Dumb educational trends

[Oney Jones]

*Example of meaningless time intensive project: My dd13 is in public school this year. They are currently doing a unit on poetry. They aren't learning about any poets, or reading classic or well known poetry. Instead, they wrote 10 original poems. For one of these poems, instead of writing it out on paper or the computer, they were to search magazines for the words, cut the words out, and paste them on a piece of paper. So far my dd has spent at least three hours on this ridiculous cut and paste job, because it's hard to find words like "smashing" and "tidbit" in a magazine. The teacher told them if they couldn't find the actual word, they could cut out individual letters and spell it that way. :banghead:

 

Great skill to learn.....if you want to assemble ransom notes...:tongue_smilie::tongue_smilie:

 

 

I'm having way too much fun with this thread! :lol:

Edited June 9, 2010 by Oney Jones

[m0mmaBuck]

:smilielol5:

 

 

I hated the (seriously!!) "What I Did Over Summer Vacation" essays. My dad worked. My mom worked. My brother and I fought. Not much to write about.

 

LOL! I lived on a farm as did about 90% of my classmates. Umm... We farmed! I wonder if the teacher really read all of those essays about picking rock, milking cows, and mowing hay.

[SusanAR]

My kids did "touch-point math" too- adnyone remember it?

[m0mmaBuck]

My kids did "touch-point math" too- adnyone remember it?

 

http://www.oja-sda.com/Files/1TouchPointMath.pdf

 

It's what the PS here still uses.

[simka2]

My kids did "touch-point math" too- adnyone remember it?

 

dd9 did it last year in ps! Thankfully she is naturally good at math!

[Nan in Mass]

I had open classrooms. I liked them, too. And when I got to college, I had no trouble concentrating in the noisy dorms GRIN.

[FaithManor]

This is a sad but true story about journaling. When I was in 4th grade, one of the boys in my class - a really nice boy who could always be counted on for an interesting conversation - received an F on his six week journal assignment which was supposed to be essentially "what happened to me today". It wasn't because he wrote poorly, he was actually a fine writer and his vocabulary was better than most of the teachers! LOL But, my nasty, rotten, egg-head teacher gave him an F because "Nothing interesting ever happens to you! It was boring to read. Can't you do something besides feed cows, muck out, and gather eggs?"

 

I guess, in the educational world, it is possible for your life to be given a failing grade for lack of stimulating content! He was such a nice kid...truly, a gem to know.

 

Wow, another one of my oh so many traumatic memories of school.

 

Dh would like you to know that the most disturbing educational trend he recalls is that two weeks before his kindergarten school year began, his parents moved out of state. He was four years old but close enough to the cut-off to start school in the new area. His family was living in a rental house, not their permanent home while they waited to take possession of their new property. The local school district had just started a new experimental kindergarten program in which the classes were divided up amongst the "fast learners or smart kids" and the "slow, probably going to end up in special ed anyway" kids with virtually no child falling in the middle - apparently special ed funding had just been given a big state increase. The test to determine your placement was whether or not you could say your address and phone number from memory. Since his parents had been unaware of this requirement to enter kindergarten and they weren't even living at what was to be their permanent address, they hadn't bothered to help him learn this information. Because he was also somewhat shy, having just moved, he was sent to a special education classroom without an evaluation. Don't know your address=learning disability. They never informed his parents. When he hit first grade and didn't seem to be making any move towards reading, his dad taught him to read. Dh graduated from college with a 3.89 grade point average with three majors and two minors and all in four years. He always felt he should have written a letter to his old school district and told them what he thought of their evaluation techniques.

 

Faith

[ChemMommy]

Because, supposedly, students need to learn to work cooperatively so they can be successful as adult workers! THIS IS HOOEY!!

 

I frequently teach the second half of class where the faculty member does super hard group exams. The students at the top of the class do all the work because they want their A's for med school. The students at the bottom do nothing because they know they don't have to. All of the students fail to get any knowledge into their brains; they are completely dependent on their notes.

 

Then comes second semester where I require them to do it on their own. What a shock! Every single year the bottom 25% of the class drops because they have learned nothing in first semester and have no foundation to build on. I see these same students in summer school where they routinely confess that they did not participate in group exams, learned nothing, and really regret having group exams. Group exams will cost them $5500 of summer tuition plus lost wages!!

 

Even the best students are surprised to hear that they can't use their notes on exams anymore. And panicked! I look at them as ask if they will use their notes on the MCAT. That's the last I hear about their complaints!

 

Yes, the group exams allow the best students to wrestle with some hard problems but it is a disservice to the class as a whole. Why is it done? The faculty member ends up grading 8 exams rather than 70. 'Nuff said!

[OhM]

Other than exterior walls, walls around bathrooms, and the walls around administrator's office, NO WALLS between classrooms. You could literally see into the room next to yours. Very noisy and distracting. Stupid, stupid idea.

 

LOL - I went to high school in a building that had been designed with open classrooms ~5-10 years before. It had failed miserably by the time I was there, so we got all these half-a$$ed demountable and portable walls in a futile attempt to enclose and separate the classes. It DID NOT work effectively!

 

Funny thing - my dad sat on the committee that built these buildings.

[Oney Jones]

My kids did "touch-point math" too- adnyone remember it?

 

 

I did touch math...thank God I'm homeschooling cuz I learned to ADD with Steve Demme's Math U See and the manipulatives right along with my boys!

[Nan in Mass]

Who had Napiar's Bones instead of learning their multiplication tables? I became really fast at making boxes of dots and counting them GRIN. I don't think it actually hurt me any. I eventually was made to learn the facts in 8th grade algebra, where we stood up and recited them (excruciatingly embarassing but I learned them), but in the meanwhile, I had a really, really solid grasp of exactly what the basic operations meant because essentially I used manipulatives until algrebra LOL.

 

I had SRA reading (after Dick and Jane) until I outgrew it and got switched to individualized reading, where I read a book, looked up 10 words from it and wrote their meanings down (I faked it since I could never find words I didn't know), and then went and discussed it with a teacher. I liked SRA reading.

 

I had a math cart, too, which I loved. Pre-test, work sheet, post-test, go back if you didn't make it through the post-test. It was nice and orderly and I loved working through it on my own and not having to wait for anybody else or worry if I didn't get something right away.

 

I also had open concept. I loved this, too. It meant my friends and I could work on our math together on the floor, and that I could curl up with my little sister (in a diffrent grade) in a sunny window sill when I did my reading, and that I could go read in the library whenever I wanted because the teachers could just peak over the balcony to check on me. It was a HUGE shock when I moved to a traditional classroom in 6th grade and had to deal with bells and doors and desks. Huge. I was really depressed and miserable and hated school with a passion from then on. I was relieved to go back to no walls in high school, even though the classes were structured traditionally. It wasn't stuffy and smelly. I had no trouble concentrating. It was nice, in fact, to hear the other classes going on. When yours got boring, you could still learn. I learned a lot of anthropology in my English class GRIN.

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Wow! Where is this happening?

[Joker]

He would come home with these math problems with dots and/or double dots on each number. Then he would commence to counting the dots to add or subtract. Horrible. Even after 6 mos of homeschooling and knowing that he knows the answers, he still taps the numbers.

 

I learned this way too. I can see a problem and instantly know the answer but I will still "tap" (I learned on a dice model and that is still how I tap) before I commit to writing an answer down. I hate it and know I am doing it but cannot seem to stop.:001_huh:

[m0mmaBuck]

Wow! Where is this happening?

 

right here in Olympia, WA. Blech!

[ImmigrantsWife]

My schooling seemed okay I guess, but I have to say that a school my 2 oldest kids went to was pretty bad ( a VERY expensive mistake). In KG they just played with blocks and beads all year learning patterns for the "Pattern Museum." Their math "HW" in first grade had questions like- "If math was a color, what color would it be?" WHAAAAAT?!?! I can't believe we paid for that garbage. It took us years to catch him up in Math.

Their spelling tests were uber-easy and not even graded, and if they missed a test they didn't even have to make it up. In fact , no grades were even even given in anything until 5th grade, and even then it was optional. Each subject just got classified as "doing well," "doing above average," and "very advanced." See, no bad ranking, no bad students at the school.

Oh yeah, and recess THREE times a day. What was I thinking?

[Susan in KY]

Actually KidWriting is very powerful!.... I wish that teachers got the respect that we deserve. I work hard everyday devoting all of my extra time to teaching, and I know that I do a phenomenal job of educating the many students that cross my path! I just wish people like you guys saw that.

 

"People like you guys" happen to include a number of ex-teachers. I am one; there are MANY others on these boards. I think it's safe to say that no one here disrespects the job you do, especially if you manage to accomplish even *part* of it in the educational climate in our public schools today. Hats off to you.

 

We all recognize that the educational system is generally broken. Therefore, we don't place our children in it any more than we have to. A number of us have left paid teaching positions to teach our own children at home.

Edited June 9, 2010 by Susan in KY

[Violet Crown]

I had a math cart, too, which I loved. Pre-test, work sheet, post-test, go back if you didn't make it through the post-test. It was nice and orderly and I loved working through it on my own and not having to wait for anybody else or worry if I didn't get something right away.

 

Oh I remember the math cart, and pre-tests and post-tests from 6th grade. My (eventually) dh and I, along with a handful of other mathy kids, finished the last post-test (pre-algebra), and ... there was nothing else. So we came to math class and sat around each day, because the teachers didn't have anything else for us.

 

Dh's mom was a teacher in the local elementary school, and made sure the next year that dh was advanced properly according to his math ability. Everybody else, the next year, went back to their 'proper' grade level (previous to pre-algebra).

 

Other lousy school reform ideas:

 

middle school

abolition of meaningful graduation exams

'language arts' (instead of English)

'social studies' (instead of history/geography)

[Rosie_0801]

Oh yeah, and recess THREE times a day. What was I thinking?

 

I didn't realise this was abnormal until reading on here. We had three breaks each day when I was at school. It seems sensible to me.

 

Rosie

[Kim in Appalachia]

Oh, and those self-taught spelling folder programs from the 70s. You get a folder (say, yellow-level), work through all the words with your "partner," put the folder back in the file box, pull out the next folder. You move up the color levels. My classmate, Christine, and I worked through the whole box. After that, we were told to read, because we had "finished spelling." In third grade.

 

 

I didn't have the spelling like that, I had math like that. I think we did math that way, self taught and going at your own level, for 2 years. The sheets we wrote on were wipe off. So after the teacher checked your work it was wiped clean and put back on the cart.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

Some of the recent things I have heard about would make school a no-go for us. I absolutely loathe the idea of kids journaling (is that even a word?).

:iagree:

[chiguirre]

What's the deal with using Touchpoint in regular ed classes? I thought it was meant for special needs kids (for whom it works very well).

[angela in ohio]

What's the deal with using Touchpoint in regular ed classes? I thought it was meant for special needs kids (for whom it works very well).

 

It was developed for special needs students, but then someone took it and started using it for typical students. :glare: It should be used as a method of last reosrt even for special needs students. Dh was trained to use it in his cross-categorical classroom (LDs, etc.,) and very few of the students needed it. Most did regular math work. The idea of using concrete materials (touching dots, manipulatives, etc.) with students past early elementary comes from the needs of special education students.

[Shawneinfl]

In 5th and 6th grade they instituted a new math program which used audio cassettes to do all the teaching. For a visual learner this was a disaster. It took me years to recover mathematically.

[Ester Maria]

In 5th and 6th grade they instituted a new math program which used audio cassettes to do all the teaching.

:001_huh:

You're kidding, right??

[jplain]

Current trends: Elimination of recess time. That's just STUPID! Come on, even adult workers get periodic breaks. Do we really think that young children are going to do their best work without periodic downtime?

 

From my own schooling days:

 

1. Watching movies in class: In sophomore world history class, we watched the miniseries Shogun (all 10 episodes, with fast-forwarding of R-rated bits) and The Lion in Winter. I didn't learn a darn thing in history. In my junior English class we watched Midnight Cowboy (fast-forwarding the R-rated parts), as an example of existentialism. :blink: In my freshman Spanish class we watched El Norte. That one was worthwhile, but shouldn't have taken up so many instructional periods. It should have been an optional after-school activity.

 

2. Ridiculous essay questions on standardized tests. One year I was asked to write an essay about a traumatic experience. So I'm supposed to write a deeply personal piece for an unknown adult reader? No thanks. I made something up.

[mcconnellboys]

I think the biggest general trend I've seen over these past decades is that all of education seems to be an open experiment, with constantly changing parameters. Scientists don't constantly change the parameters of their experiments while they are in progress. I'm not sure why teachers think they can do this with any success.

 

It's sort of like brainstorming gone wild, LOL. It's great to brainstorm ideas, but at some point you have to stop and try to implement at least one of them. And you need to give it enough time to see if it's going to work. You can't change horses in mid-stream, so to speak. You can't have a new "plan" every school year, which goes in an entirely different direction from the year prior. This sort of thing just leaves everyone confused and frustrated.

 

Looking at the educational system in most schools around me, I feel sort of like I'm at the Mad Hatter's tea party, "All Change!" Or what program is it where they say, "And now, for something COMPLETELY different!"? It's just sheer, utter chaos and madness. I'm not sure how anyone ever accomplishes ANY learning. I do think it's a testament to the ability of the human brain that learning is able to still take place at least for some kids under these sorts of conditions. But just imagine what a brainy population we'd be if learning could take place in a stable environment.....

[lovemyboys]

My husband had the open classroom thing in 1st grade. 3 classes--90 kids!--with 3 teachers. He says it was very very noisy, and everyone got sick a lot. My elem. school built a whole new jr. high with 'pods' that had 4 connected classrooms and a central place for the teacher to work. I shudder to think what it must have been like, but pretty soon they built walls.

 

Amazingly, open classrooms are STILL being promoted as the wave of the future in some places. One of my favorite education bloggers said this a while back:

 

Imagine anyone with dyslexia, aspergers, sensory-processing issues....many of which were undiagnosed in those days. :glare: Those were just a mess for all kids -- the chaos, noise level, distractions, lack of focus on one subject, often (always?) sitting on floors or carpetted tiers rather at desks.

[Jean in Newcastle]

My schooling seemed okay I guess, but I have to say that a school my 2 oldest kids went to was pretty bad ( a VERY expensive mistake). In KG they just played with blocks and beads all year learning patterns for the "Pattern Museum." Their math "HW" in first grade had questions like- "If math was a color, what color would it be?" WHAAAAAT?!?! I can't believe we paid for that garbage. It took us years to catch him up in Math.

Their spelling tests were uber-easy and not even graded, and if they missed a test they didn't even have to make it up. In fact , no grades were even even given in anything until 5th grade, and even then it was optional. Each subject just got classified as "doing well," "doing above average," and "very advanced." See, no bad ranking, no bad students at the school.

Oh yeah, and recess THREE times a day. What was I thinking?

 

The 3 recesses are the one good thing in this list. Kids need time to explore and play.

[hsbaby]

I think it's been mentioned, but Touch Math was AWFUL!!! I STILL see little dots on numbers and count them up to add and subtract. Such a bad, bad habit. It was designed to be used in special education classes, yet somehow trickled out to the mainstream. I am sooooo slow at math because of this ridiculous method. That said, I actually have taught my 13 yr. old dd Touch Math:blush: However, she is Autistic. I attempted to teach her math with a more traditional approach and got NOWHERE. She was still unable to do basic addition/subtraction problems by the age of 13. So, I (reluctantly) taught her Touch Math this year and she can finally add/sub!! I would never use this method with my non-special ed. kids though!!!

[Oney Jones]

Who had Napiar's Bones instead of learning their multiplication tables?

-Nan

 

 

Never heard of 'em.

[Oney Jones]

I think the biggest general trend I've seen over these past decades is that all of education seems to be an open experiment, with constantly changing parameters. Scientists don't constantly change the parameters of their experiments while they are in progress. I'm not sure why teachers think they can do this with any success.

 

 

:iagree: However, I don't know that it's the teachers who are instigating the major changes. I think the local school teachers (bless them!) are trying to keep up with the idiots at the state departments of education as much as the kids are.

 

Small group of kids-- tutoring-- My kind of learning.

[shannatheshedevil]

In my freshman Spanish class we watched El Norte. That one was worthwhile, but shouldn't have taken up so many instructional periods. It should have been an optional after-school activity.

 

Oh god, I watched that in Spanish class, too. The rat scene still gives me nightmares. *shudder*

[angela in ohio]

:iagree: However, I don't know that it's the teachers who are instigating the major changes. I think the local school teachers (bless them!) are trying to keep up with the idiots at the state departments of education as much as the kids are.

 

Small group of kids-- tutoring-- My kind of learning.

 

It originates in the teacher education programs. Professors who have never actually taught students in a school come up with new theoretical methods of education. After all I've seen, I really blame the universities more than the rest for the failures of our schools.

[CLHCO]

It originates in the teacher education programs. Professors who have never actually taught students in a school come up with new theoretical methods of education. After all I've seen, I really blame the universities more than the rest for the failures of our schools.

 

:lol: Yeah, that's not meant to be funny, but it is so true of *certain* fields of study in universities. People who have never been part of the group of which they're teaching or studying come up with the weirdest ideas. Child psychology alone has really been run through the ringer. Teachers who have had success are the ones I want to hear from, not educating theorists. Life's wisdom trumps the letters behind a name, in my opinion.

 

I was part of an open classroom. Stooopid. I was also of the first group of kids transferring out of junior high and into the new middle school concept. I admit, I don't care for "middle school".

[Perry]

It originates in the teacher education programs. Professors who have never actually taught students in a school come up with new theoretical methods of education. After all I've seen, I really blame the universities more than the rest for the failures of our schools.

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

[FaithManor]

I completely, wholeheartedly agree with Perry.

 

Too many educational decisions are made by those that don't stand in the trenches with real, live children and are clueless about child development, psychology, etc. It's ridiculous and teachers are forced to experiment on human beings and then become the scapegoats when the whole experiment is a dismal failure. It is a wonder that children survive!

 

I, for one, would just love to see universities and the government get out of the education business and turn schools over to local communities. Let the parents, teachers, and elected school boards of each district decide what is best for their kids without the encumbrance of looney university philosophies and the micro-management of a political system so corrupt that its answer to everything is 100 million dollars in research and a committe of white collar criminals to direct the spending!

 

Don't start me about what I think of most textbook publishing companies!

 

Faith

[angela in ohio]

I wish that instead of universities, prospective teachers had to study and work under a series of master teachers and then take subject area tests. Watching an expert teacher for a few weeks i more helpful to a young teacher than all of the theory in the world.

 

They do that, though. In the education program here, education students spend 100 hours observing observing, then complete a semester of student teaching. They also have to take subject area tests (the MTTC tests.) They are doing pretty well there. My reform would change the way that the professors become qualified and get hired. I would remove the politics and require years of teaching experience. It would also require universities to weed out poor teachers and allow school districts to more eaily fire (or send back for more training) those who aren't cutting it. (You know, in the perfect world in my head. :D)

[jplain]

They do that, though. In the education program here, education students spend 100 hours observing observing, then complete a semester of student teaching. They also have to take subject area tests (the MTTC tests.)

Yep, that's how it was for me in the early 2000's. I spent a semester observing approx 10 hours per week, and then another semester teaching 3 sections of high school biology. I worked closely with 2 mentor teachers, and I also had an evaluator from the school of education who observed my teaching several times and provided feedback. After completing my coursework and student teaching, I had to sit for a subject exam.

 

Edited to add: However, I do think that there should be a more formal transition period for the newly licensed teacher. I believe there should be "master teachers" heavily involved for 1-2 years when a brand new teacher gets his/her first teaching job. Team teaching and/or mentoring should be the norm.

 

As far as my education school coursework, maybe I got lucky. Nothing I was taught was horrifying. Most of it was Piaget-based, so while some would consider some of the ideas outdated, I doubt any of it would cause irreparable harm either. And though I wasn't a part of the early childhood or elementary education programs, I know my ed school was in favor of play-based preschool and gentle introduction of academics in kindergarten.

Edited June 9, 2010 by jplain

[susancollins]

We had group projects in high school where the whole group got one grade. We raised questions with the teacher about students who didn't do their part, they said that we would could make them through peer pressure or do the work ourselves. This was totally unfair for the students who did all the work and the others who got the same grade.

[Dana]

As far as my education school coursework, maybe I got lucky. Nothing I was taught was horrifying. Most of it was Piaget-based, so while some would consider some of the ideas outdated, I doubt any of it would cause irreparable harm either. And though I wasn't a part of the early childhood or elementary education programs, I know my ed school was in favor of play-based preschool and gentle introduction of academics in kindergarten.

 

Some of my education courses were pretty horrible.

We had some students in our program (math) who wouldn't have been able to pass a calculus course. I have noidea how one student in particular was accepted into the program (master's level).

 

Some of the education courses were okay for theory, but the one I hated was a "teaching of reading" course. This is for secondary instructors. I argued with the professor that it made sense to me to teach a student how to read a word problem - how to translate the English to math - but if a student couldn't read "Two trains are traveling..." then I really didn't see that as something I could remediate while getting them through their math class. His response was that he wouldn't want me teaching his kids then.

 

What I didn't think of until later is that if his kids couldn't read by high school, I wouldn't want to be teaching them either. :glare:

 

None of the graduate level education courses were tougher than any of my undergraduate subject courses - in any subject.

 

I'm sure there are education programs that are good and that really prepare students to be good teachers. Mine wasn't.

 

(And we also did have a practicum where we observed in schools for one semester and student teaching where we taught for one semester. Just convinced me that teaching in the high schools was NOT for me. Of my program, I think only 3-4 of 15-20 students are still teaching in the K-12 level.)

[Rosie_0801]

I wish that instead of universities, prospective teachers had to study and work under a series of master teachers and then take subject area tests. Watching an expert teacher for a few weeks i more helpful to a young teacher than all of the theory in the world.

 

Splutter, splutter! But they have to be writing! Looking won't teach anyone anything! They have to be writing stuff!

 

Rosie

[Caroline]

I wish that instead of universities, prospective teachers had to study and work under a series of master teachers and then take subject area tests. Watching an expert teacher for a few weeks i more helpful to a young teacher than all of the theory in the world.

 

I am currently working with a local university to change their teacher prep program. The final two years of the program will take place almost entirely in the k12 schools. All of the education courses will be co-taught by a university professor and a k12 teacher. Many of the content courses will be taught at the high school, giving the high school students the opportunity to take the content courses. For example, the second and third semester calculus courses will be taught at the high school, and high school students can dual enroll to take them. Same with history and lit courses. The pilot program starts next year, and we are all anxious to see how it works.

 

Another big push with the program is getting the parents, guardians, grandparents, community people involved in the teacher prep and in-service teacher professional development.

[mcconnellboys]

Oh, exactly! It's the state departments of education that are driving the constantly changing experiments. The teachers are just so many captives used to drive them along.....

[LinzluvsGJ]

Here are a few of mine:

open classrooms

 

 

OMG I hate open classrooms in schools! I did classroom assistance/observation in college in a class that had an open classroom setting. For third graders. 3 different classes and a resource center with computers set up in the middle, it was a nightmare. The kids in the back of the class couldn't hear because the class behind them was doing a different topic, the teacher couldn't correct it by talking louder because then the kids in the other class couldn't hear their teacher, when their class would get up to go do something, the other classes would be disturbed by it. It was just an overall bad setup!

[Oney Jones]

It originates in the teacher education programs. Professors who have never actually taught students in a school come up with new theoretical methods of education. After all I've seen, I really blame the universities more than the rest for the failures of our schools.

 

 

OK that makes sense Angela. Thanks for clarifying!

[mcconnellboys]

And now it's getting dumber. Kids are being taught to memorize math facts to rap music.....(other things, too....)

[mcconnellboys]

I can NOT understand why schools continue to ask students to discuss things they have not yet studied in depth or do projects in areas that may be totally new and foreign to them. What on earth can be learned by this? I've also read science books that just ask kids to start randomly hypothesizing before they know a thing about the subject at hand.....

[Guest claypow58]

I went to school in the mid-60's and learned to read using the Initial Training Alphabet in 1st grade. It was a straight 44-character phoneme alphabet and it was phenomenal. All the students in my class remained in the highest reading groups-at least through 4th grade when I moved to another town.

 

The second half of 1st grade, my family was in Florida for my father's work and subsequently, I missed the transition to a regular alphabet. It was not an issue and I was reading 5th grade books in 2nd grade (my sister had to get books for me, as the school library only let you take out for your grade level and she was in 5th at the time).

 

Anyway, I am currently pursuing my Master's in Reading Education and am researching ITA, which is what brought me here.

 

Are any classical curriculums utilizing this method? If so, has it been effective or not? Thanks

[Tiberia]

When I was in Elementary School we had the "Mod-Pod" system. This was early 70's in the Denver area.

 

Mod stood for Modules. I was never sure what that meant. The Pods were groups of open classroom areas for about 120 students, divided up into groups of 20 students, for various classes (English, math, science, etc). We'd rotate to different teachers in our Pod, depending on our "personal" schedule.

 

It was supposed to make everyone feel good and "equal" about learning, but even the kids knew Pod 3 had the lower achieving students in it; Pod 5 had the middle students; Pod 7 had the "smart" students.

 

Sometimes it was set up like a college schedule. I remember one semester when I had only a music class on Thursdays. The rest of the day I got to read in the Pod Study Room.

 

I thought everyone used this system until I got to college and people gave me really funny looks when I told them we had the Mod-Pod system. I sounds really weird to me too now! :001_smile:

[akmommy]

I didn't realise this was abnormal until reading on here. We had three breaks each day when I was at school. It seems sensible to me.

 

We had three recess breaks all through elementary school and when my oldest went to PS for K and first they had three. For elementary I would say this is very reasonable and a positive thing. If young kids are given regular breaks for physical activity I believe they are more prepared to sit still and pay attention during class time.

 

Oh, the thing I hated most about my schooling were Dick and Jane readers. I was reading real books before I started K. Our K class was broke up into reading groups and even the most advanced group was still using Dick and Jane readers. I can not stand the style of writing; it an insult to even a 5 year olds intelligence IMHO.

 

The things I hated most about the 2 years my oldest was in PS were invented spelling, as a parent volunteer it drove me crazy that I wasn't allowed to help those 5/6 olds spell a word when asked, and Whatever Math Program her first grade teacher was using. They had math journals, used calculators, and played games. The games weren't a bad thing, but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it and at the end of the year the only written work we saw for the whole year was her math journal with about 10 pages that contained 1-3 written math problems and rest was blank.