Shifting the Culture-Part 1

By Tamara

Travis and Mark have recently touched upon two issues that I am working to get my head around: addressing an institutional culture of sameness and how to equitably budget my time and energy for students all over the needs spectrum. I’m not sure they are even related issues-so I will address them in separate posts-but right now they are the ones with the greatest impact on my life in the classroom.

In response to Travis’s post about an encroaching culture of sameness I said, “How do systems like Finland and Singapore, whose foundation is a common national curriculum, appear to avoid the trap of sameness? Could it be because individual schools and teachers in those systems are given the freedom and trusted to deliver the common curriculum in a manner that best suits their students' and communities' needs? What if we were given that kind of autonomy?”

Because I do think instituting national standards like Common Core could get us away from the current loosey-goosey set of fifty state standards and too many to count district adopted curriculums. With everyone working toward the same goals we would also eliminate apples to oranges comparisons and the questionable validity of AYP.

That said, from reading and research I’ve done on other systems using a national standard model, the key element to what seems to make them successful is the commitment to individual school/teacher autonomy in the delivery of common curriculum. I am beginning to think this kind of balance merits replication. However, I’m afraid to do so will require a significant cultural shift in the perception of educators. Our current climate does not support the supposition teachers (or administrators if we are being honest) are skilled or capable to autonomously deliver curriculum. Yet I have hope a few successful pilots demonstrating the balance of school/teacher autonomy with in a common curriculum framework could spark a real shift in that perception.

Common Core is coming. Much in the way NCLB did. Rather than allowing it to foster a sense of sameness, maybe we can approach it as an opportunity for autonomy.

2 thoughts on “Shifting the Culture-Part 1

  1. Tamara

    Time is the lynch pin. You can’t even have autonomy without a significant increase to teacher planning time. In those other systems I mentioned there is far more planning and cooaborative time built into the paid day.
    Well said, Mark-I especially appreciated your closing sentence.

  2. Mark

    I think what we have is the constant shuffling of variables. Change the test, change the curriculum, change the model, change the teacher. Amidst all this, there are a few variable that have not been so quick to change: funding, teacher : student ratio, teacher prep time. We can (and will) shuffle the first list of variables ad infinitum but we will never see change until we are willing to tackles the latter list of variables.
    I’ve said before and will certainly say again: time. Give teachers more time to meaningfully evaluate and respond to student work–and therefore more time to plan lessons immediately responsive to student needs–and I bet we’ll see quick change. No amount of common core-ness will matter if we don’t have time to do our jobs the way we know it can be done best. Teaching is not just showing up and knowing your standards. Teaching should be about diagnosing student needs and having the time to immediately craft the right response

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