TeachTown Reviews 8

I got fed up with this curriculum after so many experiences with taking the time to assign a student some lessons only to find the lessons were not actually appropriate or contained incorrect information. And don't even get me started on the creepy characters or the weird "rewards." You could use free online learning platforms, apps, and materials from TPT and have your students much more interested and engaged.

It is totally screen based and thus totally inappropriate for young children.
I am a retired career educator, and encountered the TeachTown curriculum because my grandson was assigned to a class that uses it. My daughter purchased a subscription to the curriculum to give it a test drive before agreeing to place her son in the class. From what I saw of it, I was extremely concerned. There are grammatical errors throughout, and the images are sometimes not clear or inappropriate for a young child. Additionally, screens should be used for leisure and down time, as a reward for a child, or used for higher level grades where students are working on typing and computer use. Screens do not belong in the core curriculum for elementary school children.

Teachtown employee who is answering these reviews: You should be ashamed of yourself. Selling your awful products with highly bloated prices to disabled students amidst budget cuts to special education. Instead of spending so much money on expensive catered food and embroidered matching jackets, spend the money on creating a great curriculum. In the presentation you show your most polished lessons, then after the district purchases, we all discover the whole thing is a hot mess. I wouldn't even say it needs to be improved and updated, it needs to go straight into the garbage.

I really can't recommend this curriculum at all after using N2Y. If you must incorporate screens in teaching special needs students (which I already don't love), at least use N2Y which is several orders of magnitude better in quality, fit for students, and usability for teachers. This is not to say N2Y is anywhere near ideal by any means, but it's better. I believe TeachTown is more expensive than N2Y as well which is truly a shock. My fellow teachers and I can only hope our district will not continue to use TeachTown for special needs students. I really can't think of a single student I've had while I've been required to use TeachTown who I felt was a good fit for their curriculum. I am not surprised at all to see other negative reviews. The books for high schoolers are much too high, if a student can read and comprehend at that level they should not be in a classroom for intellectual disabilities. And the transition to adulthood lessons are the most depressing, cruel and insulting lessons I've ever seen. A student needs tangible hands on experiences out in the real world to prepare for the real world, not watching someone shelve items on a video screen. These students need to be treated with dignity and respect.

TeachTown lacks peer-reviewed research, overuses screens, and harms kids with autism and ADHD. Parents aren’t properly informed, and the program pushes stereotypes. Not appropriate for special education. Proceed with caution.

Our concerns with TeachTown started when we were told our son would be assigned to this curriculum at school. We were told that he would do better on this curriculum because it is screen based. However, studies have shown that screens are not as effective as tangible materials for teaching children. As for special needs students, the gold standard is a "multi-sensory approach" which is the opposite of learning on a screen. We also discovered that the only peer reviewed study conducted on this curriculum concluded with the finding that special needs children had worse language outcomes with TeachTown compared to a control group. When we contacted TeachTown about this, they declined to provide us any links to peer reviewed studies to refute those findings. In their website materials, they claim that their curriculum is like ABA therapy, therefore they don't need their own peer reviewed study. If your child has ever been enrolled in ABA therapy, you're aware of how absurd it is to compare curriculum to these therapy methods which involve working 1:1 with a therapist.

We trialed the curriculum at home and found it to be poor quality as well. It is not engaging at all compared to modern learning applications used by children. The images are dull and repetitive. Additionally, there were many errors found just within the short time we attempted to use the curriculum.

It's highly concerning that this curriculum continues to be offered and promoted for disabled students.

I was so excited when I heard my district had purchased a curriculum for my classroom. I heard about the multiple catered sales pitches and that our admin liked the TeachTown products.

However, when I actually received the materials, I was very disappointed. The printed materials are not right for my students. Even for the right level of student, they appear hastily thrown together and not great quality.

The online portion is even worse. It appears that it hasn’t been updated in 20 years. Children these days are used to very interactive engaging online content. Teachtown is drab and repetitive. On top of that, some of the characters have offensive names. “Pico” for a Latino child, “Mochi” for an Asian child, and “Ginger” for a red haired child?

The way the online content works is each time the child gets a wrong answer, they’re bumped to an easier question. My kids are bored by the content so they either take too long to click or they click randomly because they’re trying to get to the fun part. As a result, I have students who should be working on sight words who are being presented with “TOUCH THE DUCK!” And there’s just a picture of a duck on the screen.

Please don’t purchase TeachTown. It’s very expensive and the money could be better spent on better quality curriculum materials or subscriptions, better classroom equipment and supports, more staff, raises, or many other things that would make our lives easier. My TeachTown materials are gathering dust on the shelf because I care too much about my students to continue to subject them to that.

This company is a total scam. A large, peer reviewed, independent study showed that their products harmed the language development of disabled kids. Just google Pellecchia and TeachTown. TeachTown doesn’t care, they just want to make money. They’re happy to promote “studies” of just two well behaved students and fudged numbers to sell their products.