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Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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Originally Posted by west seattle gal
Last question -- are innovative teaching methods used in classrooms? Specifically, experiential (hands on/field trips) learning, project-based assignments, STEM or STEAM infusion, guest lecturers and community involvement (UNC was mentioned), apprenticeships or off-campus learning experiences with local experts, etc... In other words, elements of many competitive charter and magnet schools. Is the instruction more traditional or innovative and research-based, particularly in middle and high schools? Are critical thinking and independent initiative/thought encouraged? If so, I am 100% on board and we are moving to Carborro or CH.
Thanks!
I cannot comment on middle or high school. But for elementary school, I think the teaching is pretty traditional. They are following the core curriculum. I know for 5th grade math, we literally get emails home that say, we are working on topic 14 today. Topic 14 test is on Friday. In Science they tend to do a fair amount of hands-on experiments, at least that's what my 5th grader said. She enjoys the more hands-on compared to her previous school. For language arts, the teacher broke the class into reading groups and each group does a book club with the teacher, asst., and 3 parents being facilitators for 5 groups. We read a book over a period of weeks and discuss it for an hour each week.
In the lower grades, they have traditional teaching methods as far as I can tell with some other stuff mixed in. For example, for several weeks in the fall, they asked for parent volunteers to lead a group on a weekly basis to do logic problems and soduku problems. They do other creative activities like wax musuem (where kids learn about a particular person, and act as its wax statue that comes alive for visitors), a poetry day, and expert author day (where kids find a topic, and write a book about it, talk about it for visitors).
Our kindergarten class seems pretty innovative, but I think it's mostly the teacher. She's very into butterflies and other outdoorsy stuff, so they seem to do a lot of fun, creative learning. But they do have the worksheets, too. And it's only kindergarten where there's no state tests.
My favorite part of the whole school is that they have a big garden in the back that all the kids get to work on once in awhile. And the older kids have a monthly club to work on it. And they get to sample the food. The garden is grown in conjunction with a local pizza place who uses their herbs and tomatoes and other veggies in their restaurant. Throughout the year, there are special nights like STEM night, a family fun night and one or two others. But, honestly, we did more at old school district for special evening programs like that, but we had a very strong PTA there. Some schools in CH may do more than our school does, though.
Overall, I wouldn't call the teaching particularly innovative, though. It's mostly traditional with parts being creative or "outside the box." I wasn't "blown away" or anything when moving from our much larger school district to here by their teaching methods or school quality (although we came from an excellent school district). Overall, I am most impressed with the class size, the fact that there's a teacher and an assistant, by the school garden, and the small size of the school district that seems pretty responsive to parents' needs.
I think my experience has been pretty similar to what Michgc described, too. We have been in CHCCS for two years now. We were in a small, very flexible, outdoor-oriented private school prior to this for my older daughter's anxiety issues. Came to CHCCS in 5th grade for her and 2nd for my younger daughter.
I think a lot depends on the teachers. My younger daughter's teacher last year in 2nd grade was just okay. I didn't dislike her, but it was her first year teaching 2nd and she had a tough class to work with (a few kids with some issues) and my kid didn't seem to be challenged enough. This year (3rd) has been much better for her. I really like her teacher this year and younger daughter is able to work on her level. She really wants to have the teacher that older daughter had for 5th grade since he's really great. He does science with the kids and organizes the gardens with them. They also have chickens at school which my girls love.
They do try to do a fair amount of hands-on stuff. This is the first year they've reorganized the school day to have "project time", but it's not as project-based as the private school or the 6th-12th charter my older daughter now goes to. They do have book clubs, get to post anonymous poems on the wall and guess which student wrote it, etc. I can't remember all the projects they've done because younger daughter doesn't always tell me these things. (She will, however, tell me what girl #1 said about girl #2 and how they just ignored her — ahhh 3rd grade girl drama.) Oh, I looked at the newsletter, and remembered that we had a field trip to the bowling alley to study force and motion. That was pretty cool. I went along on it. They had different experiments set up at different lanes and the kids had to take down notes on how long it took the ball to travel down the lane and how many pins it knocked over and take their notes back to school and discuss and see if they could draw any conclusions from that. There is a fair amount of that kind of stuff.
If you go to Smith Middle School's website and click the homework links you can see their homework assignments online. As far as off-campus learning experiences, my middle school neighbor just went on a 2-week trip to China with Smith Middle School. A couple of years ago another neighbor was building a model solar car for middle school. I think they do quite a bit of stuff like that, but that car project doesn't seem too out of the ordinary to me, just really good public school.
The folks I know who have kids in high school in CHCCS mostly seem happy as far as I can tell. I don't have really close friends with high schoolers, but I haven't heard complaints. I think they do work with UNC and other area experts. I know a couple of years ago for the senior class project at Chapel Hill High they built a biodiesel fuel processor to make their own biodiesel from veggie oil. I'm sure they've done some more interesting things since then, but since we run our VWs on biodiesel that one just stuck in my mind.
Last question -- are innovative teaching methods used in classrooms? Specifically, experiential (hands on/field trips) learning, project-based assignments, STEM or STEAM infusion, guest lecturers and community involvement (UNC was mentioned), apprenticeships or off-campus learning experiences with local experts, etc... In other words, elements of many competitive charter and magnet schools. Is the instruction more traditional or innovative and research-based, particularly in middle and high schools? Are critical thinking and independent initiative/thought encouraged? If so, I am 100% on board and we are moving to Carborro or CH.
Thanks!
I suspect this depends on the school and the teachers. Tour the schools. See what you think.
I once sat next to a woman on a plane who was checking out the schools in a town where her husband had recently got a job offer. The school district had assured her that the school district was using project based learning, and oh I don't know what all.
When she got there it was rows of students hunched over worksheets. Classroom after classroom. The innovative projects were a spring treat, not part of the curriculum.
For a public school system, I think it sounds very good (and much better than my experience growing up). Worksheets have a place, but glad the schools tap into community resources. Thanks!
First, from all I've heard CH/Carrboro has good public schools overall. Wake county (and some Durham schools as well) used to also be quite respectable but the deterioration over the past 9 years we've lived here is both astounding and disappointing! A few Wake schools have held on (eg., Cary and Apex) but most have declined precipitously.
We moved here (North Raleigh) for the public schools nearly a decade ago but honestly would NEVER make that same decision now.
First, from all I've heard CH/Carrboro has good public schools overall. Wake county (and some Durham schools as well) used to also be quite respectable but the deterioration over the past 9 years we've lived here is both astounding and disappointing! A few Wake schools have held on (eg., Cary and Apex) but most have declined precipitously.
We moved here (North Raleigh) for the public schools nearly a decade ago but honestly would NEVER make that same decision now.
The way kids are shuffled about must be incredibly frustrating and burdensome, but how is the curriculum and quality of teaching? Wake has an unbelievably huge STEM network!
West Seattle, I can't speak to the Wake Co STEM schools, but CHCCS just hired away one of their principals at a STEM school to come be principal at Estes Hills Elementary. I think CHCCS is overall very strong in STEM, but we don't have dedicated STEM schools. My 3rd grader was just telling me yesterday about making a voice thread in school on an iPad about some science experiments they had done and I had to ask her to explain to me what that was. Feeling old and out of the loop over here.
If you're interested in resources for academically gifted kids you might like to check out the Duke TIP program, too. CHCCS has a press release about kids that qualified: http://chccs-news.blogspot.com/2013/...-students.html and there's a link to Duke TIP on there, too. I have a friend in Durham whose son did it I believe. I would guess it's available in Wake Co, too, but I didn't dig into the details on that.
I think one thing that draws people to CH over Wake is the guaranteed continuity of schools. In Wake you have the danger of re-districting hanging over your head (although it really affects very few people in the scheme of things) whereas in Chapel Hill it's a small district and I think people take comfort in that.
Actually, you still do have redistricting with Chapel Hill schools. I went to a different middle school then my younger sibling because my parents house got redistricted when Smith opened up and I think they are doing another redistricting of elementary students with Northside.
One unmentioned reason as to why CHCCS might be better is the competitive academic stuff going on between the students themselves. There was, when I attended, a sort of fierce academic competition among a large part of the student body for grades, test scores etc. There was not only parental, but also peer pressure to do well such that people would compare grades, test scores and college admission letters in the halls. It was that kind of place.
Last edited by Randomstudent; 04-27-2013 at 08:22 AM..
Wake is very much involved in Duke Tip as well. In general, I don't believe CHHS are that much better academically than most WCPSS. WCPSS is a MUCH larger district with a much more economically diverse spread of students which is where a lot of the differences come in. There are a few schools in WCPSS I wouldn't want my kids in but the majority are good.
There are lots of options too which is nice: calendar options, magnets, STEM, etc (not that you are guaranteed to get one).
I think the biggest attraction to CH schools is the stability, the "neighborhood schools" concept and the high test scores and SAT results acrosss most of the schools. However some people we know (and I've heard it on this board too) feel that it comes at a price though (highly stressed students and huge emphasis on testing). ANd in WCPSS, you get to have highly stressed parents over assignments!
Either way, it's good to have choices!
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