Posts by Donna Taylor5

Robert Rodriguez9 said:In our future school model, we won't have a set number of grades per year. Some spots will just have one grade, some two, and others three. It’s not about religious studies or anything, but it's definitely an option. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that if a school is short on hours, they could just make up the difference at another location. 🤔

Both of my colleagues work at two different schools simultaneously.
And once you lose those guaranteed hours, you instantly become redundant—leaving the Department of Education or the Diocese (in their case) 🤔 to scramble for available hours across the state.

redridge13 said:Yeah, and?

edit: obviously I know exactly how many freshmen there are and which specific classes they're in.
As for the kids with special accommodations—I don't know. Maybe that's why they didn't pull them into a separate group.
Or maybe it isn't... ☕

Then comes the scheduling phase where teachers get slapped with extra hours automatically—because instead of having two classes, they’ve added a third one filled with non-religious kids.
Someone has to foot the bill for those hours.
And the people in charge? They won't pay unless their hands are tied.

They’d rather let kids wander the halls than pay for an extra 11 or 12 specialized instructors.

Look, we can agree to disagree, but you already pointed out that for this debate to work, we need the exact headcount of students wanting religious studies versus those needing accommodations. That’s how classes are formed—if you have more than three students requiring special accommodations, the district has to split the class.
Right now, I’m teaching two classes that both have four students requiring accommodations.
It shouldn't be allowed, but it happens because splitting a class requires budget for extra teaching hours (which, in my case, would mean 4 extra hours of pay).

Anyway, take a breath and stop getting worked up 🙂!

redridge13 said:Not for us. Not even close. They basically scattered them just to make sure the little religious groups get totally broken up.

Oh, for crying out loud...
🙄 Look,
the smallest class—and yeah, the class sizes aren't all equal—has fewer kids in it than there are non-religious students in the whole grade level. The number of "lost sheep" is exactly enough to fill one single class.
Every single first grader takes the exact SAME curriculum except for that one subject; there isn't some other variable in this equation.
What kind of "extra classes" are you even talking about?
I don't get what part of my posts isn't making sense.
Or are you just playing dumb?
🤷

So, those little pseudo-intellectual first graders sitting in their own special classes today will eventually become the arrogant snobs of tomorrow, right?

I get the feeling you throw around theories a little too recklessly.
You clearly have no clue about the actual number of first graders or how many special education requirements dictate class sizes, yet you’re already jumping to conclusions. You think this is all just a scheme to protect some colleague's schedule? Please. It's not that simple.

redridge13 said:Look, I'm talking about what's actually happening on the ground at our school.
During enrollment, everyone knew exactly how many kids weren't doing the religious studies, yet they still stuck to the class groupings they did.
Why? Because some administrator refuses to let their precious master schedule get messed up.

They’d rather screw over five elementary teachers by leaving massive gaps in their schedules just so one religious studies teacher can keep a perfect, uninterrupted block. Pure nonsense.

Have you considered that maybe enough kids signed up for a non-religious track, but there are still too many other students to simply merge or shrink the existing classes?
To make everyone happy, the Department of Education would have to create an entirely new classroom, which would automatically blow up the weekly schedule for every single teacher, not just the one teaching religion.

redridge13 said:No, no, no, 🙂
Try reading with actual comprehension for once. 😉
Here’s the deal: now you have five different classes where 3 to 5 kids aren't attending the religious studies sessions.
The teacher, naturally, ends up with 5x2 hours a week just dealing with the first graders.
If they try to tweak the schedule so there are four religious study classes and one non-religious one, the number of kids and total classes stays identical, but the teacher loses 8 hours of pay a month—and all that loss comes strictly from their first-grade sessions.

Right.
Not necessarily. It all hinges on total enrollment (like I mentioned earlier, @nosorogu) and how many students require accommodations.

My point is that at this rate, we're heading straight toward forming entirely secular classrooms. 😉.

Susan James said:I don't see how they could stay on the same schedule if the numbers shift. Imagine having three classes where you have 8, 6, and 3 non-religious students, versus having two religious classes and one large group of 17 non-religious students.
In that first scenario, you're looking at three classes, which means six hours of religious ed in the first grade.
But in the second scenario, you only have two classes, so that's down to four hours in the first grade.

If they keep reducing the number of religious education sections like this with every generation, you eventually end up with a 16-hour workload, which basically means you don't even need a full-time teacher anymore.🥳

You think that if 8, 6, or 3 kids out of a class of 20 opt out of religious studies, those remaining 43 religious students would just be redistributed into two classes?
That’s a stretch.
The Department of Defense—or rather, our school board—hardly ever decides to merge or split classes, especially since almost every single classroom includes students on specialized IEP programs.

Actually, the situation you're describing could only happen if fifteen students from two different classes of twenty opted out at once. Then you'd be left with five students wanting religious instruction in each, forcing those two groups to merge into one class.
I'm exaggerating, but that would be a massive shift.
It’s a scenario that’s hard to imagine, and it would hit the other teachers too, because everyone would lose instructional hours due to that merger.

mom2be said:Why wouldn't they? Let's look at some math for the 1st grade.

Now that classes are "mixed," if you have N number of first grades with 2 hours a week, putting all the non-religious kids in one group would leave you with (N-1) x 2 hours per week.
That's 8 fewer hours a month on the schedule just for the first grade.

The number of classes is what it is; it's up to the school how they arrange the kids.

edit: nosorog

Fine, let's go.
So, we have three classes of 20 kids.
If five kids from each of those three classes decide they don't want religious studies, you form one new class of fifteen kids.
You still have 15 religious students in each of the original three classes 😉, so the religious instructor still has 6 hours of teaching time across those three classes.

@nosorog, a 16-hour weekly load isn't even a bad schedule.

redridge13 said:Nah, that’s just not how it works...
At my local high school, they definitely could have put together a separate group for the kids skipping religion, but they chose not to.
The real reason? It's probably because doing that would actually free up two hours of instructional time in the weekly schedule, and heaven forbid anyone disrupts the status quo. 🙄
We all know whose interests are being protected most within our American school system. ☕

What exactly does a teacher lose if the rest of the class decides to take the religious studies course?

The real culprit is the Department of Education, which dictates how these class sections are structured. As soon as you split them up, you're forced to expand the weekly schedule for everyone—like giving a history teacher two extra periods. And once those hours go up, the payroll follows.

HBT, it’s all just one big conspiracy.🙄.

silentraven6 said:Are you kidding me?

I honestly feel for the kids enrolled in religious studies classes. It’s like we assume they lack any sense of discernment or critical thinking, right? Like their brains just don't work yet?

It always seems to boil down to this: if a kid doesn't take those classes, the parents are treated like outcasts who shouldn't even be spoken to. It's as if providing them with extra knowledge is somehow forbidden, and they should just be left to fend for themselves without any guidance at all.

Personally, I wouldn't dream of trying to fix one injustice by committing another, even if there were strict rules about supplemental education. How does that even work? You try to solve a problem by making things worse? That's just nonsense.

At the end of the day, parents should have the same freedom to choose between an extra math tutor and a religious studies class.

What are you even talking about?
Who actually said anything about sidelining kids who skip religion class?
Those are issues you take up with the government; the religious students have nothing to do with it. If the US signed a Concordat, then the US should have protected the kids not attending those classes too.
Since they didn't, the US is the entity you need to hold accountable.

And no, in this specific instance, this isn't about parental choice, BECAUSE ELECTIVES CANNOT BE PART OF THE CORE CURRICULUM. This is about a teacher acting on her own whims, which she claims is "for your benefit."
It suits your interests, so suddenly it’s "fair."
That’s the kind of "justice" they practice: as long as my kid gets what they want, I couldn't care less about anyone else!

Persephone said:So, instead of finding a way to be home earlier, she took religion class, even though it's an elective, essentially forcing her to stay at school longer. Unpaid.

Agreed.

wanderingbadger44 said:Actually, no, she isn't being paid for that. Not if you're referring specifically to that gap in her schedule.
Just like you pointed out earlier, she gets to decide whether to spend her downtime idling away or actually being productive.

She has every right to choose the idle route.

Now, if she chose to fill that gap by taking on extra hours, then sure, she’s getting paid.

But yeah, any school inspector would tear that decision apart without blinking an eye.

At the same time, an inspector can't force her to stop idling or forbid her from relaxing during her break, nor can they mandate that she cram students into a vacant period. When there's a hole in her schedule, she isn't even obligated to stay on campus; she could easily head out to grab a coffee.

That's exactly my point.
Extra sessions can't overlap with regular class hours. It has to be zero period or after school.
If a teacher handles her extra work during her own prep period instead of when it's actually scheduled, she's getting paid—not just in cash, but in time. Instead of waiting until the end of her shift to get things done, she squeezes it into her break and bills it as "extra duty." She gets home an hour or two early and doesn't give a damn!
In the official logbook she turns in at the end of the year, it probably shows she did the extra work during 6th or 7th period, even though she knocked it out way earlier during 3rd period.
Bottom line: don't pity her or praise her. The woman just figured out how to get home early while multitasking on the fly.
She's screwing over the kids in religious ed in the process, but hey, it's their fault for signing up, right?

James Alvarez2 said:Did you just jump in on the last post or did you actually read the whole thread?

History in elementary school?
You gotta explain metaphors... that's literally all I'm talking about.

You're looking at kids watching cartoons; they've heard bits and pieces of some fairy tale here and there. A story about a woman being formed from a rib isn't exactly a hard concept for a child to wrap their head around. I know when I was a kid, I didn't ask too many questions about it.
Obviously, you don't dive into the gritty details; they aren't interested in that anyway.
You can explain anything to kids, regardless of their grade level. You just need to be a good storyteller, and their imagination will take care of the rest.
We don't expect a first grader to approach this with a critical eye, nor are they capable of it.

Sarah Hall53 said:If religious studies were lumped in with any other elective, she wouldn't even have this gap in her schedule to exploit.
And since she feels this huge moral obligation to watch over the kids who aren't staying for religious studies—which, by the way, she is NOT being paid for, and it's eating into her own personal time—she's decided to kill two birds with one stone. She uses that scheduling gap caused by the short religious studies block to cover her bases, and yeah... let's just tear her apart! Honestly, how awful is that?

If this were that, or if it were this... But it isn't!
The situation is what it is, but that doesn't mean a teacher can just pass the time however she wants.
It sounds to me like you're trying to fix one wrong with another.
The students in religious studies don't care where one, two, or five other kids are during their class time, and it's not their job to worry about it.
But should we strip away the opportunity for extra help just to make things "even"?

We don't need to crucify her, but her actions aren't exactly worth praising. She isn't paid to provide extra help only to the non-religious kids; she's paid to be available to EVERYONE interested. If I were a parent with a kid in religious studies who also happened to be a math whiz, I'd certainly want an explanation as to why she isn't holding extra sessions when they're supposed to happen (so my kid could attend), instead of doing it right in the middle of someone else's class!

And, yeah...
She is getting paid for it, obviously. She took a free period that she might have just wasted and used it to do something she's actually paid to do during a time that works for EVERYONE. The catch is that it doesn't work for her to wait until regular classes are over.
It looks like a win-win, but she'd get crushed by an auditor or a particularly fed-up parent.

silentraven6 said:NASA mentioned today: "That's part of my scheduled hours."

I really need to pull her aside and ask how that actually works. And yeah, she made it pretty clear that things will stay this way again this year, because they do a great job and actually enjoy the extra work—plus, she noted it's an opportunity reserved specifically for students who don't take religious studies. Apparently, the whole setup is going to change next year.

I'm dying to know how they'll pull that off.

What time are those religious studies classes held?
It feels like my colleague is trying to operate in the shadows.
She’s basically plugging her gaps in the schedule by running a program during the exact window when all the kids attending the after-school sessions are available (that zero hour right after the final bell).
Look, you can fill your breaks however you want, but she’s being paid specifically for the after-school program—she admitted it herself: "it's in my contract"—so she has to make it accessible to everyone equally.
Basically, she found a loophole to avoid staying late at school despite it being in her job description, and she’ll probably get away with it as long as nobody files a formal complaint.

Man, why did you delete your comment? I wanted to ask how equal treatment is actually possible for the kids skipping religious studies when the instructors are already getting paid.

My focus isn't exactly 🙂 lately, so I'm constantly refining my thoughts.
Honestly, I mostly agree with you.
Since cutting the program entirely might be tough, I'd just slash the religious studies block to one hour; I wouldn't even mind if they moved it to a local church.
However, regarding the end of your post: the instructors are paid to teach the students who choose to attend, so there's no issue there.
But the teacher still needs to be available for the other students too, since she's on the payroll for them as well.

James Alvarez2 said:First graders grasping metaphors?
Like, "grab a rib, make a wife..."?

Just out of nowhere?

I don't see what's so hard to grasp here.
Kids eat up this stuff; it doesn't sound half as ridiculous to them as it does to us.
With a good storyteller and a bit of imagination, any myth makes perfect sense to them.
I teach history, so I know firsthand how much they love these legends.
Wait until you see their eyes light up and hear the questions they start firing off 🙂!

Finally, looks like the matter is settled 🙂!

Thanks and best regards!

Moderators really need to step up and keep an eye on the handles people are using here.
Take this user, for example, who’s been hanging around for about a month now.

He’s drifted through three or four different subforums, yet nobody has flagged his username for being written in Cyrillic.
To top it off, he's clearly just looking for a fight.

I can't seem to find an answer...
Is it possible to use Cyrillic characters for a username?

No.

Hello there.

My mother is 50 and has been battling lupus for 20 years.

Her latest labs show her CH50 levels have dropped; a normal range is 50-150, but she’s sitting at 36.
Is there anyone here who can make sense of this? The doctors we've consulted seem stumped on the actual implications...
The only thing we know for sure is that it relates to the kidneys 🤷.

Thanks.