Anonymous wrote:I’m taking my kids out tomorrow so we can leave and spend more time with different family members are a long drive away.
DC is transient and lot of us don’t have family in the area and flying is too expensive for us.
Hopefully they aren’t missing much but they will be bringing their laptops and have time to check for assignments etc during their trip.

I wish FCPS would move over some of the other random days off and give the kids this whole week. Two days is so pointless.

This is what everyone should do. FCPS doesn't care AT ALL about making family life manageable so take the days you need and let the teachers figure out how to give your kids the opportunity to make up they are allowed to have.

I hate putting more on the teachers because they probably have the worst deal in FCPS, but they also have a chance of being listened to - families don't.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reason parents hate this is the calendar has endless (pointless) days off where no one cares about pacing and mandatory test dates and oh look now we have to jam up a major holiday week because we wasted all this other time.

How wrong you are, on so many counts.

1. Teachers have cared about pacing all along. How dare you say "no one cares about pacing." Teachers have been concerned about pacing since before school started.

2. Teachers are not wasting "all this time." They are teaching on all instructional days. They dont have time to waste. What a disgusting accusation to make.

3. Are you calling TEACHING on instructional days, "jamming up a major holiday week"? Do you have any concept of how contradictory and hypocritical your argument is?

4. If your offensive post is not about teachers and is instead an attack on the school board, you've done a piss-poor job communicating that since everything in your post is about teacher planning and pacing.

Good Lord, take it down a notch. Go have some eggnog or something. Take the day off and give your students a break.

One of my child’s teachers nixed her own plan today and said, “forget the packet pages. You all have been working so hard.” She gave them a break for the rest of the period. She’s also no longer requiring them to finish the pages over break and said we will do it in class after the break. So they got 30 minutes to catch up on other work. How amazing! She is wonderful.

I’m a different teacher.

Administration would not see this teacher as “amazing” and “wonderful.” We are evaluated on how productively we use our class time, not on how cool and casual we are.

And I’m going to be honest with you as someone with 25 years of experience texting. Students weren’t spending 30 minutes catching up on work. They were relaxing, catching up on shows or time with friends.

Lol. WOW. ‘25 years of experience texting’! Put that on LinkedIn.

Anonymous wrote:I’m taking my kids out tomorrow so we can leave and spend more time with different family members are a long drive away.
DC is transient and lot of us don’t have family in the area and flying is too expensive for us.
Hopefully they aren’t missing much but they will be bringing their laptops and have time to check for assignments etc during their trip.

I wish FCPS would move over some of the other random days off and give the kids this whole week. Two days is so pointless.

+100000

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reason parents hate this is the calendar has endless (pointless) days off where no one cares about pacing and mandatory test dates and oh look now we have to jam up a major holiday week because we wasted all this other time.

How wrong you are, on so many counts.

1. Teachers have cared about pacing all along. How dare you say "no one cares about pacing." Teachers have been concerned about pacing since before school started.

2. Teachers are not wasting "all this time." They are teaching on all instructional days. They dont have time to waste. What a disgusting accusation to make.

3. Are you calling TEACHING on instructional days, "jamming up a major holiday week"? Do you have any concept of how contradictory and hypocritical your argument is?

4. If your offensive post is not about teachers and is instead an attack on the school board, you've done a piss-poor job communicating that since everything in your post is about teacher planning and pacing.

Good Lord, take it down a notch. Go have some eggnog or something. Take the day off and give your students a break.

One of my child’s teachers nixed her own plan today and said, “forget the packet pages. You all have been working so hard.” She gave them a break for the rest of the period. She’s also no longer requiring them to finish the pages over break and said we will do it in class after the break. So they got 30 minutes to catch up on other work. How amazing! She is wonderful.

I’m a different teacher.

Administration would not see this teacher as “amazing” and “wonderful.” We are evaluated on how productively we use our class time, not on how cool and casual we are.

And I’m going to be honest with you as someone with 25 years of experience texting. Students weren’t spending 30 minutes catching up on work. They were relaxing, catching up on shows or time with friends.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reason parents hate this is the calendar has endless (pointless) days off where no one cares about pacing and mandatory test dates and oh look now we have to jam up a major holiday week because we wasted all this other time.

How wrong you are, on so many counts.

1. Teachers have cared about pacing all along. How dare you say "no one cares about pacing." Teachers have been concerned about pacing since before school started.

2. Teachers are not wasting "all this time." They are teaching on all instructional days. They dont have time to waste. What a disgusting accusation to make.

3. Are you calling TEACHING on instructional days, "jamming up a major holiday week"? Do you have any concept of how contradictory and hypocritical your argument is?

4. If your offensive post is not about teachers and is instead an attack on the school board, you've done a piss-poor job communicating that since everything in your post is about teacher planning and pacing.

Somehow many teachers who have the same rules for pacing are starting their vacations already— classes taught by subs. So apparently if a teacher wants to put in the effort, this isn’t a jammed week.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reason parents hate this is the calendar has endless (pointless) days off where no one cares about pacing and mandatory test dates and oh look now we have to jam up a major holiday week because we wasted all this other time.

How wrong you are, on so many counts.

1. Teachers have cared about pacing all along. How dare you say "no one cares about pacing." Teachers have been concerned about pacing since before school started.

2. Teachers are not wasting "all this time." They are teaching on all instructional days. They dont have time to waste. What a disgusting accusation to make.

3. Are you calling TEACHING on instructional days, "jamming up a major holiday week"? Do you have any concept of how contradictory and hypocritical your argument is?

4. If your offensive post is not about teachers and is instead an attack on the school board, you've done a piss-poor job communicating that since everything in your post is about teacher planning and pacing.

Good Lord, take it down a notch. Go have some eggnog or something. Take the day off and give your students a break.

One of my child’s teachers nixed her own plan today and said, “forget the packet pages. You all have been working so hard.” She gave them a break for the rest of the period. She’s also no longer requiring them to finish the pages over break and said we will do it in class after the break. So they got 30 minutes to catch up on other work. How amazing! She is wonderful.

Anonymous wrote:The reason parents hate this is the calendar has endless (pointless) days off where no one cares about pacing and mandatory test dates and oh look now we have to jam up a major holiday week because we wasted all this other time.

How wrong you are, on so many counts.

1. Teachers have cared about pacing all along. How dare you say "no one cares about pacing." Teachers have been concerned about pacing since before school started.

2. Teachers are not wasting "all this time." They are teaching on all instructional days. They dont have time to waste. What a disgusting accusation to make.

3. Are you calling TEACHING on instructional days, "jamming up a major holiday week"? Do you have any concept of how contradictory and hypocritical your argument is?

4. If your offensive post is not about teachers and is instead an attack on the school board, you've done a piss-poor job communicating that since everything in your post is about teacher planning and pacing.

The reason parents hate this is the calendar has endless (pointless) days off where no one cares about pacing and mandatory test dates and oh look now we have to jam up a major holiday week because we wasted all this other time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD had a make-up test today because she missed a day last week for a school event. Except the instructor can't stay after school now, so it's two tests tomorrow. Even if I said she could skip school (which I would not), she wouldn't, because she has two different problem sets (~30 problems) due when she returns on Tuesday, a writing summative on Wednesday, a SAQ on Thursday and a quiz on Friday. Essentially, the only class she will have no work for is the one where she has two tests tomorrow.

She's planning to handle it by working/studying tomorrow after school, and on Wednesday, before our guests arrive. She is also contributing 3 dishes to Thanksgiving, so I'm not sure where the time is coming from.

And this is exactly the problem. Now your child is stuck with a bunch of work over the break. What if you all were traveling? It would make it that much harder. Teachers need to be instructed to not have any work due the first 3 days back from break. It’s utterly ridiculous. There should be no summatives allowed within the first 3 days.

No, three days is absurd. Your idea of not allowing summatives for the first three days back is what is utterly ridiculous.

There should be no SUMMATIVES for the first block back, but after that, it is back to normal. That means there can be summtives as early as Wednesday, December 3. Formative grades should be allowed to be collected at any point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD had a make-up test today because she missed a day last week for a school event. Except the instructor can't stay after school now, so it's two tests tomorrow. Even if I said she could skip school (which I would not), she wouldn't, because she has two different problem sets (~30 problems) due when she returns on Tuesday, a writing summative on Wednesday, a SAQ on Thursday and a quiz on Friday. Essentially, the only class she will have no work for is the one where she has two tests tomorrow.

She's planning to handle it by working/studying tomorrow after school, and on Wednesday, before our guests arrive. She is also contributing 3 dishes to Thanksgiving, so I'm not sure where the time is coming from.

And this is exactly the problem. Now your child is stuck with a bunch of work over the break. What if you all were traveling? It would make it that much harder. Teachers need to be instructed to not have any work due the first 3 days back from break. It’s utterly ridiculous. There should be no summatives allowed within the first 3 days.

DP.
I don’t need my child that coddled. If they have a test on the 2nd day after break, I consider them fortunate for having the break to study. They can travel, spend time with family, and still find time. Heck, my college daughter is home right now for break and she is studying for her upcoming finals. Isn’t she fortunate that her high school years helped her prepare for the rigors of college?

Anonymous wrote:DD had a make-up test today because she missed a day last week for a school event. Except the instructor can't stay after school now, so it's two tests tomorrow. Even if I said she could skip school (which I would not), she wouldn't, because she has two different problem sets (~30 problems) due when she returns on Tuesday, a writing summative on Wednesday, a SAQ on Thursday and a quiz on Friday. Essentially, the only class she will have no work for is the one where she has two tests tomorrow.

She's planning to handle it by working/studying tomorrow after school, and on Wednesday, before our guests arrive. She is also contributing 3 dishes to Thanksgiving, so I'm not sure where the time is coming from.

And this is exactly the problem. Now your child is stuck with a bunch of work over the break. What if you all were traveling? It would make it that much harder. Teachers need to be instructed to not have any work due the first 3 days back from break. It’s utterly ridiculous. There should be no summatives allowed within the first 3 days.

DD had a make-up test today because she missed a day last week for a school event. Except the instructor can't stay after school now, so it's two tests tomorrow. Even if I said she could skip school (which I would not), she wouldn't, because she has two different problem sets (~30 problems) due when she returns on Tuesday, a writing summative on Wednesday, a SAQ on Thursday and a quiz on Friday. Essentially, the only class she will have no work for is the one where she has two tests tomorrow.

She's planning to handle it by working/studying tomorrow after school, and on Wednesday, before our guests arrive. She is also contributing 3 dishes to Thanksgiving, so I'm not sure where the time is coming from.

It's a school day, therefor there are assignments that students need to do.

You get the choice as parents to have your child do them in school, or to pull your child and have them do them at home.

Neither is right or wrong, but to expect your child to be excused from work because you are not sending them to school is insane, and to expect teachers to stop teaching to accommodate the 10-20% of families who choose to extend vacation is even more insane.

I’m taking my kids out tomorrow so we can leave and spend more time with different family members are a long drive away.
DC is transient and lot of us don’t have family in the area and flying is too expensive for us.
Hopefully they aren’t missing much but they will be bringing their laptops and have time to check for assignments etc during their trip.

I wish FCPS would move over some of the other random days off and give the kids this whole week. Two days is so pointless.

I'm sure there will be a lot of absences on Tuesday.

My kid also had 3 tests today ... but that has no bearing on his attendance tomorrow, because it's a different set of classes. One of his classes tomorrow (Tuesday) has a long-term project due. The teacher has been advertising this project for a month. It's not a hard project. Students were encouraged to turn it in early. My student chose to wait until yesterday to finish the project, so he needs to go to school on Tuesday. He was complaining to me that most of his friends are skipping tomorrow (I think "most" is a strong exaggeration based on what I've heard from other parents, but I'm sure some are). I asked him when those friends turned in the project? "Last week". Hmmm.... maybe a good learning moment for my kid. High five to that teacher!