Nicholas King said:I honestly don't see how the abstract concept of learning outcomes—which, by the way, isn't some localized invention—has anything to do with whether or not I actually grasp the specifics of this particular reform.
What I’m laying out here isn't a matter of bias or personal prejudice; these are simply cold, hard facts, not subjective opinions.
Besides, here’s a little challenge for you all: this forum is absolutely crawling with educators—so why don't all those professionals whose knowledge assessments are subject to external oversight before they're even administered step up? I'd love to see them write down exactly how they define a grade given to a student in a clear and concrete way. Let’s just take a single grade like a "passing" mark, for instance.
Nicholas, man, you're missing the point entirely. The way "outcomes" work around here is that instead of saying students will learn the past simple tense during class, the outcome becomes something like "Student 5.3"—I'm just making up numbers now, don't quote me—"can speak simple texts." Um, okay. Yeah, that'll really revolutionize the system! Then, you can "operationalize" that outcome by stating that "the student describes past events using the past simple." And suddenly, the student is going to learn the past simple SO MUCH BETTER, just because I didn't write "5th grade B learns past simple" in my lesson plan, but used those fancy phrases above instead!
See, THAT is how outcomes work in our neck of the woods. They have nothing to do with the actual concept of learning outcomes as the rest of the world knows and uses them—primarily as something verified through external assessment and independent testing.
If there’s one thing I seriously want to stay far away from, it’s those school reforms. 😁
It’s coming for you in two years, or three—it doesn't even matter once they hit fifth grade—because every new wave of incoming freshmen and fifth graders just keeps following the reformed curriculum, plus those kids who started the new system in fifth grade? They’re sticking with it through sixth too... you can't run from it any more than you can run from your own mother; you can only really push the inevitable back by maybe three years at most.
So, just to get everyone on the same page regarding the upcoming changes—next year, the curriculum overhaul only hits the first and fifth graders in elementary school (though, if you're looking at biology, chemistry, or physics, that'd be the seventh grade equivalent), plus the incoming freshmen in high school. For those kids already in the advanced science tracks, they’ll just keep doing things the way they always have, while everyone else follows the old system.
So, I was thinking about how many schools handle their reading lists—it seems like most teachers just pick titles based on what’s actually sitting on the shelves in the school library. It's kind of a practical thing, right? Like, if you've got twenty copies of Pinocchio just gathering dust and maybe only three copies of Winnie Pooh, it honestly makes way more sense to assign the one everyone can actually get their hands on instead of causing a massive shortage.
Honestly, it’d be way better if they just had twenty minutes of English four times a week. And if they could actually group students by their skill level—or at least keep the groups small enough—it would make life so much easier. That way, you can actually manage differentiated instruction without losing your mind in those massive, mixed-ability classes.
Look, I could totally just stick to the first few lessons like the textbook suggests, but honestly? My experience tells me that students grasp it way more easily if I weave in stuff from their other classes—like math, specifically. It’s that whole concept of interdisciplinary integration that the old professors used to preach about. If people want to argue that it's too early to start learning a foreign language... well, hey, everyone’s entitled to their opinion, right? I could go on and on about all those psychologists who try to meddle in language teaching methodology, but I won't. I'm trying to be a decent human being here. 😬
Hey Luna, I honestly feel like the curriculum was supposed to go in stages—firstly, addition and subtraction up to 20, then moving on to numbers up to 100, and only once that's solid do they tackle the multiplication tables through 100.
The way the Republican Party textbooks don't align with any of the other subjects is just... tragic, really. And even within my own subject, things were such a mess—for instance, we’d be working on numbers up to 10 in the second semester, yet by midterms, some kids hadn't even mastered writing the number six. 🙄 It means you end up having to overhaul half the textbook just to make sense of it all, and every single class for two months, you're stuck answering the same question: "Teacher, why did we skip those pages?"
I’m part of that 1990/91 crowd—you know, those kids who grew up right on the edge of the millennium—and if I remember correctly, our first semester was basically just learning printed letters and how to count to 10... then the second half was when we actually started writing things out and tackling numbers up to 20.
I’m probably going to get shot down here, but honestly, it feels like Rhino, urbantinker8, and I are totally on the same page about this. 😂 A Christmas miracle? 🤔 I’ve been watching my little one—who, let's be real, isn't exactly struggling with school right now... if anything, the kid would practically die of boredom since they've only covered about seven letters so far!
I was thinking—and please, feel free to correct me if my colleagues over at the local elementary school know better—that maybe we should move handwriting lessons to second grade. That way, we could spend more actual time in first grade focusing on reading comprehension instead. I don't know why people act like losing one extra hour of instruction is such a massive deal, honestly. It’s just... it happens so often where kids master the physical mechanics of reading the words, but then they're just rushing through their handwriting, while actually grasping what they've read stays stuck somewhere in limbo. The kids who are naturally gifted tend to figure out comprehension on their own, but the ones who struggle? They don't. And once they fall behind, it starts a domino effect—they hit math word problems, then science in third grade, and everything just collapses like a house of cards because we didn't prioritize understanding the text back in first grade.
Oh man, yeah—I almost totally forgot to mention this part... if some absolute disaster happens right at the end of May or June, nobody gives a single damn about dealing with all the paperwork for stuff that’s just going to be wiped from the books by September anyway.
You want to hear something truly ironic? A massive amount of this stuff just gets ignored or swept under the rug—mostly because nobody wants to give the people in charge a headache with extra paperwork, or because they’re terrified the school system will look bad. But honestly, the Department of Education couldn't care less, since on paper, the numbers aren't moving. With this new nightmare of a regulation—and I'm talking about a title that’s twenty-six words long—even the stats are going to tank. See, for every single behavioral issue, the teacher ends up stuck with six months of extra administrative work before and after class. So, the number of "disciplinary measures" will plummet, just like the number of failing grades will drop once they implement that after-school program meant to punish any "bad" teachers who dare to actually fail a student.
Honestly, someone who hasn't quite mastered the names of school subjects in German can still manage to describe their weekly schedule just fine. Or someone who doesn't know the vocabulary for food and drinks can still put together sentences about buying groceries or ordering at a restaurant. It works, you know? Let’s just skip over all that tedious, exhausting rote memorization—that kind of grind—and actually focus on problem-solving and creativity instead. And hey, even if we don't have a formal framework or any specific material to work with to practice that creativity... well, who cares, right?
It’s funny when you think about it—take sports, for instance. No one argues that you shouldn't have to run through a specific drill two hundred times to get the movement down. We all accept that complex maneuvers have to be broken down into these tiny, seemingly pointless little components. You drill each one until you're absolutely exhausted, and only then, when you stitch them back together, do they actually become a meaningful move or a play... But I guess that's the thing—in sports, nobody expects 90% of the people involved to turn into pro athletes overnight. Yet, for some reason, schools seem to hold this weird expectation that everyone should reach that level, while simultaneously pushing back against any actual drilling or repetitive practice.
If you can’t even list them out, there’s no way you’re going to be able to point them out—you know, in a diagram or a 3D model or whatever. Like, if you're trying to explain how we actually perceive sound... look, you just can't tackle a problem creatively if you haven't even mastered the basics yet. You have to own the material at a foundational level first. first the drill, then the skill.
Brandon Foster7 said:They won't get bogged down in specific war dates, but they’ll definitely realize that war is garbage. They'll see how people try to drag them into a new conflict under the guise of patriotism, when really, it's just a way for the ultra-rich to pad their bank accounts. Wars start over territory and ego, but you feed those ideals to an unsuspecting public. The people die while the architects of the war cash in.
It's simple, really, but you have to give everyone a fair shot at realizing that war and aggression aren't the answer. Education gives them that chance; whether they actually get it is up to them.
History is life's greatest teacher. Biology helps you understand evolution. And geography? That’s just to make you believe the world is flat.
The thing is—and I'm thinking of a buddy of mine who taught at those three-year vocational high schools—they basically just waste time. They'll spend hours drilling cosmetology students on things like the lactose cycle within a cell and all that technical jargon that, let's be honest, they'll never use in their actual jobs. And more importantly, none of that helps them wrap their heads around basic common sense—you know, stuff like how evolution works, or the fact that vaccines protect against diseases rather than causing them, or that birth control is what prevents pregnancy (and no, drinking a Coca-Cola isn't a contraceptive method). I mean, honestly, the way things have been handled until now (and frankly, how most of those vocational schools still operate) doesn't help anyone. We're just bogging students down with nonsense they don't care about and will never find useful in the real world. Those subjects really need to be scrapped entirely—or better yet, totally overhauled and reframed so they're actually learning skills relevant to their trades, alongside the absolute essentials that might actually stick for once. Maybe, then we might actually end up with people who don't fall for conspiracies about the Earth being flat, or claims that vaccines cause autism, or that prayer alone cures cancer, or that rinsing your mouth with Coke prevents pregnancy. ☕
People always assume the school secretary is just the principal's right-hand person—you know, the one handling schedules and coffee runs—but that’s not really it at all. In reality, they're more like a legal compliance officer tasked with making sure everything the school does stays strictly within the bounds of the law. Honestly, I've always felt like "secretary" is a pretty misleading title for what they actually do... it just doesn't capture the legal weight of the job.
Yeah, from what I can tell, basically every other industry either hires their own project managers or just brings in an outside agency to draft everything up for them. ☕ The thing isn't really about actually executing the project—it's the struggle of writing it out in a way that actually gets approved. ☕
And honestly, regarding those green versus white boards... I can't think of a single school around here where whiteboards have actually replaced all the green ones. We're ALL still covered in chalk dust over here. I've got my projector, a screen, and my laptop, but the board? It’s still as green as a lawn in the Midwest.
Wait, seriously?! I had no clue! ☕ But honestly, having a permanent position is way more secure than being on a contract. I mean, sure, if you're teaching an elective, things can feel a bit shaky—but with contract work, it’s almost guaranteed that you'll be back at the unemployment office in three, six, or nine months. And if they pull that shady move where they just end the contract during a holiday break—which happens more than people realize in some school districts—you might not even qualify for benefits since you won't have those three months of continuous employment under your belt. ☕
And yeah, I totally get why there's such a massive pile of applications for the permanent roles. If the schedule is full-time, you’re going to get everyone looking for stability, including teachers juggling multiple schools. You'll also get people living in the suburbs who are willing to commute two hours each way just to make it work. It makes sense, really.
Honestly, trying to track down my profile for an English-German swap is becoming a total nightmare—it’s almost impossible. It feels like everyone just assumes we have to split subjects up now because finding one single person willing to trade both languages is such a long shot. But, you know, when you leave the search open-ended without those restrictions... man, you get hit with way more requests. 😉
I feel like you guys are being a little strict about this—back home, if a parent showed up in person to hand over a request or a formal note (mostly just so there wouldn’t be any doubt about who actually wrote it), they’d honestly accept a scribble from a notebook.