Questions for week 2: April 19
1. What makes content such a challenging area to upgrade?
2. What specific subjects are begging for attention and seem dated to your staff and your learners?
3. Is the possibility of purposeful provocation useful as a means to get out of subject matter ruts?
4. Could this study group, or your campus/department, choose one subject and go through the process of reviewing it to upgrade and to replace content?
Reading assignment for April 26: Chapter 4
Saturday, April 17, 2010
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17 comments:
This may be the most challenging chapter in Heidi Jacobs book. The issue of updating curriculum on any widespread basis is going to be the most frustrating endeavor of all when it comes to making the type of fundamental changes needed for implementing Curriculum 21. Jacobs is absolutely correct to frame much her discussion within a global perspective.
Jacobs asks what needs to be kept, cut, or created in the content of our curriculum. Whatever the answers may be, they must take into consideration the impact of our changing world in terms of economic, political, cultural, scientific, and technological advances.
This is particularly challenging for two primary reasons.
First, as Americans we are a narrow minded, self-centered culture who will find it extremely hard to relinquish our perception as world leaders in every geo-political, -economic, - ideological and cultural arena.
History has proven that any nations ability to maintain dominance depends on its productive capacity. The United States has built an economic and industrial base which outpaced the rest of the world since the turn of the century. But it is now predicted that by the time our current kindergarten students are in their most productive years of employment, the leading economic power in the world will be China. The United States will be tied in second place with India.
To date, it might be said that when it comes to preparing for the future, the smartest (and only) significant change we have made to our educational system is the addition of teaching Mandarin.
Secondly, as Texans, we are locked into a form of governance that frustrates timely change in educational issues – in particular those involving curriculum. One only needs to look back on the recent process of updating the Social Studies standards.
Two significant factors which affect how we can, in fact, choose what to keep, cut, and delete in our curriculum are CONSENSUS and POINT OF CONTROL. Just watch any subject department on any campus meet and discuss changing their scope and sequence. You are likely to see as many opinions and arguments as there are members of the team. I believe the types of significant changes to curriculum which Heidi Jacobs proposes are way more intricate and involved that a few superficial changes such as deciding to discuss the Civil War for one week instead of two, or adding or deleting vocabulary terms here and there, or choosing which case studies to include within various subjects .
How much time do we devote to studying the economy of Brazil versus Poland? Do we continue teaching students how to use software that may be outdated next week?
The seemingly simple task of reaching consensus among ten teachers takes on an even more daunting aura when you think of reaching consensus on a state, let alone national level.
Even if consensus among the curriculum practitioners (i.e. teachers) was possible, they really are not the true point of control. Unfortunately, the deep-rooted, systematic changes needed are ultimately controlled by a State Agency and Legislative Board of Education with a history of being influenced by politics, economics, and even religious lobbyists. Sadly, the true point of control for meaningful curriculum change is not located in the classroom or local district.
Yes, we should do what we can at the local level, and we should allow innovation and risk-taking in the classroom. But how far can we (should we) push the parameters when we are still held accountable to high stakes testing designed at a state level?
One appropriate action we should be taking is to push initiatives such as the Visioning Institute’s. Another is to be involved in our professional organizations.
Ultimately, every educator owes it to the profession in general and their students in particular to remain aware of developments in their curriculum area and constantly explore innovative and effective practices to make each day’s lessons meaningful and relevant within a local as well as global perspective.
I felt very frustrated reading this chapter because I agree with Greg that it is difficult to push innovation when we are held to state and testing standards. I particularly felt this way when reading on page 40 about moving from state history to case studies of the states. I love her ideas about focusing on our state and the global connections, but does that line up with our current Social Studies TEKS? We have segmented our curriculum for so long that I think it will be difficult for teachers to do this without guidance. I personally find that two years on Texas history is an area where we could update the curriculum. I love the idea about videoconferencing with students around the state to learn about the rich geography, food, culture, and weather of our state. I think we too often spend most of our curriculum on Texas talking about the past and not about what is currently going on in our state. Our state is a leader in the nation, and we could help our students see the importance of their decisions as Texans much better if we focused on this.
I would love to start out the year with the question, "What is dated and nonessential?" I think this is what we have to do in order to give ourselves the time to have the depth of learning we crave. I agree that until we get involved we will continue to find our profession in the hands of people who are more concerned with political agendas than the engagement and learning of our students.
I agree with Greg that this subject is difficult to even discuss because I am concerned about what is actually in our power to change. With state and testing requirements, it is difficult to do as Ms. Jacobs suggests and actually figure out what is outdated and what we can change. I believe that those who make the content decisions are often too concerned about their political agendas to really care about the level of engagement and learning of our students.
I think the area that most needs updating is Social Studies. I love her ideas about studying the states based on their relationships with the global community instead of just studying the history of the state. Unfortunately I feel that this is so different from the way we are used to seeing social studies that it will require some help for teachers to implement. I also think that making Social Studies mean something and helping children see how applicable it is to what is going on in the world today will make it so much more engaging to our students. I think Social Studies would be the perfect place for our district or this study group to start on since there are new Social Studies TEKS being adopted as we speak. It would be great to start off with the new TEKS and a new approach.
I, too, agree with Greg and April. How much work can we do at a campus or district level when the state standards don't match-up? I also thought that Yes, W. A. Porter could address one subject area, but I had to stop and think of the effect it would have on students if the work was done campus-wide instead of district-wide. What about studnts who move from one campus to another? What gaps would we see in student learning? Would we be able to share work among campuses, and then would teachers feel ownership in work another campus did?
I absolutely loved the global perspective for change in each subject area the book addressed. From my point fo view social studies is the most outdated at the elementary level. We still teach the state and national symbols: bluebonnet, pecan tree, mockingbird, etc. granted students need to know these things, but not in Kinder, first and second grades. Where is the global connection?
In my opinion, we need to start small at the district level with one subject. Make replacements for that subject area K-12. I think once techers see , feel, and hear how this works for one area, they would be ready to apply it in other areas. In the words of my dear friend Cay Moore, "Go slow to go faster later."
I am in agreement with all of my colleagues. I have always had a passion for curriculum, and because of that, have spent most of my educational career extremely frustrated. Trying to move teachers from a very linear way of thinking and planning to a global, concept-based approach to planning has been the most difficult challenge of my career. Yet that is exactly what we must do, I believe, in order to move our students into a higher level of learning about and understanding the world in which they live. In all of the disciplines that Jacobs discusses, I find myself getting very excited, followed by a depression of how large, no enormous, the task will be to accomplish. We have to consider, as Jaime and others have said, the alignment to TEKS and district curriculum. We certainly have to consider the movement of our students and not creating any gaps. And we absolutely MUST find a was to involve more teachers into the development of a meaningful and rigorous curriculum for our students, not just using a few teachers throughout our district to write curriculum for the entire district. There will not be buy-in using our present method of curriculum development. Jacobs has been preaching curriculum integration for a long, long time, and I am so about that. I would so like to see this happen in BISD.
Upgrading curriculum is indeed a challenging task, and our traditional education system only complicates the issue. For several months now I’m been contemplating in my mind how we can accomplish such an overwhelming task and a couple of thoughts come to mind.
1. By taking a big step back and carefully looking at what we do, whether teacher, principal, specialist, consultant, or district leader, we need to view our roles from a broader perspective. I believe that most of us have become so attached to our area of expertise that it is hard to see how it fits into the big picture. My title is “specialist” but I work diligently to be a “generalist.” When we begin to move away from teaching skills/concepts in isolation and package instruction as interdisciplinary, project based learning we will find the time to provide the depth and complexity needed to allow student creativity and innovation.
2. Consider “what is not essential or dated” and let it go. Every lesson plan and curriculum document needs to be approached with this leading question. I appreciate April’s comment that it would be a great way to begin the school year.
Finally, page 48 gives some great suggestions on how to modernize and update assessments and assignments throughout the year. The forums suggested include podcasts, video conferences, documentaries, voice-overs, e-comments, feedback, meetings, stories, lectures, and more, all of which will fit into any area of the curriculum.
I felt the same frustration as Greg,Jaimie, and April when I read Chapter 3. We are bound by the state standards and high stake testing. While I agree with Jacobs idea of teaching from the global perspective, we are required to teach the TEKS. Social Studies is an area I feel we lag behind. I would rather our scholars see the global connections of our state rather than just knowing what the state flower is.
As I read this chapter, I became more and more frustrated with the challenges we face with the bureaucratic system in which we work as educators. How can we change the content when what we will teach and when we will teach it is a top down process? I agree that we must challenge this with our support of the Visioning Institute. While attempting to be a learning organization within a bureaucratic model, we must find the places within the system in all the subjects (not just one) that we can make the changes described in this book. We feel bound by the high stakes testing and the accountability to reach certain levels, but if we gave the teachers the information shared in this book and time, most of them would love to upgrade the content areas. Each subject as discussed in the book has a need for change. It would be difficult for me to choose one. If we truly believe that every child will succeed in a future they create then we must adopt the ideas in this book. We can’t wait to review, upgrade, and replace content but we also cannot rush the process. We need to take it in small steps and work through the process. Just as in Chapter 2, replacing one dated assessment with one modern one per semester, we could work through exchanging one rut in the content per semester or year with dynamic and current material.
Moving from How to Why…
At first I was very frustrated with this chapter because I was concentrating on the How. I liked what she had to say about Social Studies and the point of view we should take when teaching our state history, but I realized that I live in Texas a state where history and state pride run deep. How do I change something that is mandated by the state, engrained in our culture, and tested on the TAKS test?
When I got to the Math section this chapter started to make more sense. As a student I struggled in Math because most of my teachers taught by memorization. I was never taught the practical applications of math, I was taught the skill of repetition. As curriculum designers we must create pragmatic lessons that explain the WHY and stretch across the disciplines. We can no longer teach concepts because the TEKS say so we much teach with meaning and purpose and prepare our students for a 21st Century future.
I spoke to the over 100 secondary English teachers at the last ALT of the year, and I used Jacobs' words to bolster our discussion about the total rewrite of our curriculum. It seemed so appropriate to ask her 3 central questions. "What is essential and timeless?" "What is not essential or dated?" "What should be created that is evident and necessary?"
We used these three questions to choose 2 common long works per grade level in grades 6-12 across the district. This may not sound like much, but it was huge to come to consensus about this. We had to decide what literature was really "timeless" and decide what was truly "dated."
The best message in this chapter, though, was in the section about teaching English. Two things are abundantly clear. We must teach English as a foreign language, keeping in mind all the linguistic subtleties of the language. Moreover, we MUST connect reading, writing, speaking and listening. Secondly, we must realize that there are new genres that are part of today's culture. Our TEKS do not adequately address media literacy, but we must help our students understand the various genres that are part of media.
One thing I think what makes content so difficult to upgrade is the fact that we have quite a number of teachers who love to create a unit or a set of lessons and then pull them from the drawer when this unit of study rolls around each year. I think that Schlechty makes the point that too often "reform" is couched in the mindset of making a "new and innovative" approach fit into what I'm already comfortable doing, and as long as this thought process prevails, nothing really ever changes. So, as I observe in classrooms and see many of the same types of lessons, even after a re-write, I keep asking myself, “Shouldn’t this all be different, if it’s been re-written?” I read in the previous posts where some are frustrated with the state control, and I am as well, but I honestly feel that if I could create an educational milieu where teachers expected progressive thinking of each other, then we’d truly transform the education.
For my campus, I feel that math is the area that needs to be shown a little love. I feel the way we teach reading is very "cutting edge" and are seeking out the best practices, but in the area of math, I still see a lot of drill and kill, worksheets, whole-group lessons. Caren has been working with us last year, but I feel that I need to have a clearer picture of what needs to happen and how to roll this out to the teachers so they will share this vision and work to make it happen.
When reading this chapter, I was amazed and excited about the changes in curriculum that Ms. Jacobs was proposing. Some of the changes were a drastic departure from the norm in an attempt to leave behind the things that were not essential or were dated. I understand that we do not have the ability to change our curriculum and must continue to make the TEKS our focus. However, we do have the ability to teach the TEKS in different ways. I can see that the challenge that we now have is to incorporate some of the ideas that Ms. Jacobs is proposing into the curriculum we now have. She had some great examples in every subject.
The section talking about Social Studies really spoke to me. I thought back to my K-12 years and I loved SS but always noticed we ran out of time by the end of the year and rarely entered the 20th century. I think Ms. Jacobs makes a good point that our emphasis should be on the last 50 years.
I taught 4th grade and loved teaching Texas History. However, as much as I hate to admit it Ms. Jacobs is probably right in her assertion that there should be less focus on state history and more on global history. Perhaps TX history should not be focus in both 4th and 7th grades. There were also some great suggestions on how to merge state history within the context of US and world history.
Mike
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