PP-

I taught in DMV area for a year. The schools were very different from where I had student taught. They did not teach spelling or grammar, did not teach phonics, did not have textbooks, did not allow me to call on students to read out loud as a class or do red pen corrections on drafts as they said it would hurt their feelings.

I am now a substitute back in a very nice school district in MA. Kids have workbooks and textbooks. Teachers get the teacher edition. Parents volunteer to come in and make copies for the teachers, but they don’t even need as many as in DMV area since they have are provided with resources like textbooks and workbooks. They have weekly spelling tests. I’ve been in kindergarten classes where the kids are learning a sentence starts with a capital and has end punctuation, something many of the advanced fourth graders in DMV area did not seem to know (bc the schools did not want teachers teaching how to write explicitly, they just wanted kids to write without being taught how to do so). The kids where I am now do read aloud as a class where teachers call on kids, do pop corn reading, or pull a name from a cup. They do remind kids they can pass and I believe this is because there are always a few students who struggling with reading and may be too anxious to read for the class but I haven’t seen many kids ask to pass. I think it’s good they have that option but even some who see a reading specialist and struggle go for it when it’s their turn. I’ve seen first graders write a paragraph and in 5th they do a five paragraph essay. They have reading anthologies. It’s a lot like when I was a kid in the 90’d and a lot like where I student taught.

When I taught in DMV area I had a lot of admin and fellow teachers almost pick on me for asking about textbooks and spelling tests. I had an admin ask why I wanted to be a teacher if I wanted a set curriculum to follow. It honestly really soured teaching for me. I did some long term subbing back home then worked an office job. The office job paid less than teaching but I’m still not sure I’d want to go back to teaching full time, so I’m just subbing to decide. I really do like the way the district I’m in right now does things. It’s a very wealthy area so I think parents can be a bit demanding, but teachers seem to have a great work life balance and they are paid very well.

I got off topic, but I’ve been in schools that only use Calkins for ELA and usually those kids cannot write. They just don’t know how and many teachers realize Calkins isn’t effective but have people above them telling them that’s the style they need to use to teach ELA and they cannot supplement by adding in things like spelling or dictation. Which reminds me that where I sub now, even the first graders do dictation.

I don’t think the pandemic is the issue for these eighth graders. I honestly bet they’re victims of a school district that used Calkins or something like it for k-5, so they will likely always struggle with writing. They just never learned what a paragraph is or what to capitalize. Never had spelling tests or learned phonics. It’s sadly happened to many kids in this country, but luckily many districts are moving away from it or at least allowing teachers to supplement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if they are tiny it is not relevant (except socially) its the high schoolers who really suffered.

No, the parents who never parented suffered.

well personally I can't teach algebra or trig, so sure you've got me!

Anonymous wrote:My sister in law is a public school ELA teacher and brought a stack of essays with her to my house as she’s staying over because her water heater flooded her apartment. I perused though some of them out of curiosity. She teaches the 8th grade. Some of these kids write like they are in elementary school. Serious and consistent spelling mistakes (read is raed, you are is ur, mention is mensin etc), failure to write more than 2 sentences for a 500 word essay, run on sentences, poor punctuation etc. She told me most of the kids are very behind and a good number should not proceed to high school. She said that in the last 3 years the overall quality of the work the kids are producing is down. How much do you think the pandemic hurt your child academically?

8th grade? Prob wasn’t the pandemic. They likely went to an elementary school that used Lucy Calkins only for ELA. They would’ve been in 5th when pandemic came, so my guess is they weren’t taught how to write in k-5 like they should have. It’s common in the schools that only used Calkins. Most are waking up to the fact that that curriculum ruined reading and writing for many kids and are moving away from it.

Anonymous wrote:if they are tiny it is not relevant (except socially) its the high schoolers who really suffered.

No, the parents who never parented suffered.

if they are tiny it is not relevant (except socially) its the high schoolers who really suffered.

Not at all. My kids were in 3rd and 5th grade. My oldest is in 8th grade and is excelling in middle school. Both my kids are in the fcps AAP program. I did put both of them in a summer writing class for 2 weeks last summer because their writing could use improvement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is so privileged, including my experience. We did private and a pod and hired a reading specialist for my K student. Of course he is fine.

Who was really hurt are lower-income students without family and financial support who were already disadvantaged and are now more so. It’s unfeeling not to recognize that pandemic learning loss affects those most who can least afford to face it. As a society we are failing the poor yet again but DCUMers are fine so let’s just not talk about it and/or pretend it isn’t happening!

Well, look at you!

I couldn't even dream of putting my kids in private even though they are a smart, hardworking bunch. Had no pod (no one near us to pod) so it was a little isolated, though it helped that I had multiple kids to play with each other. And I was the reading and math specialist for my kid.

It was a lot of work so I can't say that "fine" would be a given as you would be able to assume for your child. I'm happy to say that they are fine.
I answered the question for this thread, we made it through okay. But having been raised in tighter circumstances when I was younger, I know it would have been disastrous if the pandemic had happened when I was a kid as maybe you don’t.

So what do you want? Yes, every awful thing in the world will hit the poor in a more disastrous manner (illness/pandemic/climate change.)
So now that the small talk of how our kids are doing is over, what do you want done?

That is the thing…you shouldered a lot of work. So did I. Our kids are fine. The kids, as I said, WITHOUT FAMILY SUPPORT—which many lower income kids don’t have—are not OK. The school systems need to supplement more to make up for the loss. There is no one there for many of these kids at home. My brother is a teacher in a low-income school…many of his students have parents on meth and pills, they aren’t helping with homework. Don’t those kids deserve a chance like ours? Social supports, like the extra COVID money, should be paid for and used by school systems.

Income and family support are two different things. Plenty of lower income families worked with their kids. Plenty of high income choose not to and they are the ones like you complaining about it.

You are clearly clueless on what is going on. MCPS has offered multiple free tutoring opportunities - some unlimited - for over two years now. If families choose not to use them that's on them. Many of these kids struggled before covid but it was just ignored by people like you.

So, check your private school privilege and get a clue about the real issues. Bad teaching is a huge part of it - they teach for 5-10 minutes and then go into group discussion, lack of good curriculum, lack of reinforcement through classwork and homework and then reviewing the homework with the kids, etc. are a bigger problem.

Prior to covid, we heavily supplemented as we saw a huge gap in academics. Some of the privates we looked at had far worse curriculums.

Income is very relevant, because if I, like other wealthier people, don’t want to supplement my children’s education by personal effort, I can just hire tutors and specialists. Poor families who don’t have time or inclination can’t just hire a stand-in.

It’s great that you supplement on a low income, but there are many kids falling through the cracks.

I am not “complaining” about anything with respect to my children, my kids are fine and get any help they need, and I don’t mind paying for it. I am not even qualified to assist my oldest in maths, he is far above my competence so it would be a waste of time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids managed and came out ok. They're both very self-motivated so did fine on the academic side. I'm sure it's not what it could have been though. But as teenagers they missed out on some important things socially. Millions of kids had it worse.

But in retrospect, closing public schools for a year and a half - while privates were allowed to stay open, not to mention all of red America - was disastrous. Just read some of the comments here. We collectively decided to throw public school kids under the bus. Unforgivable. A complete societal failure.

Where were they closed a year and a half? In VA, it was March 2020 to March 2021.

Can't remember the exact details for FCPS -- how soon we forget! -- but I think only about 60-70% of the kids went in person in March of 2021, and you needed to have signed up to go in person at the start of the year, and the kids who were going in person were doing it one day on one day off, with Monday a planning day. So things weren't entirely open.

For us, we absolutely lucked out for Kid #3, who we signed up to go to a private K the week before shutdown. They opened almost on time, did a great job, only a couple of weeks were virtual throughout the year. So he had not quite as good an experience as he could have had, but it was remarkably normal. Second year, though, we sent him back to public and he somewhat stagnated because so many of his new classmates had been stuck on the ipads for their K experience.

Kid #2's public school did exceptionally well with virtual school and in any case we ramped up supplementation. So she wasn't far behind where she would otherwise have been.

Kid #1's public school did a horrible job, and him + screens = inattention disaster. Supplementation could only go so far. We gave up midway through the school year and homeschooled; academically he may have wound up ahead of where he would otherwise have been. But physically he did very badly; closure of activities and sports leagues really hurt.

A lot! My kid missed the end of second grade and most of third grade. We got a tutor during the summer between 2nd and 3rd when we realized how behind she was in reading (this obvously started prior to the pandemic but we really only saw it when school moved virtual). We continued with the tutor when we saw that 3rd grade would also be virtual (aka non-existent). Now she is in 5th and I think she's okay with reading but writing is still behind. She seems to be making a lot of progress this year so hopefully we're through it. But overall the pandemic was very bad and I do wonder if we will be seeing kids for many years who lack some kind of foundational learning blocks.

No. My kids go to Catholic school and other than March-June 2020, they attended in-person school.

Academically- Her other grades haven’t dropped but she was already having difficulty with math pre-pandemic and the pandemic just made it worse. She seems to have bounced back and currently has a high B in eighth grade pre-algebra.

Socially- DD and her best friend got in a fight the day before Spring Break 2020 and since they don’t attend the same middle school, they never got back together. DD didn’t go to school at all during the 2020-21 school year and looking back she admits the reason she didn’t want to go to school was so she could avoid friend drama. On the first day of seventh grade another friend iced her out. She found friends and became somewhat popular and when she switched schools halfway through the year she found her group too. Now she’s in eighth and was bullied at the beginning of the year and is now being excluded. It’s probably because she switched schools, not bc of Covid but it really is hurting her going from semi-popular to a complete outcast. Even her friends at her new school treat her like the person you hang out with when you have no other options. Most likely will end up switching back to public.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is so privileged, including my experience. We did private and a pod and hired a reading specialist for my K student. Of course he is fine.

Who was really hurt are lower-income students without family and financial support who were already disadvantaged and are now more so. It’s unfeeling not to recognize that pandemic learning loss affects those most who can least afford to face it. As a society we are failing the poor yet again but DCUMers are fine so let’s just not talk about it and/or pretend it isn’t happening!

Well, look at you!

I couldn't even dream of putting my kids in private even though they are a smart, hardworking bunch. Had no pod (no one near us to pod) so it was a little isolated, though it helped that I had multiple kids to play with each other. And I was the reading and math specialist for my kid.

It was a lot of work so I can't say that "fine" would be a given as you would be able to assume for your child. I'm happy to say that they are fine.
I answered the question for this thread, we made it through okay. But having been raised in tighter circumstances when I was younger, I know it would have been disastrous if the pandemic had happened when I was a kid as maybe you don’t.

So what do you want? Yes, every awful thing in the world will hit the poor in a more disastrous manner (illness/pandemic/climate change.)
So now that the small talk of how our kids are doing is over, what do you want done?

That is the thing…you shouldered a lot of work. So did I. Our kids are fine. The kids, as I said, WITHOUT FAMILY SUPPORT—which many lower income kids don’t have—are not OK. The school systems need to supplement more to make up for the loss. There is no one there for many of these kids at home. My brother is a teacher in a low-income school…many of his students have parents on meth and pills, they aren’t helping with homework. Don’t those kids deserve a chance like ours? Social supports, like the extra COVID money, should be paid for and used by school systems.

These kind of problems.. support from a school would be s few drops in the bucket. There absolutely needs to be aid for these kids, but not led by the education system.

Why not? The education system is the perfect place to deal with this by hiring and staffing before/after school programs, summer programs, etc so these kids have a safe place to go where they can get the extra academic support kids from functional households get from their parents. Including access to therapists, mentors, etc.

I'm not saying you are wrong, but that is not the structure in place now except in some local areas that decided to take this on. You are talking about weaving together resources to create a safety net for these kids. That takes fundamental change in how most people/municipalities view the educational system.

That should happen, but if just education takes the lead, you don't get adequate support for the concept and all you are left with is people like your brother pouring out their life blood for these kids trying to save them when really there should be support from the top down.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids managed and came out ok. They're both very self-motivated so did fine on the academic side. I'm sure it's not what it could have been though. But as teenagers they missed out on some important things socially. Millions of kids had it worse.

But in retrospect, closing public schools for a year and a half - while privates were allowed to stay open, not to mention all of red America - was disastrous. Just read some of the comments here. We collectively decided to throw public school kids under the bus. Unforgivable. A complete societal failure.

Where were they closed a year and a half? In VA, it was March 2020 to March 2021.

Lots of DC schools did not open or did not have space for all kids that wanted to go in person in Spring, 2021. So many kids weren't allowed inside a school building between March 2020 and didn't open until Fall of 2021.

Same in Virginia. My kid could go back 2 days a week, but her teacher was only appearing virtually to those kids. She didn't see a teacher in person until Fall 2021.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is so privileged, including my experience. We did private and a pod and hired a reading specialist for my K student. Of course he is fine.

Who was really hurt are lower-income students without family and financial support who were already disadvantaged and are now more so. It’s unfeeling not to recognize that pandemic learning loss affects those most who can least afford to face it. As a society we are failing the poor yet again but DCUMers are fine so let’s just not talk about it and/or pretend it isn’t happening!

Well, look at you!

I couldn't even dream of putting my kids in private even though they are a smart, hardworking bunch. Had no pod (no one near us to pod) so it was a little isolated, though it helped that I had multiple kids to play with each other. And I was the reading and math specialist for my kid.

It was a lot of work so I can't say that "fine" would be a given as you would be able to assume for your child. I'm happy to say that they are fine.
I answered the question for this thread, we made it through okay. But having been raised in tighter circumstances when I was younger, I know it would have been disastrous if the pandemic had happened when I was a kid as maybe you don’t.

So what do you want? Yes, every awful thing in the world will hit the poor in a more disastrous manner (illness/pandemic/climate change.)
So now that the small talk of how our kids are doing is over, what do you want done?

That is the thing…you shouldered a lot of work. So did I. Our kids are fine. The kids, as I said, WITHOUT FAMILY SUPPORT—which many lower income kids don’t have—are not OK. The school systems need to supplement more to make up for the loss. There is no one there for many of these kids at home. My brother is a teacher in a low-income school…many of his students have parents on meth and pills, they aren’t helping with homework. Don’t those kids deserve a chance like ours? Social supports, like the extra COVID money, should be paid for and used by school systems.

Income and family support are two different things. Plenty of lower income families worked with their kids. Plenty of high income choose not to and they are the ones like you complaining about it.

You are clearly clueless on what is going on. MCPS has offered multiple free tutoring opportunities - some unlimited - for over two years now. If families choose not to use them that's on them. Many of these kids struggled before covid but it was just ignored by people like you.

So, check your private school privilege and get a clue about the real issues. Bad teaching is a huge part of it - they teach for 5-10 minutes and then go into group discussion, lack of good curriculum, lack of reinforcement through classwork and homework and then reviewing the homework with the kids, etc. are a bigger problem.

Prior to covid, we heavily supplemented as we saw a huge gap in academics. Some of the privates we looked at had far worse curriculums.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard from both my kids' teachers that they're still seeing big issues with handwriting and social skills.

At the beginning of the year, a 4th grade teachers shared than about half of her students were still writing certain numbers backwards. This is likely due to reliance on tablets for math instruction during virtual and in the following year. The 4th grade teachers have reported lots of social issues too, particularly among the boys (who have been described as "wild" or "feral").

A first grade teacher shared that she was still teaching pencil grip and letter formation to her students this spring and that many were still very far behind in fine motor skills. She thought it was likely from missing years of preschool/daycare. She said she's still seeing social issues too.

My DD is in 4th grade and the handwriting is what her teacher commented on to us as well. My DD's handwriting was really bad at the beginning of the year and has improved considerably. I think what has helped has been the teacher's insistence on not using electronics for writing assignments. My DD has weekly essays and reports which are all handwritten. It was rough at the beginning but now it's fine- she started out complaining about writing a paragraph but she can now do a 2-3 page essay on different topics she's researching. My DD also disliked this teacher at the beginning because she was so strict with behavior but now really loves it when she compares to other 4th grade classes.

As for the OP's question, my DD was in 1st grade. School has been a struggle b/c she didn't learn through zoom. Getting her up to speed academically and also being able to handle a full day of school with behavioral and academic expectations was hard. I'm happy we had the transition period in a year where it didn't matter grade wise.

Even before covid, most schools stopped teaching handwriting and its one thing you need to work on at home. Then, come middle school, most things are on the computer.