By Rena
Why do some teachers choose to develop curriculum, while others do not? Teaching is a very complex endeavor. Each teacher's knowledge, skills and experiences affect the interactions of students and materials in ways that neither students nor materials can. The current trend by some school districts that want teachers to use published and purchased materials with fidelity – page by page, and usually scripted, is in conflict with constructivist learning, monitoring and adjusting, and teaching based decisions on your knowledge of students.
Since Washington State has identified standards for students at each grade level, many publishers have advertised their wares as being aligned to and scientifically researched to improve student learning. This is good advertising. Good enough to have those in charge of purchasing materials use these same statements to justify teachers using said materials and restricting them to delivering curriculum according to specific instructions. Thus eliminating the art of teaching. Those golden opportunities when teachers identify the students' learning styles, their understanding of the content, and the joy of being an independent learner, could easily be eliminated.
I believe that knowledge acquisition is active and strategic, focused on many factors, including problems of understanding, diversity of expertise, learning styles and interests. Successful curriculum projects help students to develop through constructing curriculum out of their present experiences. Teachers know that each student comes to school with various and diverse experiences which are to be shared and celebrated.
Vygotsky's zone of proximal development encourages the teacher to explore the distance between the students' actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. This cannot be accomplished through step-by-step, page-by-page, mass produced materials. I hope that I can continue to teach students, not materials.
I don’t understand how, or why teachers knowingly choose not to fulfill those obligations. Sure, there are a few poor teachers who simply need run out of the profession, but I don’t think the existence of those poor or ineffective practitioners is an argument for restricting good teacher from using wise professional judgment. That’s what we’re trained to do. Otherwise, why bother training, recruiting, and retaining effective teachers if their only job is to pass out canned curriculum and tests.
Testing kids more won’t make them smarter. Teaching them probably will.
Yes, Tom! It is surprising what highly skilled, intelligent teachers can do. They can get results by teaching, inspiring, and knowing what it is that each student needs to be successful. It also amazing what good teachers can do when given the proper resources and limited restrictions to their resourcefulness.
Respectfully, Mark, they use such comments as evidence of teachers knowingly failing to fulfill contracts for students to meet or exceed minimum academic standards. Use whatever procedures your districts permits, but make sure all students meet or exceed all minimum academic standards. Yes, practices exist for this to happen. And yes, we all know how to defeat them, but that does not necessarily insure that students perform adequately against the state approved external validity check as expected with each signed contract to teach. Yes?
I think that to be a good teacher you need to be resourceful, but not necessarily creative. That’s my approach anyways. I have to come up with a literacy lesson, a math lesson and a science or social studies lesson every school day. There’s no way I’m going to make each lesson up from scratch. But there’s no way I’m going to just follow the teachers’ editions, either. I look through the books, think about what’ll work with my kids, what’ll work with my style, and come up with a lesson that usually works. Districts like Bellevue got carried away by trying to control everything their teachers do. What they need to do is focus on hiring good, resourceful teachers, buying quality materials, and making sure that both the materials and the teachers focus on the standards. And then step back and let it happen.
Please, let’s not confuse curricula with manufactured materials. What most of us are discussing is the mandate by some districts for teachers to teach materials as printed. Skilled teachers know how to assess students, are masters of their curriculum and understand the standards. They are a much better judge of what to teach to whom and how than a detached group of well meaning people trying to sell materials. Our goal is to teach each child so they may reach their potential.
How?
Interesting comments about “fidelity” to curricula. Whether intentionally or not, these comments support reasons advocates for academic standards and tight curricula use to assert their position. Yes?
Blind fidelity to curriculum designed without specific children in mind is a mistake. This is basically what teachers do who have students work mindlessly through a text book and neither tailor the methods to their students or try, in any way, to pique their interest in the subject by connecting its importance to their lives.
Regardless of whether or not the creative artistry of teaching is one of the major perks of the profession, regardless of what I think is important about literature or history, children aren’t ingredients. The classroom is not a stovetop. You can’t take a recipe for learning that’s been created and sold to make a profit and tell teachers to cook up success. Districts mandating strict lockstep adherence to a curriculum are grasping at straws because they don’t know what else to do.
And Bob, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect teachers to “show the minimum required measured learning increases directly and promptly,” and then move on. That’s meeting standards, but it’s not adhering to a district-mandated curriculum. Good teachers personalize, assess, diagnose, create tailored curriculum to meet the needs of their students, and teach it in an engaging way. If it doesn’t work well, they back up and reteach, or spiral back to important components of the lesson.
Would physical therapy work if it was the same for every patient? Would it work to serve the exact same meal to every customer in a restaurant? Does every Olympic athlete follow the same training regimen? No. Best results are experienced when one’s individual needs are taken into account. The same holds true for students. Their experience, skill sets, and interests vary. The teacher who works with them every day should design the curriculum that will serve them most effectively.
I think that part of the problem is that standard curricula that are adopted by different districts aren’t written by current classroom teachers, or they are written by teachers with limited experience compared to the whole of our nation.
I have been in the situation where my high-needs, low-income, highly diverse high school was expected to adopt the exact same curriculum as the most successfully, predominately middle-class high school in our district. It was disastrous. Cultural intelligence in a diverse population should not be measured on the same scale as the cultural intelligence of the middle-class white population. Likewise, curriculum and strategies that are developed in the latter high school are not easily transferable to the former.
The same thing happens when curriculum is written in Olympia and taught in inner-city Seattle. The focus has got to be on skills rather than knowledge, and each teacher, who knows best the learning patterns of her students, should determine the methods and strategies to be enable students to gain those skills. Rena is right: teaching IS an art.
So if it isn’t tested, we shouldn’t teach it. That’s my contractual obligation. Got it. I’m just curious what those “creative ways” would be if I’m told I have to give Worksheet 17 on October 4th because that’s what the curriculum says…regardless of whether my kids are ready for Worksheet 17 or whether they have already mastered the skills invovled with Worksheet 17 and are ready to move on.
I must make sure my students can identify whether a given poet is from a given movement or style…romanticism, trancendentalism, modernism, etc. I could drill them to memorize definitions and connect authors’ names with the movement, and they will ace the test (which is multiple choice). All I have time to do is the drill and memorization. They have no real clue what romanticism or modernism or transcendentalism means, other than the definition, but they can pass the test. They don’t understand the nuances of each point of view, how each responds to the world and society in a unique way. To provide that information and that experience would mean teaching beyond what is being tested… which apparently is beyond my contracted obligation?
How about when I teach “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The test does not require an understanding of the Great Depression (even though the book is loaded with allusions which the kids will not spot without that information). The test does not require that they understand the novel’s cultural significance, the controversy surrouding it, or the masterful intersection of three plotlines to reinforce a major theme. The test has vocabulary, identification of characters and events from the plot. Do I then ignore everything but character identification and event sequence? They can get that from Sparknotes…why do I even bother having them read the novel if they’re only being tested on what they can find more easily on Sparknotes?
This is the problem with absolute fidelity to the curriculum. In math, if the curriculum says teach fractions using fraction strips, but I find that using a different manipulative (or no manipulative at all) works better for my learners, I ought to have the freedom to adjust that approach. Strict fidelity to curriculum does not welcome that. If my students need to understand the historical context of Animal Farm in order to better understand the concept of allegory I ought to be granted the freedom to adjust in ways that I believe will help them… if the curriculum doesn’t include that historical context for AF, it is not welcome.
You may argue that wanting to teach historical context in order to foster a connection and context (prior schema) for a reading is my exertion of my “preference” or “belief.” But, plenty of research on literacy will indicate that engaging prior schema and understanding literary context is a fundamental to effective comprehension of a literary text. If the curriculum doesn’t “allow” that, but past experience tells me that student performance increases as a result of this instruction, why should I be banned from including that?
Yes, schools are about student learning, not teacher beliefs, preferences, etc. As we all know, teachers sign contracts to fulfill the official state mandated minimum standards for student learning. Just show the minimum required measured learning increases directly and promptly. Good teachers, by definition of contracted expectations, will do so, and then move on to other instruction, sometimes in creative ways. Yes?
Unfortunately, teacher autonomy might make it harder for schools to produce the “data” necessary to convincingly and reliably demonstrate progress. It’s much easier to document growth if they all start with the same pre-assessment and are measured by the same post-assessment, with consistent steps in between.
But, as a poster on a previous blog entry stated: how many things do we do in education because they are easier for administration, not better for student learning?
Now, one could argue that the fidelity approach with common assessments can produce measurable growth in student learning. That’s probably true. But I think it just must run out the profession’s best, brightest, and most creative, because that creativity that makes them great teachers might be stifled by a rigid and rote curriculum.
In recent years this issue has caused major conflict between teachers and districts (Bellevue, 2008). As teachers have risen to the demand for higher standards and more student achievement, they also are more likely to demand autonomy in return.