environment, with plenty of time for play and OP's kid's situation. My kid is in a JKLMM elementary and whenever we do have him in aftercare due to scheduling conflicts, he doesn't want to leave when I come to pick him up (sometimes I think he'd like to live on the school grounds!) He also gets excited on Sunday evenings because tomorrow it will be time to go to school and see his friends. School days, even long school days, aren't bad - it's that particular school that sounds awful!

OP, look around for charters or other EOTP schools - most anything sounds better. You can call Janney as someone suggested but I bet they just went down to the next person on the list and that person took the spot, so that's gone.

Also, 'finding a better life' is great advice in theory but hard to apply. OP is a single parent, thus she already has less income and flexibility than a two-parent family. My schedule is more flexible than hers, I bet, not just because DH and I can alternate or modify our schedules if a life or work emergency comes up for one of us, to make DC's routine work, but also because having two parents allows more parenting choice and more income - we can buy IB for a good school and not worry about long commute, plus I don't need to earn as much as if I were a single parent, which enables me to have a flexible job with time to drop off/pick up DC from school w/o needing to put him in before/aftercare every day. Not to mention that some people, single parents or not, are in less flexible career fields than others or have other circumstances which make life harder. Being able to have a better life is a luxury and one to be grateful for, not something everyone can achieve just with a wave of a magic wand. Even moving to e.g., a far out suburb with decent schools and lower cost of living (to trade off for a hellish commute) takes time. You can't just move in a week.

Over the course of human development, it's not standard at all. As a society, we've made some choices about the importance of Mammon in our lives. Why do people have children they can't raise? Why do they pretend they have no choices? We all have choices - we may not like them - but we have them.

My choice is for intolerant judgmental people on this thread to be quiet. But they may not like my choice. It sounds like they have so many choices they cannot figure out what thread to go to to make more poor parents feel bad next.

Yes, it is incomprehensible to me that someone would give up a spot at Janney that guarantees Deal and Wilson. But I am not walking in her shoes, and I have no idea what was going on in her life at the time. For all you know, she could have been in a shelter. We just allowed a child to miss an entire week of ES homework (not very self motivated) due to a death in the family. We should be shot, right?

And the problem here is not the existence of recess or after care but the nature of it. We put our third child in after care for K and 1st grade - 8:45, sometimes morning care at 7:00 am until 6pm. She was at a JKLM and I was undergoing treatment for a life threatening illness. Knowing what you know now about me, that I put my kid in after care, should my husband and I have "chosen" to have an abortion instead? She seems pretty happy to be on this earth, and we are delighted that she is here. Even had she faced years of after care, I would never have regretted our decision to have a third child. And no, she was not an accident either. And we can afford her, we just cannot always give her all the attention she deserves because we can no longer play man to man defense. Does that mean anyone who cannot afford a nanny in addition should never have more than two children? Give us all a break and give it a rest. OP, I feel for you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8-6

Holy crap - that's your problem right there: your child is putting in a 10 hour day. You are an adult and you would find 10 hour days unsustainable. It's unreasonable to expect that of a 6 year old.

If there is a lot of yelling at the school, then it's a low-quality school. However, that's a secondary issue. Find a better school, but more importantly, find a better life. You are asking too much of your child.

8-6 is a long day but it's fairly standard (or only a little longer) for an elementary school kid who has aftercare. HOWEVER, there is a huge difference between a 6-yr old who spends those 10 hours in a nurturing, happy and stimulating environment, with plenty of time for play and OP's kid's situation. My kid is in a JKLMM elementary and whenever we do have him in aftercare due to scheduling conflicts, he doesn't want to leave when I come to pick him up (sometimes I think he'd like to live on the school grounds!) He also gets excited on Sunday evenings because tomorrow it will be time to go to school and see his friends. School days, even long school days, aren't bad - it's that particular school that sounds awful!

OP, look around for charters or other EOTP schools - most anything sounds better. You can call Janney as someone suggested but I bet they just went down to the next person on the list and that person took the spot, so that's gone.

Also, 'finding a better life' is great advice in theory but hard to apply. OP is a single parent, thus she already has less income and flexibility than a two-parent family. My schedule is more flexible than hers, I bet, not just because DH and I can alternate or modify our schedules if a life or work emergency comes up for one of us, to make DC's routine work, but also because having two parents allows more parenting choice and more income - we can buy IB for a good school and not worry about long commute, plus I don't need to earn as much as if I were a single parent, which enables me to have a flexible job with time to drop off/pick up DC from school w/o needing to put him in before/aftercare every day. Not to mention that some people, single parents or not, are in less flexible career fields than others or have other circumstances which make life harder. Being able to have a better life is a luxury and one to be grateful for, not something everyone can achieve just with a wave of a magic wand. Even moving to e.g., a far out suburb with decent schools and lower cost of living (to trade off for a hellish commute) takes time. You can't just move in a week.

Over the course of human development, it's not standard at all. As a society, we've made some choices about the importance of Mammon in our lives. Why do people have children they can't raise? Why do they pretend they have no choices? We all have choices - we may not like them - but we have them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:janney called me in mid-september for first grade, yes. she wasn't crying then about the yelling or i might have tried harder to figure it out.

yes, true, it's the recess and aftercare that are the main issue. i will try to pick her up earlier than 6pm when i can

Glad she's a priority "when [you] can!"

Perhaps the highest priority is earning a salary so that the child can be fed, clothed & housed.

When Janney kids are putting in 50 hour weeks so their parents can feed, cloth, and house them? It's because they are being fed surf & turf, clothed in Hannah Andersen & Tommy Hilfiger Children, and housed with a mortgage their parents couldn't intelligently afford or sustain.

Superficial choices.

Good Lord. Wouldn't you have loved this thread to have actually been about Janney so you could feel superior about your life choices? Oh well, you'll just have to look for another opportunity to bash Janney and its families.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:janney called me in mid-september for first grade, yes. she wasn't crying then about the yelling or i might have tried harder to figure it out.

yes, true, it's the recess and aftercare that are the main issue. i will try to pick her up earlier than 6pm when i can

Glad she's a priority "when [you] can!"

Perhaps the highest priority is earning a salary so that the child can be fed, clothed & housed.

When Janney kids are putting in 50 hour weeks so their parents can feed, cloth, and house them? It's because they are being fed surf & turf, clothed in Hannah Andersen & Tommy Hilfiger Children, and housed with a mortgage their parents couldn't intelligently afford or sustain.

Superficial choices.

OP's child does not go to Janney but a school EOTP. By OP's description, it does not sound like Brent or Maury either, so it's probably a school in a not too awesome neighborhood/with a student population whose parents aren't yuppies. So I will bet that the parents at OP's school work hard to keep food on the table and a roof over the kid's head, not to clothe them in boutique fashions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She is getting yelled at personally and in a group. The teachers like to be controlling for no apparent reason. For example, I was there one day when the kids were lining up for recess (not her class) and the teacher said to get their coats. One boy said he didn't want his so she yelled to get his coat. He had on an undershirt and a long-sleeved shirt so he didn't get it. She yelled again and he said he'd be find without it (and granted it was about 50 degrees, not 20) and she screamed, "I am not ASKING you, i am TELLING to GO GET YOUR COAT NOW!!!!" Totally uncalled for , imo. Why not have him suffer the natural consequences of being cold if he chose not to get it. The point is, I find that the teachers there just want the children to jump and not have a mind of their own. I know that at times children can't be left to make their own decisions but that situation seemed over the top.

She gets yelled at for any number of things like this I suspect.

There is just no excuse for this. All the Capitol Hill parents know about yelling in DCPS, but have come to accept it as the price of living on the Hill and going to public school. One might think Janney could be held to higher expectations, but honestly in my conversations with Janney parents I'm not at all surprised. There's really no acceptable reason for an unskilled (obviously!) young teacher to be collecting a (relatively) high salary for screaming at 6 year-olds. Sorry, there's just not. In a nutshell, we're talking about one of the best DCPS schools and this is nothing but pathetic.

PP, she is not talking about yelling at Janney. She is talking about an unnamed EOTP school. She got into Janney but declined. (I have no idea if yelling goes on at Janney, but that's not what OP is talking about).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:8-6

Holy crap - that's your problem right there: your child is putting in a 10 hour day. You are an adult and you would find 10 hour days unsustainable. It's unreasonable to expect that of a 6 year old.

If there is a lot of yelling at the school, then it's a low-quality school. However, that's a secondary issue. Find a better school, but more importantly, find a better life. You are asking too much of your child.

8-6 is a long day but it's fairly standard (or only a little longer) for an elementary school kid who has aftercare. HOWEVER, there is a huge difference between a 6-yr old who spends those 10 hours in a nurturing, happy and stimulating environment, with plenty of time for play and OP's kid's situation. My kid is in a JKLMM elementary and whenever we do have him in aftercare due to scheduling conflicts, he doesn't want to leave when I come to pick him up (sometimes I think he'd like to live on the school grounds!) He also gets excited on Sunday evenings because tomorrow it will be time to go to school and see his friends. School days, even long school days, aren't bad - it's that particular school that sounds awful!

OP, look around for charters or other EOTP schools - most anything sounds better. You can call Janney as someone suggested but I bet they just went down to the next person on the list and that person took the spot, so that's gone.

Also, 'finding a better life' is great advice in theory but hard to apply. OP is a single parent, thus she already has less income and flexibility than a two-parent family. My schedule is more flexible than hers, I bet, not just because DH and I can alternate or modify our schedules if a life or work emergency comes up for one of us, to make DC's routine work, but also because having two parents allows more parenting choice and more income - we can buy IB for a good school and not worry about long commute, plus I don't need to earn as much as if I were a single parent, which enables me to have a flexible job with time to drop off/pick up DC from school w/o needing to put him in before/aftercare every day. Not to mention that some people, single parents or not, are in less flexible career fields than others or have other circumstances which make life harder. Being able to have a better life is a luxury and one to be grateful for, not something everyone can achieve just with a wave of a magic wand. Even moving to e.g., a far out suburb with decent schools and lower cost of living (to trade off for a hellish commute) takes time. You can't just move in a week.

Anonymous wrote:I worked in a an EOTP school that was like what you described. What stands out to me, OP, in your initial description of the school is that the principal is not setting the tone that children should be treated with respect. That is just unacceptable.

At my old school, teachers and aides (not all, but many) constantly yelled at the children, doled out really harsh punishments for the slightest infractions, and simply ignored some disruptive children who just wandered the halls during the day because I think it was easier for them to not have them in class. It was so bad that I quit without another job because I couldn't stand listening to the teachers scream at the kids. After witnessing a particularly egregious incident that I considered both verbal and physical abuse, I reported it to the principal the following day. He shrugged it off and told me that he had already heard about the incident from the teacher and it wasn't as I had described and told me that the child -- a six year old -- was threatening the adult so the adult's reaction was warranted. I quit the next day. Should I have stayed and tried to help the school become a better place? Maybe. I really felt bad about leaving the kids I worked with, but my very low salary was not worth the terrible working conditions I had to put up with.

Wow. Just... wow.

You did the right thing, PP. Life is long, you will not regret rejecting such a toxic environment.

Anonymous wrote:She is getting yelled at personally and in a group. The teachers like to be controlling for no apparent reason. For example, I was there one day when the kids were lining up for recess (not her class) and the teacher said to get their coats. One boy said he didn't want his so she yelled to get his coat. He had on an undershirt and a long-sleeved shirt so he didn't get it. She yelled again and he said he'd be find without it (and granted it was about 50 degrees, not 20) and she screamed, "I am not ASKING you, i am TELLING to GO GET YOUR COAT NOW!!!!" Totally uncalled for , imo. Why not have him suffer the natural consequences of being cold if he chose not to get it. The point is, I find that the teachers there just want the children to jump and not have a mind of their own. I know that at times children can't be left to make their own decisions but that situation seemed over the top.

She gets yelled at for any number of things like this I suspect.

There is just no excuse for this. All the Capitol Hill parents know about yelling in DCPS, but have come to accept it as the price of living on the Hill and going to public school. One might think Janney could be held to higher expectations, but honestly in my conversations with Janney parents I'm not at all surprised. There's really no acceptable reason for an unskilled (obviously!) young teacher to be collecting a (relatively) high salary for screaming at 6 year-olds. Sorry, there's just not. In a nutshell, we're talking about one of the best DCPS schools and this is nothing but pathetic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:janney called me in mid-september for first grade, yes. she wasn't crying then about the yelling or i might have tried harder to figure it out.

yes, true, it's the recess and aftercare that are the main issue. i will try to pick her up earlier than 6pm when i can

Glad she's a priority "when [you] can!"

Perhaps the highest priority is earning a salary so that the child can be fed, clothed & housed.

When Janney kids are putting in 50 hour weeks so their parents can feed, cloth, and house them? It's because they are being fed surf & turf, clothed in Hannah Andersen & Tommy Hilfiger Children, and housed with a mortgage their parents couldn't intelligently afford or sustain.

Superficial choices.