Do you feel that overall your district is organized in it's planning? The biggest gripe that I have with my district is we don't have a definite scope and sequence of the curriculum until the last minute. Of course we have standards that we can follow and it's usually similar to the year before. But I'd love to have this info. a lot earlier so that I can plan. It's not just the curriculum, it's other areas as well..like various due dates. I understand that somethings are uncontrollable, but there are things that we have to do every year, but yet no one has an answer until the last minute. Ok, this sounds like a vent LOL. So, how is your district?
My district doesn't have a curriculum. Each grade level decides what they want to do, according to the standards, which makes my job harder since I work with all the grade levels. We've got new admin this year so I'm hoping the organizational aspect is changed a bit.
Sarge---I completely agree! My district is very organized and provides pretty strict guidelines on what we teach when. Some topics even have a how to teach section. I know that a neighboring district hands teachers a binder with everything that they should teach with all worksheets and assignments. It's crazy! There is no teacher flexibility, no trust that we are professionals!
My school district is one of the largest in the province and they are very good about communicating expectations, new policies, etc. We do not have set a set curriculum (we have provincial expectations that must be met for each subject at each grade level), mandated textbooks or a mandatory scope and sequence. The provincial expectations dictate what we need to teach, we decide how we are going to do that.
In my previous district, SO unorganized, especially the sped department which I worked under as a sped teacher. They drove me nuts with their slacker-ness. For example, my first year there, they decide 3 weeks into the school year that we need to fill out all of this specific paperwork for gen ed teachers to have the IEP information (basically a summary of each child's IEP). The paperwork itself wasn't a bad idea, but being it was the 3rd week of school, of course we had already given this information to teachers in our own format and had to redo it with this specific paperwork. It was like that with pretty much everything- after you'd already done it yourself, they came up with some guidelines for how it had to be done. It totally discouraged me from doing anything ahead of time. I can see the other side too- my new district is really organized as far as curriculum/pacing guides. On the one hand, I'm glad I don't have to put that together myself, and the reasoning behind it is good (we have a high mobility rate between the schools, so the theory is that kids won't have too much of an adjustment if they go to more than one school during the year). However, on the other hand I know it's hard to have little flexibility with the curriculum.
While I agree with Sarge, I would like a little continuity within the district. For instance, last year I got a student from another building in our district (about 1 mile away) in December, and they had not completed any of the science requirements for the year! Don't know how that teacher gave a science grade the first quarter.
Missy-I like the word continuity better than organized. Thanks for giving it that spin. That's exactly what our district needs. And yes, the flexibility can be a good thing.
I work for a Catholic high school, not a district. But they're incredibly organized. In September, before school starts, I'll have all my deadlines. (In fact, I have most of them already.)
I'm in the same boat as you. I am starting at a charter school this year. They have a curriculum, but since it is a chain of charter schools throughout Texas, I keep being told the curriculum for the year is not finished yet. We don't get to see anything until orientation and teacher work days that start August 6. I feel like I could have been doing so much more this summer. My principal just keeps saying to read over the TEKS (Texas state standards), but I'd rather have the actual curriculum in front of me, so I can REALLY plan. The break has been great, but now I'm bored and would like to prepare as much as I can since the first year teaching is never complete smooth sailing! Whatcha gonna do though? Guess that's just how it goes! I'm still having fun buying stuff for my room (even though they won't let me see that until August 6 too!).
