I share these things because I feel like it makes me feel more confident in my homeschooling so I figured others might like to know this stuff. My sister is a teacher in our local district and I can honestly say, one of the better ones. I visit her school a certain amount and know a certain amount of teachers and she really does well with those children. OK....the district I live in has people in administration called curriculum directors and such. There are generally 2 directors per subject, per elementary or secondary. Their sole job is to make changes to the curriculum all year and get the word out. OK..let's start with, if they are sooo right about what they are doing, why do they need to change it all the time? At least twice a year, the teachers have to attend conferences with each set of directors (this means 2 times all the subjects) to go over the most recent changes. This is at least twice a year, but last year happened considerably more often and can happen more often any year. They do training in the 2 weeks prior to the school year to go over changes. But then in the fall, often receive changes and again in the spring and sometimes even more often. This may not sound like a big deal, but picture yourself, as a teacher with 25 children. You set up your room, write your lesson plans out, and get ready for the year. Then you have a conference, all new curriculum, all new things to implement. Now you run back to your classroom and try to go through everything and rewrite your lessons. Then in Sept, Oct, or even November, you get called to a conference. They changed their mind, now they want to rewrite something else. Usually, the rewriting is more of adding things in, not changing things, which means, they have to figure out how to fit MORE in. These changes generally are not for the better. Since you have multiple subjects, this happens multiple times through the fall and spring. Here it is, mid April, and my sister had to have a sub for the day so she could go and listen to a lecture on a new vocabulary program to go along with all the other programs. The program is a ridiculous one as it is. And they already have too many vocabulary programs. My sister was telling me how they completely micromanage, but, these directors have not been in the classroom in decades. Recently, one week, her class had 70 vocabulary words. The directors said these words MUST be placed on index cards. So the students spent days on end just putting them on index cards and taking index cards home trying to get them done. Then they had their test and grades and never used them again. This new vocab program is in addition to what they are already doing, not replacing. Did I already mention they are grade schoolers? AND, the teachers were informed that any student who did not pass the tests on the words would have to go to summer school. This applies to Kinder also..all the grades. Ok...so...see the problem here? These children do not even have time to do any meaningful learning or to even be children as they spend hours and hours on making index cards for excessive amounts of vocab words that they will never remembered. These words are not even age appropriate. I remember one of the 3rd grade words being collinear. When someone tried to point out that these words were not age appropriate and would not come up in reading or any of the subjects, the directors responded with the notion that this children in this district are extra smart and can handle it. Ohhh kay. I think I mentioned in the past that they have spent so much time on vocab words in math that the children do not have time for actual calculations. The school constantly is recommending summer school and summer tutoring. They want to keep the test scores up, but do not want to actually teach any math that the children will eventually need. They also charge for summer tutoring and summer school so the district makes a fair amount of money off of it. OK..thought I would share. I hope I was not too confusing. But..even if I was..the whole point is how chaotic and confusing everything is.
My dh is a newbie ps board member. It will be interesting to have the inside scoop with regard to the inner-workings of the ps system.
