4 ms·

Wait, when did this stop being the norm?

sokoloff 4y ago
My district stopped it a few years ago because teachers complained that "it was too hard to learn to teach both third and fourth grade" (and so they wanted to only teach a single grade). I've never been a professional elementary school teacher, but that doesn't seem to be a Herculean task.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Many school districts require "lesson plans" to be submitted for darn near everything, and it is much easier to just recycle the same pile of lesson plans each year than actually create new ones. I suspect much of the "lesson plan" submission stuff is TPS-level busywork.
  - idontpost 4y ago
    > I suspect much of the "lesson plan" submission stuff is TPS-level busywork. Yes and no. The submission part is certainly pointless. No one reads them after the day they're used. But having a plan each day is kind of important and well supported by data as a beneficial practice. Source: Escaped Teacher.
    - TimPC 4y ago
      Agree 100%. Micromanaging someone’s lessons by actually reviewing the plans is an exercise in frustration and futility. But as a student you’d know when your teacher showed up unprepared and tried to wing it.
- helloooooooo 4y ago
  The teacher has to adapt to the curriculum, develop material for it that suits the students and their own teaching styles. All while teaching kids all day. This consumes a lot of time, and is incredibly mentally taxing.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > I've never been a professional elementary school teacher, but that doesn't seem to be a Herculean task. Right now a teacher is saying the same thing about a web developer who can't even figure out why their Word keeps crashing.
- jedberg 4y ago
  If you're a professional programmer, it would be the same as asking you as a full stack developer to develop a monolith in a datacenter using java on Windows this year and then next year asking you to develop microservices in Python using linux on Kubernetes. The high level skills are similar, but the details are all different.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    The details of 3rd and 4th grade are that different now?
    - jedberg 4y ago
      Yes. For one, science and social studies cover completely different topics. For two, even the math and English cover very different parts of those topics. And 3rd to 4th is also a huge transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn". 4th grade is the first time kids are expected to learn new information on their own from reading it, so it's a very different teaching experience. Changing grades is like starting again as a brand new teacher.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Thanks for the thought-provoking reply, raising several issues I hadn't considered. It does seem like an inordinately high percentage of third grade teachers are able to learn the equivalent of python microservices on k8s on linux in a single summer as I rarely hear of a teacher being unable to make the leap between 3rd and 4th grade instruction (or vice versa) while developers who are unable to rapidly switch ecosystems is quite common. It is work to be sure, but success seems fairly assured.

My district stopped it a few years ago because teachers complained that "it was too hard to learn to teach both third and fourth grade" (and so they wanted to only teach a single grade). I've never been a professional elementary school teacher, but that doesn't seem to be a Herculean task.

bombcar 4y ago
Many school districts require "lesson plans" to be submitted for darn near everything, and it is much easier to just recycle the same pile of lesson plans each year than actually create new ones. I suspect much of the "lesson plan" submission stuff is TPS-level busywork.
- idontpost 4y ago
  > I suspect much of the "lesson plan" submission stuff is TPS-level busywork. Yes and no. The submission part is certainly pointless. No one reads them after the day they're used. But having a plan each day is kind of important and well supported by data as a beneficial practice. Source: Escaped Teacher.
  - TimPC 4y ago
    Agree 100%. Micromanaging someone’s lessons by actually reviewing the plans is an exercise in frustration and futility. But as a student you’d know when your teacher showed up unprepared and tried to wing it.
helloooooooo 4y ago
The teacher has to adapt to the curriculum, develop material for it that suits the students and their own teaching styles. All while teaching kids all day. This consumes a lot of time, and is incredibly mentally taxing.
pessimizer 4y ago
> I've never been a professional elementary school teacher, but that doesn't seem to be a Herculean task. Right now a teacher is saying the same thing about a web developer who can't even figure out why their Word keeps crashing.
jedberg 4y ago
If you're a professional programmer, it would be the same as asking you as a full stack developer to develop a monolith in a datacenter using java on Windows this year and then next year asking you to develop microservices in Python using linux on Kubernetes. The high level skills are similar, but the details are all different.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  The details of 3rd and 4th grade are that different now?
  - jedberg 4y ago
    Yes. For one, science and social studies cover completely different topics. For two, even the math and English cover very different parts of those topics. And 3rd to 4th is also a huge transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn". 4th grade is the first time kids are expected to learn new information on their own from reading it, so it's a very different teaching experience. Changing grades is like starting again as a brand new teacher.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Thanks for the thought-provoking reply, raising several issues I hadn't considered. It does seem like an inordinately high percentage of third grade teachers are able to learn the equivalent of python microservices on k8s on linux in a single summer as I rarely hear of a teacher being unable to make the leap between 3rd and 4th grade instruction (or vice versa) while developers who are unable to rapidly switch ecosystems is quite common. It is work to be sure, but success seems fairly assured.