Feel my pain! I love teaching Social Studies! I love coming in costumes and the projects my former students have done show such understanding and creativity - that's learning! I would love to enhance the ELA curriculum in 5th grade through S.S. like I did when I taught middle school the past 20 yrs.
Now, it's "embedded" in the elementary ELA curriculum. Um, I hate to inform those with that idea, but a periodic Achieve 3000 article out of context and out of chronological order is no where close to teaching S.S.!
No wonder we see these people being interviewed and can't answer anything related to their own country correctly let alone world history. S.S. is not an almighty FSA tested curriculum. Thus, its not important according to the "they" who dictate curriculum.
Science is suffering at some schools too as some grade levels are to embed it like they embed S.S. - periodically. Oh, but wait, those almighty tests are mostly nonfiction reading in upper elementary and into middle and high school. Things that make you go, "Hummmm?" Recess? Is there such a thing? Oh, and by the way, our students' resource classes were 5x/week, then they were cut to 4x/week. Now, our students who have to stay until 4:00 every day for extra hour reading, only get the resource classes of art, music, PE, and media 2x/week on an A week/B week rotation.
Not only are we limiting their ability to learn S.S., the fine arts, and P.E., with only 2 resources per week at 45 mins each, when exactly are teachers to get everything accomplished? I can tell you. Hours at night (3 tonight) and more on the weekend (12 hrs this past one, plus a trip to school on Saturday to attempt to gather a ton of materials for an upcoming lab). The kids are missing out and so are the teachers. Teaching is not fun right now. It's laborious.
Now, it's "embedded" in the elementary ELA curriculum. Um, I hate to inform those with that idea, but a periodic Achieve 3000 article out of context and out of chronological order is no where close to teaching S.S.!
No wonder we see these people being interviewed and can't answer anything related to their own country correctly let alone world history. S.S. is not an almighty FSA tested curriculum. Thus, its not important according to the "they" who dictate curriculum.
Science is suffering at some schools too as some grade levels are to embed it like they embed S.S. - periodically. Oh, but wait, those almighty tests are mostly nonfiction reading in upper elementary and into middle and high school. Things that make you go, "Hummmm?" Recess? Is there such a thing? Oh, and by the way, our students' resource classes were 5x/week, then they were cut to 4x/week. Now, our students who have to stay until 4:00 every day for extra hour reading, only get the resource classes of art, music, PE, and media 2x/week on an A week/B week rotation.
Not only are we limiting their ability to learn S.S., the fine arts, and P.E., with only 2 resources per week at 45 mins each, when exactly are teachers to get everything accomplished? I can tell you. Hours at night (3 tonight) and more on the weekend (12 hrs this past one, plus a trip to school on Saturday to attempt to gather a ton of materials for an upcoming lab). The kids are missing out and so are the teachers. Teaching is not fun right now. It's laborious.
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