Dear Students past, present, and future,
Above anything else, you are the reason I do what I do. For an hour a day for one hundred and eighty days in high school (or for six hours a day for six months if you are one of my preschool students) we are bonded together in a relationship where I hope you have a little more insights and knowledge about yourself and the world leaving my classroom then when you came in. My success is determined by your success, not just in school, but also in life.
As I think back over my years as a student, a student teacher, and now as a teacher I think the one thing that sticks out was my need for perfection within myself.
As a student, I never hand an assignment in without checking and re-checking it for errors. I also tend to write my paper around the great ideas and quotes I had found from “experts” in the field. My last blog for my “Curriculum in It’s Social Context” class was made up of fourteen paragraphs and I used eleven quotes and would have included more if I had found a way for them to fit. As this semester has progressed I have become more comfortable with my experiences becoming the data for my writing. It is in the classroom where I have been able to put shoe leather to the topics that I read about and decide which ones really do work.
I think that this need for perfectionism is the result of having a few teachers who had me scared for my academic future as they were always looked for the elusive “right” answer, not caring about the thought process as much as the answer. I remember once in AP Literature and Composition in high school our assignment was, in pairs, to take a poem and interpret it. My partner and I chose the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes and we used our knowledge of oppression, hope, and the Harlem Renaissance writers to interpret the poem to be about a mother, who had been through the struggle, encouraging her son to keep fighting. We were excited to present it in front of the class, having found this project and the poem to be so interesting when, approximately five minutes into the presentation, our teacher told us that we were wrong, to sit down, and then spent the next twenty minutes lecturing the class on the “true” meaning of the poem for all mankind. It was not only a mortifying experience, but it also taught me that my interpretations were not necessarily the right ones. That teacher did not want to know how we had come to the interpretation that we had, to dialogue about questions we may have had, but rather wanted to tell us what the “right” interpretation was.
As a student teacher, my perfection manifested itself in spending hours preplanning and planning lessons and units, sometimes having up to five pages of notes, questions, and activities to cover in a single class period. What I didn’t do, however, was develop the ability to reflect on what I was learning through teaching, so I had to learn those same lessons again.
While I expected a lot from myself, I was beginning to see that I did not want to scar my students and instead expected much less from them in terms of behavior and academics. Coming from somewhat of a privilege background, I knew these students had the resources at their disposal to be whatever they set their minds to and it took a few months to see that I needed to encourage them to see that too.
I learned that I needed to expect as much from disadvantaged students as I had from my private school student teaching students. While these students were more economically disadvantaged, it did not mean that they were any less intelligent, or that they needed me to hold their hands. I need to keep them accountable, learning skills about time management and academic honesty that they could use beyond the classroom.
As a teacher, my perfectionism had reached such a point, that I did not want anyone to see me as anything less than perfect. I was so concerned my students would have questions I couldn’t answer that I spent hours researching whatever topic we were discussing. I had always seen my teachers as such beacons of knowledge that could answer any question; that is what I wanted to be that for my students. I was petrified that they would find a question that I could not answer and that they would somehow see me as less of a teacher. What I had failed to understand at the time was that these beacons of knowledge had spent so many years teaching the exact same material they probably could not help to anticipate the questions that would be asked and to know the answers.
What I was also unaware of was that having all this knowledge did not encourage my students to want to learn, but rather they looked to me for the answers and that I had alienated them the same way I had felt alienated by my teachers: not having the right answers. I have discovered that students who are afraid of being wrong, will not offer answers to even the simplest of questions and will not ask questions for fear of looking “stupid”. I have taken this knowledge and redefined what the image was that I was projecting to my students. While before it was an image of “perfection” it is now an image of “openness in learning as life long learners.”
Having had the privilege of educating some of you as preschoolers and some of you as high schoolers, you will notice that the image I attempt to convey to you may have varied slightly. As preschoolers I set up the room (with tents, and tunnels, play clothes and a play kitchen) and had you engage in activities that encouraged the “building of imagination” as our main image. If you put blocks in the play dough and told me it was a birthday cake, we sang “Happy Birthday” and blew out the candles. If we were drawing a picture and you told me that a couple purple squiggly lines was a cow, I didn’t tell you that it looked like a mess and that cows weren’t purple, we just talked about cows. The structure of the day allowed time for you to explore the various centers until you found what interested you. Work was your play and being able to ask questions and think outside of the box was what was important.
If I taught you a decade or more down the road, the image I endeavor to communicate to you is one of “life-long learning”. To a lesser extent, I still encouraged you to use your imagination as you asked questions about things we were learning in class and things that you saw on the news that made you curious about the world at large. Imagination will follow you through a career and help you to see outside think more creatively as you help move your company forward. All great CEOs and leaders have the vision to see where they are going and the imagination of how to get there successfully.
What things I could not answer, we explored together. As scientists we think through the questions, developing a hypothesis, designing what an experiment would look like, when possible conducting the experiment, and then looking at the results. In one class when the students wanted to know whether plants could survive without light, we planted lima bean seeds in cups and put some on the windowsill and hid some in a cabinet. Two weeks later we found out that those in the cabinet were paler, but taller than the ones in the windowsill as they stretched looking for sunlight. When the students were curious to know what would happen if the plant was then exposed to light, we put both plants in the windowsill and the pale one became green. I also encouraged each of you to take ownership of your own learning by asking good, thoughtful questions and by finding resources to help you in your search. I am naturally curious about the world and want my students to be the same. I am not ashamed of the fact that I Google things I don’t know; my friends find it funny, but I really want to know and living in an age where we have the information at our finger tips, we need to be learning how to access it and wise ways to use it.
As we move forward I make several promises to you. First, I promise to continuously develop my tools for reflection as your teacher. I never want to become one of those teachers that use the same lesson plan year after year because it is already done. As the interests and curiosities of my students change with each new class, so should I be tweaking my curriculum. I shouldn’t be pulling out worksheets if I have tactile learners and I shouldn’t have students always working in groups if they are not interpersonal learners. I have already begun to journal about our days together- what activities worked, which ones did not; how your class responded to one activity and how engaged each of my student seemed to be in the learning process. As I am required by school policy to follow and include certain things in my curriculum, I am also looking for new and interesting ways to engage students in each topic.
Reflection is not just a valuable tool for me, but also for each of you, too. You come into a classroom and say that you hate something, but why is that? What experiences in your past have set up a dislike for something on the very first day? I encourage you to think back through your educational experiences. Do you hate science because of a poor teacher? Then open yourself up to becoming excited about the subject from a teacher who is excited about the subject. Did you not understand something and then do poorly in the class? Ask questions. I am also going to begin using science journals in class; these will help me understand questions you may have and for you to think through things we are learning in class.
I also promise to seek out best practices and to collaborate with other teachers. Doing so will help me to feel more satisfied in my career by ensuring that you as students learn and that I have done my job well. This may mean that you will see more principles, directors, or fellow teachers in our classroom from time to time. Relax, they are not their to judge you, but rather observe what is going on in our classroom, and make suggestion to me on how I can better communicate, plan, and engage you as learners. I also plan to connect more with teachers that you will continue to have in science and in your grade level so that the curriculum we use will move you easily vertically, ensuring that you have the information that is needed to excel in other science courses, and horizontally, ensuring that you have the reading and writing skills to be successful in the grade you are now. These connections will keep you from compartmentalizing learning and answer the question “Why do I need to know this?”
I am also committed to the idea that I am not training professional students. Whenever possible, and because of the expectations of the school I may not always have control of this, but I will not teach to a test. My job as your teacher is not to fill your mind with pointless information that you can spew forth on a test and then forget about. If this is the case then I have failed you as a teacher and you have wasted your time as my student. Each of you will, hopefully, graduate high school and seek a career that interests you. If you do not see the relevance behind what we are learning, ask. I want to open a dialogue where you can ask questions and talk through what we are learning. This means that I am also committed to making instruction relevant. The lack of connection between the subject being taught and what the you as students already knew, felt, and loved would make the curriculum “formal and symbolic,” having no real lasting impression on you as the student, leading to a lack of motivation and ultimately, and according to John Dewey “the child’s reasoning powers, the faculty of abstraction and generalization, are not adequately developed.” As a preschooler this means you will continue to engage in self-directed play and as a high schooler we will look for ways to make curriculum more relevant, among other things differentiated instruction.
I am continuously growing as a student and as a teacher and hope that my students are too. You may be students today, but tomorrow you will be decision makers; I hope that we have worked through enough controversial subjects that you have the critical thinking skills necessary to make a good decision. My first lesson, or my last lesson to you: Knowledge has the power to change thought patterns and lives. Use it, or lose it.
Jeanne Holladay
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Cycle Five: What consitutes a successful curriculum?
Every few years, it seems, we are privy to new insights in the way of educational reform, all intended to make students succeed through a better curriculum. It seems like they are like the saying about the weather in Michigan, “wait 5 minutes and it will change”. I think our readings for this cycle show ways in which we can make education better: focusing on a students’ as individuals (what makes them happy?), changing ideas about assessment, increasing teacher collaboration, and working to lessen variables outside of class.
Having had the unfortunate opportunity of being required to teach to a test, I am a firm believer that standardized tests are not the way to measure how successful a curriculum, program, or school operates. When we fill a child’s head full of information and then teach that child how to do well on tests, we are not preparing them for life, but rather to be excellent Trivial Pursuit players. Tests are not a good indicator of whether a child has mastered material, but rather how much of the jargon they are able to retain long enough to spit it out on paper. As Eisner points out, “The result is an approach to reform that leaves little room for surprise, for imagination, for improvisation, or for the cultivation of productive idiosyncrasy,” (329). He also points out that the education of the past and the education of the present are not the same. “Education has evolved from a form of human development serving personal and civic needs into a product our nation produces to compete in a global economy,” (330). We are mass-producing laborers instead of educating humans.
When we place pressure on our students to do well on a test, and place their futures on that test, we are placing them under pressure that “undermines the kind of experience that students out to have in schools,” (Eisner, 330). Each year, Chinese students commit suicide after they receive failing grades on the gaokao (the Chinese National College Entrance Exam). In the United States, high-stakes testing can cause severe emotional or physical distress on students while not producing the desired effect of improvement in student learning.
So how do we do assessment better? At CPESS the portfolios the students complete, as well as presentations they make, “are the primary record-transcript- of a student’s success at CPESS and the basis for receiving the diploma.” (Meier 60). At Tutor Time, we do something similar. Children have a file that follows them through their time at the center from enrollment to kindergarten. These files contain ability profiles (what they should be accomplishing for their age range), but also examples of art, mathematics, early literacy, musical, and physical education. Pictures and anecdotal reports indicate what a child enjoys and what he or she is learning.
I have incorporated several of Eisner’s suggested assessments in my year at Calvert. One question Eisner asked is “Do students participate in the assessment of their own work? If so, how? It is important for teachers to understand what students themselves think of their own work,” (332). My Honor’s Earth Science students were in charge of teaching their classmates an overview of a chapter in the book we did not have time to cover at length in class. At the end of their teaching, I had the students evaluate themselves as both teachers and students (as their peers taught), based on a rubric I passed out and explained at the beginning of the project. I also had them give me a rationalization for giving themselves that grade. Most students had trouble separating themselves from being the graded to the grader. They were so used to having someone tell them what was acceptable and unacceptable that they couldn’t think for themselves. Do they give themselves a great grade because they want to increase their GPA, or are they honest with (or even hard on) themselves because they know they could do better?
Another one of Eisner’s suggested assessments that I have used involved questions. “Perhaps we should be less concerned with whether they [students] can answer our questions than with whether they can ask their own,” (331). I have always thought that in order to be a good learner, a student has to be a good thinker. I was fortunate to learn under a master teacher during my undergrad and she was an expert at questioning. During our tests, she would have us write and answer our own questions. In the beginning, it could be something as simple as true and false or fill-in-the-blank, but as the semester progressed she made us write more challenging questions, eventually writing an entire test based on the questions we had asked.
“What if we took the idea seriously and concluded units of study by looking for the sorts of questions that youngsters were able to raise as a result of being immersed in a domain of study?” (331). I tried this with my Earth Science students and got mixed results. As with grading themselves, some students were completely baffled at this and chose not to answer (or ask) any questions. Others chose to show less than I know they knew, while still others excelled at thinking outside of the norm. We continued to work on asking questions and opening a dialogue about topics covered in class. If both questioning and self-evaluation had been taught at an earlier age, these students would have flourished with these assessment tools. The preschoolers I am currently working with are always asking questions and learning to find the answers in those.
One common theme between Eisner, Noddings, and Meier is the idea of personalized or individual interest curriculum. At Meier’s school, Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS), students in the Senior Institute complete 14 portfolios of the student’s choosing and take ownership over the material. Eisner tells us “we should be trying to discover where a youngster is, where his or her strengths are, where additional work is warranted,” (330). Noddings suggests that while we are promoting certain goals in schooling, we are neglecting education that is personal and that brings happiness in occupation. That by grouping all students together to take the same classes, we are not benefiting those who want to learn, nor are we changing the minds of those who see a career and not schooling in their futures.
Differentiated education has become a hot-topic over the last decade as schools, textbook makers, and society at large are seeing the need to treat individuals as individuals. I have had a few successful experiences in this area. In teaching Earth Science, I assigned a project as a means of review. The students were given a rubric of things that needed to be included, but the means of presentation was their choice. I was impressed with the projects I got back: only one was a traditional essay; others included books, dioramas, poems, stories, songs, and a play. As each person presented, students were able to review the material in new and interesting ways. As a preschool teacher, what we call “explorative play” could also be considered differentiated instruction as children chose activities and areas to explore on their own or with a teacher as “fellow learner”.
Both Eisner and Meier also address the idea of teachers working together. Eisner believes that a deep problem of schooling is that teachers “don’t often have access to other people who know what they’re doing when they teach and who can help them to do it better,” (329). Meier’s school helped to remedy this by allowing teachers time to collaborate on lesson plans and on strategies to help students.
Teacher collaboration is beneficial to both the schools and the teachers. For students, teacher collaboration provides consistency, best practices, and the knowledge base from many teachers. For the educator, collaborative efforts breaks the isolation teachers may feel, and brings daily satisfaction that results from ensuring students learn and a job well done. Collaboration can vary and may involve giving feedback on a lesson, discussions on student assessments, and analyzing student data.
I was very fortunate in my year at Calvert to have a number of colleagues who I could go to for mentoring as a new teacher. The school district itself provided mentors for all new teachers who had all been teaching for ten or more years and who met with us at least once a month to answer and ask questions about our first years. Additionally, a fellow new teacher and I sought out an experienced teacher in our department who had been teaching for more than ten years and who helped us get established by showing us practices that had worked in the past and helping us handle hard situations. She was very generous with her materials and time. The biggest help, though, was the relationship I had formed with another new teacher in my department. We planned together, shared materials, and just dialogued at the end of the day/week/lesson/unit about things that had gone well and things we should change for next time. These interactions with people who knew what I was going through or who were going through it at the same time helped to establish me as a teacher.
We are all aware that students come to class with whatever baggage that brought with them from outside of school. Providing for physical needs is something they did extremely well at the charter schools in the New York Times article. Families who lived in the zone the school covered had access to after-school programs, asthma care, pre- college advice and note taking skills, and adult classes for expectant parents “The organization has placed young teaching assistants, known as peacemakers, in many of the elementary school classrooms in the area and poured money into organizing block associations, helping tenants buy buildings from the city, and refurbishing parks and playgrounds. By linking services, the program aims to improve on early-childhood programs like Head Start, whose impact has been shown to evaporate as children age.” (1). The flexible schedule and small size at CPESS allowed staff to take the time to teach students caring and compassion so they were able to express it in times of extreme unrest, caring for their emotional needs as well. Noddings discusses the social aspect of education, “If the am is justice-to provide all students with an education that will meet their needs- the solutions is likely to involve the provision of considerable variety in school offerings and to include material that might contribute to personal as well as public life,” (432). He advocates rigorous and interesting course that center on a students talents and interest in order to demonstrate a society that honors all honest workers, not just those with degrees and lots of money.
So, to answer the question of the week “what constitutes a successful curriculum?” I would say that the answer is: work and effort. It involves teachers working together to encourage their students in areas of interest to be critical thinkers and to take responsibility for their education. This is far more complicated than pulling out cookie-cutter lesson plans from years past and calling them “what works”. We are not training professional students and the idea of doing well on a standardized test is not what will make them excel in life (which should be our ultimate goal as educators). Education is always evolving, and so should our curriculum.
Having had the unfortunate opportunity of being required to teach to a test, I am a firm believer that standardized tests are not the way to measure how successful a curriculum, program, or school operates. When we fill a child’s head full of information and then teach that child how to do well on tests, we are not preparing them for life, but rather to be excellent Trivial Pursuit players. Tests are not a good indicator of whether a child has mastered material, but rather how much of the jargon they are able to retain long enough to spit it out on paper. As Eisner points out, “The result is an approach to reform that leaves little room for surprise, for imagination, for improvisation, or for the cultivation of productive idiosyncrasy,” (329). He also points out that the education of the past and the education of the present are not the same. “Education has evolved from a form of human development serving personal and civic needs into a product our nation produces to compete in a global economy,” (330). We are mass-producing laborers instead of educating humans.
When we place pressure on our students to do well on a test, and place their futures on that test, we are placing them under pressure that “undermines the kind of experience that students out to have in schools,” (Eisner, 330). Each year, Chinese students commit suicide after they receive failing grades on the gaokao (the Chinese National College Entrance Exam). In the United States, high-stakes testing can cause severe emotional or physical distress on students while not producing the desired effect of improvement in student learning.
So how do we do assessment better? At CPESS the portfolios the students complete, as well as presentations they make, “are the primary record-transcript- of a student’s success at CPESS and the basis for receiving the diploma.” (Meier 60). At Tutor Time, we do something similar. Children have a file that follows them through their time at the center from enrollment to kindergarten. These files contain ability profiles (what they should be accomplishing for their age range), but also examples of art, mathematics, early literacy, musical, and physical education. Pictures and anecdotal reports indicate what a child enjoys and what he or she is learning.
I have incorporated several of Eisner’s suggested assessments in my year at Calvert. One question Eisner asked is “Do students participate in the assessment of their own work? If so, how? It is important for teachers to understand what students themselves think of their own work,” (332). My Honor’s Earth Science students were in charge of teaching their classmates an overview of a chapter in the book we did not have time to cover at length in class. At the end of their teaching, I had the students evaluate themselves as both teachers and students (as their peers taught), based on a rubric I passed out and explained at the beginning of the project. I also had them give me a rationalization for giving themselves that grade. Most students had trouble separating themselves from being the graded to the grader. They were so used to having someone tell them what was acceptable and unacceptable that they couldn’t think for themselves. Do they give themselves a great grade because they want to increase their GPA, or are they honest with (or even hard on) themselves because they know they could do better?
Another one of Eisner’s suggested assessments that I have used involved questions. “Perhaps we should be less concerned with whether they [students] can answer our questions than with whether they can ask their own,” (331). I have always thought that in order to be a good learner, a student has to be a good thinker. I was fortunate to learn under a master teacher during my undergrad and she was an expert at questioning. During our tests, she would have us write and answer our own questions. In the beginning, it could be something as simple as true and false or fill-in-the-blank, but as the semester progressed she made us write more challenging questions, eventually writing an entire test based on the questions we had asked.
“What if we took the idea seriously and concluded units of study by looking for the sorts of questions that youngsters were able to raise as a result of being immersed in a domain of study?” (331). I tried this with my Earth Science students and got mixed results. As with grading themselves, some students were completely baffled at this and chose not to answer (or ask) any questions. Others chose to show less than I know they knew, while still others excelled at thinking outside of the norm. We continued to work on asking questions and opening a dialogue about topics covered in class. If both questioning and self-evaluation had been taught at an earlier age, these students would have flourished with these assessment tools. The preschoolers I am currently working with are always asking questions and learning to find the answers in those.
One common theme between Eisner, Noddings, and Meier is the idea of personalized or individual interest curriculum. At Meier’s school, Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS), students in the Senior Institute complete 14 portfolios of the student’s choosing and take ownership over the material. Eisner tells us “we should be trying to discover where a youngster is, where his or her strengths are, where additional work is warranted,” (330). Noddings suggests that while we are promoting certain goals in schooling, we are neglecting education that is personal and that brings happiness in occupation. That by grouping all students together to take the same classes, we are not benefiting those who want to learn, nor are we changing the minds of those who see a career and not schooling in their futures.
Differentiated education has become a hot-topic over the last decade as schools, textbook makers, and society at large are seeing the need to treat individuals as individuals. I have had a few successful experiences in this area. In teaching Earth Science, I assigned a project as a means of review. The students were given a rubric of things that needed to be included, but the means of presentation was their choice. I was impressed with the projects I got back: only one was a traditional essay; others included books, dioramas, poems, stories, songs, and a play. As each person presented, students were able to review the material in new and interesting ways. As a preschool teacher, what we call “explorative play” could also be considered differentiated instruction as children chose activities and areas to explore on their own or with a teacher as “fellow learner”.
Both Eisner and Meier also address the idea of teachers working together. Eisner believes that a deep problem of schooling is that teachers “don’t often have access to other people who know what they’re doing when they teach and who can help them to do it better,” (329). Meier’s school helped to remedy this by allowing teachers time to collaborate on lesson plans and on strategies to help students.
Teacher collaboration is beneficial to both the schools and the teachers. For students, teacher collaboration provides consistency, best practices, and the knowledge base from many teachers. For the educator, collaborative efforts breaks the isolation teachers may feel, and brings daily satisfaction that results from ensuring students learn and a job well done. Collaboration can vary and may involve giving feedback on a lesson, discussions on student assessments, and analyzing student data.
I was very fortunate in my year at Calvert to have a number of colleagues who I could go to for mentoring as a new teacher. The school district itself provided mentors for all new teachers who had all been teaching for ten or more years and who met with us at least once a month to answer and ask questions about our first years. Additionally, a fellow new teacher and I sought out an experienced teacher in our department who had been teaching for more than ten years and who helped us get established by showing us practices that had worked in the past and helping us handle hard situations. She was very generous with her materials and time. The biggest help, though, was the relationship I had formed with another new teacher in my department. We planned together, shared materials, and just dialogued at the end of the day/week/lesson/unit about things that had gone well and things we should change for next time. These interactions with people who knew what I was going through or who were going through it at the same time helped to establish me as a teacher.
We are all aware that students come to class with whatever baggage that brought with them from outside of school. Providing for physical needs is something they did extremely well at the charter schools in the New York Times article. Families who lived in the zone the school covered had access to after-school programs, asthma care, pre- college advice and note taking skills, and adult classes for expectant parents “The organization has placed young teaching assistants, known as peacemakers, in many of the elementary school classrooms in the area and poured money into organizing block associations, helping tenants buy buildings from the city, and refurbishing parks and playgrounds. By linking services, the program aims to improve on early-childhood programs like Head Start, whose impact has been shown to evaporate as children age.” (1). The flexible schedule and small size at CPESS allowed staff to take the time to teach students caring and compassion so they were able to express it in times of extreme unrest, caring for their emotional needs as well. Noddings discusses the social aspect of education, “If the am is justice-to provide all students with an education that will meet their needs- the solutions is likely to involve the provision of considerable variety in school offerings and to include material that might contribute to personal as well as public life,” (432). He advocates rigorous and interesting course that center on a students talents and interest in order to demonstrate a society that honors all honest workers, not just those with degrees and lots of money.
So, to answer the question of the week “what constitutes a successful curriculum?” I would say that the answer is: work and effort. It involves teachers working together to encourage their students in areas of interest to be critical thinkers and to take responsibility for their education. This is far more complicated than pulling out cookie-cutter lesson plans from years past and calling them “what works”. We are not training professional students and the idea of doing well on a standardized test is not what will make them excel in life (which should be our ultimate goal as educators). Education is always evolving, and so should our curriculum.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Cycle Four: How Should Curriculum Be Generated?
I was enlightened to the public spectacle that curriculum can generate as I read through the New York Times article “How Christian Were the Founders?” In it, we learn about the big decisions the state of Texas was making in regards to its Social Studies curriculum. With a majority of the sitting board of the Christian Coalition, members were attempting to rewrite the curriculum to include not only more Christians (among them Billy Graham) but also to add a more Christian slant on history.
Whatever the final decision that was made about the additions to the curriculum, it was obvious from the article that this decision did not lay in the hands of the people responsible for relaying it to the students: teachers, but rather a group of business people and/or politicians whose expertise lay in other fields. Don McLeroy, a vocal member of the Texas board, made no bones about the fact that his professional qualifications have nothing to do with education. “I’m a dentist, not a historian,” he said. “But I’m fascinated by history, so I’ve read a lot.” (NYT 2) However, it wasn’t the board that was responsible for figuring out how to implement this new curriculum- that fell to the teachers. “The process in Texas required that writing teams, made up mostly of teachers, do the actual work of revising the curriculum, with the aid of experts who were appointed by the board.” (NYT 5) Experts it seems with the same biases as the board.
I think the thing that shocked me most about this article was the misunderstanding involving Bill Martin Jr. As someone who works with small children, I cannot recount how many times I have read Mr. Martin’s books. “Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?” (which aids children in making associations between colors and meanings to objects) “Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?” (that helps toddlers identify zoo animals and the sounds they make), “Panda Bear, Panda Bear What Do You See?” (which encourages conservation) and “Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom” (which teaches children about the alphabet) are all favorites among the under 3 set. I was surprised Martin, a native son of Texas and arguably “America’s favorite children’s author” would be left out of History because of unfounded accusations. “In this case, one board member sent an e-mail message with a reference to “Ethical Marxism,” by Bill Martin, to another board member, who suggested that anyone who wrote a book with such a title did not belong in the TEKS. As it turned out, Bill Martin and Bill Martin Jr. are two different people. But by that time, the author of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” was out.” (NYT 9) Teaching Bill Martin Books
Looking at other important, yet “controversial” people in American History, I wondered who else would soon be out like Bill Martin, JR. Ben Franklin, inventor and Founding Father whose illegitimate children and mistresses may soon become a problem for the Christian Coalition? Benedict Arnold is painted as a traitor, but under his guidance, the Americans won one of the most decisive battles of the American Revolution. He became frustrated and bitter when he was passed over as a representative in the Continental Congress by military and political rivals who not only tried to claim credit for his accomplishments, but also charged him with corruption leading to an investigation where he was ordered to pay the Congress when he had already spent his own salary on the military operation. Who wouldn’t be angry, and yet the only Benedict Arnold we read about in history is the traitor. What about President Harry Truman who ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan killing thousands? Do we wipe clean the slate of American history those men and women who, while serving our country in one form or another also had questionable political-ties or morals?
I agree with Cynthia Dunbar, a Christian activist on the Texas board, when as she put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.” (NYT 2) I disagree with Ms. Dunbar that making everything “Christian” is the best way for our government to function in the next generation. I hope we are raising educated children who are able to think, defend, and dialogue about what is truly worth remembering.
I found the Tyler reading “Basic Principles of Curriculum Instruction” to be helpful in getting the “bigger picture” idea on generating curriculum.
Before beginning to write a curriculum, we must first take into account what skills we want out students to have obtained when the lesson/unit/class is over. Tyler outlines 4 major skills in his writings (68-82); among these are thinking (relating ideas instead of remembering and repeating, develop logical arguments, can not be immediately obtained from textbooks), acquiring information (developing understanding of particular things, knowledge about various things, viewed as functional, and has a value in itself), social attitudes (a tendency to react even though the reaction does not take place-emotional concomitants that does not result in a required change of attitude), and developing interests. I see a contradiction in the way I taught high school and the way I am currently teaching preschoolers. As a high school teacher, and maybe because of the emphasis on test scores, a lot of my lessons focused on teaching skills mostly from acquiring information with a small nod towards thinking. I had high hopes that my students would develop interest in the subject area, but left little time to discuss their attitudes about different topics. As a preschool teacher, the skill set tends to more rounded, but I still tend to focus on developing interests, acquiring skills, and thinking, added to some time for social attitudes. They play dress-up and count with blocks, read stories about how it is OK to be different and to like who you are, and sing ABCs and the days of the week. Interaction with the world and those in it are keys to their continued educational growth.
I found that a lot of the effective teaching that I had done in Maryland to prepare my students to take the HSA (the test that each students is required to take and pass in Science in order to graduate and receive a diploma) had been forethought by someone who knew how to write broad scope curriculum and utilized some of the tools Tyler writes about.
Tyler talked about organization in curriculum being both vertical-between grade levels- and horizontal-between subject areas. Calvert County employed the vertical organization of curriculum to prepare students for the Biology HSA (the test is given to 10th grade students). Biology is the study of living things and among those things are plants, animals, and the environment, things most notably taught about in Environmental Science courses. While many schools teach Earth Science, an “easier” science, to 9th graders, Calvert took a look at the educational objectives that needed to be reached for students to pass the HSA, discovered that these are also met in the Environmental Science curriculum, and changed their course offerings so that students took Environmental Science as ninth graders and Biology as 10th graders, hoping that with effective teaching and evaluation, the students would do well on the HSA. It seems to be working as Calvert students perform well on the test.
Connecting Biology and Environmental Science in this way not only allowed the students to retain information from one year to the next, but it showed students how the two related to one another. “If they have no appreciable connection, the student develops compartmentalized learnings which are not related to each other in any effective way when dealing with his own everyday life.” (84) Students often ask, “why do I need to know this?” and math and foreign language are two places where students can readily see the connections between what they have learned and what they will learn. I see the importance in doing this more effectively in my own classroom.
Evaluation is key in not only determining what students are learning, but what is effective and what is not. As Tyler suggests, you cannot determine how effective a teacher or curriculum is by giving one cumulative exam at the end of the year, or even a mid-term in the middle (although two evaluations are better than one). “One is not able to evaluate an instructional program by testing students only at the end of the program…It is clear that an educational evaluation involves at least two appraisals—one taking place in the early part of the educational program and the other at some later point so that the change may be measured.” (106) At Calvert, HSA Biology students were given a lot of evaluations to determine how they were doing. Each student took a test at the beginning of the school year that measured how much of the material he or she already knew. Throughout the course of the school year, benchmark tests(based on public release questions from previous HSAs) were given that measured not only what the students were learning, but also included questions from previous material so we knew how much the students were retaining as well. As the scores were compiled using computer software, I was able to analyze how each student was progressing and could make a pretty accurate estimation on how well they would do on the test in May. These benchmark tests were time consuming, and the software we used was not cheap, but the energy focused into teaching and reteaching was well worth it.
Teaching Earth Science, and student teaching in Michigan, I know that evaluation could be done better. My own experience as a student I was well acquainted with the “shovel and dump” method of doing school; cram the night before enough to be able to spit it out the next day on paper and then forget it. No actual long-term learning was taking place and if my schools had done evaluation as Tyler suggested months later, they would have seen an A- student with C- grades.
Additionally we must remember that it is “the reaction if the learner himself that determines what is learned.” (64) As teachers we can carry out exquisitely planned lessons, link to things in other classes, using prior knowledge that the student had gained from other lessons, and analyze the data that we receive from evaluation, but it is the students who must take responsibility for their learning. That does not let the teacher off the hook in the slightest,; we must be on the lookout for unexpected outcomes “that may develop from a learning experience planned for other purposes.” (68) We do not want to teach our students to hate our subjects either by placing too much in their hands. As a student in high school English literature, we read a lot of Shakespeare and I hated it. I could not comprehend what was being said and grew extremely frustrated. While I was eventually given the tools to do so, the reading still gave me no pleasure. To this day, I cringe when I hear a Shakespearian play or poem. My teachers taught me comprehension strategies, but an extreme dislike for the work.
As I continue to think about this information, I am mulling over a quote from Tyler’s writing, “Given an objective to be attained, a student must have experiences that give him an opportunity to practice the kind of behavior implied by the objective.” (65) As teachers and curriculum writers our goal is the give students those experiences, with the benefit of being as creative as we need to be, to help achieve the objective and teach them about the world. We truly do have great jobs!
Additional Resources:
Generating Curriculum and Instructional Innovations Through School-Based Management
Whatever the final decision that was made about the additions to the curriculum, it was obvious from the article that this decision did not lay in the hands of the people responsible for relaying it to the students: teachers, but rather a group of business people and/or politicians whose expertise lay in other fields. Don McLeroy, a vocal member of the Texas board, made no bones about the fact that his professional qualifications have nothing to do with education. “I’m a dentist, not a historian,” he said. “But I’m fascinated by history, so I’ve read a lot.” (NYT 2) However, it wasn’t the board that was responsible for figuring out how to implement this new curriculum- that fell to the teachers. “The process in Texas required that writing teams, made up mostly of teachers, do the actual work of revising the curriculum, with the aid of experts who were appointed by the board.” (NYT 5) Experts it seems with the same biases as the board.
I think the thing that shocked me most about this article was the misunderstanding involving Bill Martin Jr. As someone who works with small children, I cannot recount how many times I have read Mr. Martin’s books. “Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?” (which aids children in making associations between colors and meanings to objects) “Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?” (that helps toddlers identify zoo animals and the sounds they make), “Panda Bear, Panda Bear What Do You See?” (which encourages conservation) and “Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom” (which teaches children about the alphabet) are all favorites among the under 3 set. I was surprised Martin, a native son of Texas and arguably “America’s favorite children’s author” would be left out of History because of unfounded accusations. “In this case, one board member sent an e-mail message with a reference to “Ethical Marxism,” by Bill Martin, to another board member, who suggested that anyone who wrote a book with such a title did not belong in the TEKS. As it turned out, Bill Martin and Bill Martin Jr. are two different people. But by that time, the author of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” was out.” (NYT 9) Teaching Bill Martin Books
Looking at other important, yet “controversial” people in American History, I wondered who else would soon be out like Bill Martin, JR. Ben Franklin, inventor and Founding Father whose illegitimate children and mistresses may soon become a problem for the Christian Coalition? Benedict Arnold is painted as a traitor, but under his guidance, the Americans won one of the most decisive battles of the American Revolution. He became frustrated and bitter when he was passed over as a representative in the Continental Congress by military and political rivals who not only tried to claim credit for his accomplishments, but also charged him with corruption leading to an investigation where he was ordered to pay the Congress when he had already spent his own salary on the military operation. Who wouldn’t be angry, and yet the only Benedict Arnold we read about in history is the traitor. What about President Harry Truman who ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan killing thousands? Do we wipe clean the slate of American history those men and women who, while serving our country in one form or another also had questionable political-ties or morals?
I agree with Cynthia Dunbar, a Christian activist on the Texas board, when as she put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.” (NYT 2) I disagree with Ms. Dunbar that making everything “Christian” is the best way for our government to function in the next generation. I hope we are raising educated children who are able to think, defend, and dialogue about what is truly worth remembering.
I found the Tyler reading “Basic Principles of Curriculum Instruction” to be helpful in getting the “bigger picture” idea on generating curriculum.
Before beginning to write a curriculum, we must first take into account what skills we want out students to have obtained when the lesson/unit/class is over. Tyler outlines 4 major skills in his writings (68-82); among these are thinking (relating ideas instead of remembering and repeating, develop logical arguments, can not be immediately obtained from textbooks), acquiring information (developing understanding of particular things, knowledge about various things, viewed as functional, and has a value in itself), social attitudes (a tendency to react even though the reaction does not take place-emotional concomitants that does not result in a required change of attitude), and developing interests. I see a contradiction in the way I taught high school and the way I am currently teaching preschoolers. As a high school teacher, and maybe because of the emphasis on test scores, a lot of my lessons focused on teaching skills mostly from acquiring information with a small nod towards thinking. I had high hopes that my students would develop interest in the subject area, but left little time to discuss their attitudes about different topics. As a preschool teacher, the skill set tends to more rounded, but I still tend to focus on developing interests, acquiring skills, and thinking, added to some time for social attitudes. They play dress-up and count with blocks, read stories about how it is OK to be different and to like who you are, and sing ABCs and the days of the week. Interaction with the world and those in it are keys to their continued educational growth.
I found that a lot of the effective teaching that I had done in Maryland to prepare my students to take the HSA (the test that each students is required to take and pass in Science in order to graduate and receive a diploma) had been forethought by someone who knew how to write broad scope curriculum and utilized some of the tools Tyler writes about.
Tyler talked about organization in curriculum being both vertical-between grade levels- and horizontal-between subject areas. Calvert County employed the vertical organization of curriculum to prepare students for the Biology HSA (the test is given to 10th grade students). Biology is the study of living things and among those things are plants, animals, and the environment, things most notably taught about in Environmental Science courses. While many schools teach Earth Science, an “easier” science, to 9th graders, Calvert took a look at the educational objectives that needed to be reached for students to pass the HSA, discovered that these are also met in the Environmental Science curriculum, and changed their course offerings so that students took Environmental Science as ninth graders and Biology as 10th graders, hoping that with effective teaching and evaluation, the students would do well on the HSA. It seems to be working as Calvert students perform well on the test.
Connecting Biology and Environmental Science in this way not only allowed the students to retain information from one year to the next, but it showed students how the two related to one another. “If they have no appreciable connection, the student develops compartmentalized learnings which are not related to each other in any effective way when dealing with his own everyday life.” (84) Students often ask, “why do I need to know this?” and math and foreign language are two places where students can readily see the connections between what they have learned and what they will learn. I see the importance in doing this more effectively in my own classroom.
Evaluation is key in not only determining what students are learning, but what is effective and what is not. As Tyler suggests, you cannot determine how effective a teacher or curriculum is by giving one cumulative exam at the end of the year, or even a mid-term in the middle (although two evaluations are better than one). “One is not able to evaluate an instructional program by testing students only at the end of the program…It is clear that an educational evaluation involves at least two appraisals—one taking place in the early part of the educational program and the other at some later point so that the change may be measured.” (106) At Calvert, HSA Biology students were given a lot of evaluations to determine how they were doing. Each student took a test at the beginning of the school year that measured how much of the material he or she already knew. Throughout the course of the school year, benchmark tests(based on public release questions from previous HSAs) were given that measured not only what the students were learning, but also included questions from previous material so we knew how much the students were retaining as well. As the scores were compiled using computer software, I was able to analyze how each student was progressing and could make a pretty accurate estimation on how well they would do on the test in May. These benchmark tests were time consuming, and the software we used was not cheap, but the energy focused into teaching and reteaching was well worth it.
Teaching Earth Science, and student teaching in Michigan, I know that evaluation could be done better. My own experience as a student I was well acquainted with the “shovel and dump” method of doing school; cram the night before enough to be able to spit it out the next day on paper and then forget it. No actual long-term learning was taking place and if my schools had done evaluation as Tyler suggested months later, they would have seen an A- student with C- grades.
Additionally we must remember that it is “the reaction if the learner himself that determines what is learned.” (64) As teachers we can carry out exquisitely planned lessons, link to things in other classes, using prior knowledge that the student had gained from other lessons, and analyze the data that we receive from evaluation, but it is the students who must take responsibility for their learning. That does not let the teacher off the hook in the slightest,; we must be on the lookout for unexpected outcomes “that may develop from a learning experience planned for other purposes.” (68) We do not want to teach our students to hate our subjects either by placing too much in their hands. As a student in high school English literature, we read a lot of Shakespeare and I hated it. I could not comprehend what was being said and grew extremely frustrated. While I was eventually given the tools to do so, the reading still gave me no pleasure. To this day, I cringe when I hear a Shakespearian play or poem. My teachers taught me comprehension strategies, but an extreme dislike for the work.
As I continue to think about this information, I am mulling over a quote from Tyler’s writing, “Given an objective to be attained, a student must have experiences that give him an opportunity to practice the kind of behavior implied by the objective.” (65) As teachers and curriculum writers our goal is the give students those experiences, with the benefit of being as creative as we need to be, to help achieve the objective and teach them about the world. We truly do have great jobs!
Additional Resources:
Generating Curriculum and Instructional Innovations Through School-Based Management
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Cycle Three: Should the curriculum address controversial issues?
When deciding what to teach and what not to teach, controversial subjects often have us as teachers scratching our heads. Do we address these topics? If so, how? What is age appropriate? This weeks readings helped to answer some of these questions, but as broad as this topic is, many more questions still remain. Jonathan Silin stated in his article that, “ the denial of subjectivity within the curriculum only falsifies experience and alienate students from their own possibilities, “(246). For the peace of our society, to help those in need, and to fully educate our children, these important issues must be somehow addressed.
To be honest and when I looked at the readings for this week and noticed one on HIV/AIDS I wondered to myself, “Is HIV/AIDS really still a controversial topic? We all have had health classes or job safety training or watched enough after-school specials to know that the only way to pass on HIV/AIDS is through the transmission of bodily fluids—blood, semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk, and any other bodily fluid that contains blood. This is 2011, a full 30 years after the ‘AIDS epidemic’ broke.” My was I surprised to sit down to watch ABC’s February 18, 2011 edition of “What Would You Do?” and the segments with an HIV positive restaurant patron/ waiter that I knew ignorance was still alive and well in America. The show cited a Kaiser Family Foundation survey released in 2009 on HIV/AIDS indicating the ignorance we may be passing on to our children. 23% of respondents are still uncomfortable working with someone with HIV/AIDS, 35% would be uncomfortable having a child whose teacher was HIV positive or had AIDS, and a stunning 51% of people would be uncomfortable having their food served by someone with HIV/AIDS. Even more stunning 20% of people thought you could get HIV from sharing a glass with someone who has HIV, 12% thought you could get it from a toilet seat, and 7% thought it was possible to acquire HIV from swimming in a pool. (All of these statistics are actually an increase from a similar survey in 2000).
In his article, Silin pointed out that the adults in their lives had already affected how the children thought or felt about the topic of AIDS. “Whether motivated by specific fears and anxieties, or simply the emotional resonance of the word in out culture, their behaviors accurately mimicked the responses of the majority of adults,” (247). Silin also pointed out that the schools often “reduce complicated social problems to simplified fragments of information, adopted pedagogic strategies that focus on measurable, behavioral outcomes.” (249) rather than opening up dialogue. I found this to be the problem when I taught Biology. I was given only a small amount of time (1 class period, or roughly 45 minutes) to cover the anatomy of the male and female reproductive system as well as certain sexually transmitted diseases. The class probably spent no more than 10 minutes on the subject of HIV/AIDS as we defined it, discussed how it was transmitted, and how it was not, before we moved on to another topic. Having no meaningful discussion or connection, the students may have forgotten what was taught soon after.
The more society changes, and the more controversial subjects are talked about outside of school, the more it seems we are freer to discuss them in class. Forty years ago when my parents went to elementary school, the subject of gays/lesbians was taboo; twenty years ago when I was in elementary school, progressive schools in New York and San Francisco were bringing the subject to light, but not in my small town; today, the school district in Helena, Montana’s original curricular goals wanted to teach students in first grade to “Understand human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender.” It is possible to discuss sexual orientation without idealizing it, or condoning it. Social studies, the study of how people interact with one another, seems like the most logical place for the topic of sexual orientation to be addressed. Thornton argues that while blatantly ignoring gays/lesbians, “Educators must answer the question, ‘Does everybody count as human?’” (363). We rise up to defend women oppressed by the Taliban, but not of gay men or presumably gay men “although, as with Afghan women, the persecution rests on these men simply for being who they are,” (363). However, that statement makes it seem that women and gays are the only ones receiving Taliban oppression, when those who convert to Christianity are also being unjustly persecuted and sit on death row simply for the crime of converting to Christianity, and yet we stay silent. As educators, we need to be non-biased; meaning we can’t pick an agenda (such as gay rights) and call everyone who ignores us wrong for silencing parts of history and then simply ignore the plights of others. We could easily make the same argument for the Holocaust; schools teach that Jews were sent to concentration camps and killed, but so were thousands of Gypsys, those who were disabled and mentally ill, Jehovah’s witnesses, freemasons, Soviet POWs, ethnic Poles, and many others numbering conservatively at 8 million, also died. The evil it takes to slaughter that many people needs to be counteracted by educating students that everyone has value.
Educators need to be willing to ask good questions: “How had Addams, who rejected some of the gender conventions of her day helped to shape her time and legacy. “Her significance, in this scheme, incorporates the complexities and controversial aspects of her life as well as speaking to different but nonetheless related questions today,” (365) or simply, “ What if you were mocked/teased/ harassed simply for being who you are? Are you a lesser person? Who are you giving control to? Did they earn it? How would you fight back? Would you fight back, or just lie down and die?’
One thing teachers do need to consider when choosing what to teach, and is often the nail in the coffin of controversial curriculum, are parents’ rights. Being an educator, but not being a parent myself, I looked to social media (Facebook) to help me look at the topic from another point of view. I asked my Facebook friends, who are all parents and swing the gamut from conservative to liberal, the questions: “Should controversial subjects be part of school curriculum? What do you think about your children learning about such subjects as sex, tolerance, evolution, HIV/ AIDS and gender issues at school?” I got back varied responses (I have included some of them below) that all seemed to rally around one point: each parent wanted to be able to talk to their child about these important topics and to have a dialogue where worldview and culture could meet in a safe environment. Just reading the curriculum goals in the New York Times article “Early Lessons in Tolerance”, I can’t imagine being a parent and being forced to explain to my child earlier than the 5th grade what sexual intercourse is and how that may include vagina, oral, and anal penetration. In a 2004 PBS poll, 27% of respondents thought it was inappropriate to be teaching about oral sex to high schoolers and a majority (57%) thought it was inappropriate to be teaching it to middle schoolers (who are at least 1 grade older than the Montana 5th graders).
Blogs on controversial sex education in Montana
There are ways in which districts have gotten parents involved, giving them a voice, and in turn, allowing controversial subjects to be taught with little criticism. During the late 1990s and early part of the 2000s, my mother was a member of a panel known as the “PA 226 committee”. Members of this committee included parents, clergy, people from the health department, someone from the school district, and students who previewed materials to be used in health and science classes to cover topics such as sex education, menstrual cycles, and sexually transmitted diseases. Barb Fils, who works with parents and is a technical advisor for PA 226 committees is quoted saying that through her work it has been, “proved the point that if you talk to (parents) and you don’t hide anything, they want more.”
One topic that came up when dialoguing with my friends through social media, and while reading through the articles for this week was how the teachers themselves needed to approach the subject. They all agreed that the topics do need to be addressed in schools, but in a fair, unbiased way. (Read Joanna’s comments below to get the opinion of one teacher in the field.)
As a science teacher, I have taught two controversial subjects—global warming and evolution. My first brush with this was during my student teaching. I was teaching Biology at a Christian school in Grand Rapids and as part of a lesson I had the students watch a film on amphibians. When I previewed it, I noticed that while it had good pictures and information, it also came to its information from an evolutionary standpoint. I contemplated not showing the video, but then decided to use it and test my students understanding of evolution. (Having received some background on the school curriculum, I knew evolution was a subject that these students would have learned about in some detail previously). If they had issues with the film (and I knew they would), I asked them to write a paragraph to the narrator explaining flaws in the science. I got back a lot of papers that said “You are stupid. Don’t you know evolution is wrong.” and “Evolution is not Science.” Having read their responses to my cooperating teacher, I asked permission to create a short unit on evolution. He agreed and I spent 2 weeks teaching on Darwin, natural selection, Lamrack, carbon dating, micro and macro evolution; teaching my students to think critically, and to understand that in order to argue effectively they needed to be just as educated in what they did not believe as what they believed. We had lots of lively discussion and as the unit progressed there were fewer debates with the words, “well that’s stupid” and more use of scientific facts as rebuttal. In the end, most were able to find a happy medium between faith and science.
It is important for schools and parents to come together and educate students on controversial subjects so that we are raising educated citizens who can live in a free and peaceful world.
Curriculum helpers—Pro-evolution for teachers
Teaching origins in the public schools
Interesting article on a Gay Health class
----------------------
Parents comments
Amy - i think teachers and schools already have a lot on their plates but if they have time and it can be integrated than sure these are topics our kids are going to be around and experiencing their whole lives so why not make them
Bethany- Since there is likely to be a wider difference in opinions when it comes to these topics (as opposed to math, science, music, etc) , I would rather parents educate their own children. I want to approach those subjects with my kids from my own world-view. I think it would be very hard for the public educators to teach those topics from a purely objective stance.
Rhonda- I "think" that if they're teaching about the existence of these topics, that's one thing. I think schools cross the line when they try to teach our kids how to feel/act/respond/accept them. I really don't even think they have a place in curriculum. Sadly, some parents do Not have important conversations with their kids regarding these topics, but I don't think there is a way to teach them without sharing a personal opinion. That's how I feel about it anyway!
Erin- I really agree with all of what Rhonda said. it's so hard to say what should be done. but just as parents have their own opinion on these issues, so do teachers. So, while it would be great for students to learn the FACTS of how HIV/Aids is contracted and so on and so forth, you never know what kind of "spin" the teacher is going to put onto it. Id rather educate my children about these things myself since I bare no hate and love people of all races/sexual orientation.
Jessica- I'm with Bethany in that parents ought to educate their own kids... but too many don't. Schools are right to pick up the slack, and good parents will continue to educate their kids as they ought, ideally preemptively to any disagreeable content in a school curriculum. I don't mind my kids learning about other viewpoints, because they've already learned mine, and I don't like the idea of leaving my kids unprepared to encounter different views and ideologies when they're no longer under my care.
Joanna (teacher, not a parent, who brought some thought provoking insights for the parents to consider) - As a geography teacher, right now I am teaching about the Middle East, which forces me to teach about religions such as Islam and Judaism. I think it is necessary that students know about these things and not to call them "weird" or "stupid...". I have to teach tolerance for differences, especially religious differences. I want them to know about these things so that they are not ignorant in the future when they may come in contact with a person of another religion. I am not teaching that one religion is wrong and another is right, just that these religions exist and they are different from and similar to each other on certain points. Without being taught how to be tolerant, from school or home, kids just dont know how to handle difference, and often handle it poorly. Unfortunately, many parents (not all parents!) are not able to teach about this because they either dont know the information themselves or dont have the time or desire to do so. I think the best way to ensure that peace endures in our country is to teach tolerance, not hate.
To be honest and when I looked at the readings for this week and noticed one on HIV/AIDS I wondered to myself, “Is HIV/AIDS really still a controversial topic? We all have had health classes or job safety training or watched enough after-school specials to know that the only way to pass on HIV/AIDS is through the transmission of bodily fluids—blood, semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk, and any other bodily fluid that contains blood. This is 2011, a full 30 years after the ‘AIDS epidemic’ broke.” My was I surprised to sit down to watch ABC’s February 18, 2011 edition of “What Would You Do?” and the segments with an HIV positive restaurant patron/ waiter that I knew ignorance was still alive and well in America. The show cited a Kaiser Family Foundation survey released in 2009 on HIV/AIDS indicating the ignorance we may be passing on to our children. 23% of respondents are still uncomfortable working with someone with HIV/AIDS, 35% would be uncomfortable having a child whose teacher was HIV positive or had AIDS, and a stunning 51% of people would be uncomfortable having their food served by someone with HIV/AIDS. Even more stunning 20% of people thought you could get HIV from sharing a glass with someone who has HIV, 12% thought you could get it from a toilet seat, and 7% thought it was possible to acquire HIV from swimming in a pool. (All of these statistics are actually an increase from a similar survey in 2000).
In his article, Silin pointed out that the adults in their lives had already affected how the children thought or felt about the topic of AIDS. “Whether motivated by specific fears and anxieties, or simply the emotional resonance of the word in out culture, their behaviors accurately mimicked the responses of the majority of adults,” (247). Silin also pointed out that the schools often “reduce complicated social problems to simplified fragments of information, adopted pedagogic strategies that focus on measurable, behavioral outcomes.” (249) rather than opening up dialogue. I found this to be the problem when I taught Biology. I was given only a small amount of time (1 class period, or roughly 45 minutes) to cover the anatomy of the male and female reproductive system as well as certain sexually transmitted diseases. The class probably spent no more than 10 minutes on the subject of HIV/AIDS as we defined it, discussed how it was transmitted, and how it was not, before we moved on to another topic. Having no meaningful discussion or connection, the students may have forgotten what was taught soon after.
The more society changes, and the more controversial subjects are talked about outside of school, the more it seems we are freer to discuss them in class. Forty years ago when my parents went to elementary school, the subject of gays/lesbians was taboo; twenty years ago when I was in elementary school, progressive schools in New York and San Francisco were bringing the subject to light, but not in my small town; today, the school district in Helena, Montana’s original curricular goals wanted to teach students in first grade to “Understand human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender.” It is possible to discuss sexual orientation without idealizing it, or condoning it. Social studies, the study of how people interact with one another, seems like the most logical place for the topic of sexual orientation to be addressed. Thornton argues that while blatantly ignoring gays/lesbians, “Educators must answer the question, ‘Does everybody count as human?’” (363). We rise up to defend women oppressed by the Taliban, but not of gay men or presumably gay men “although, as with Afghan women, the persecution rests on these men simply for being who they are,” (363). However, that statement makes it seem that women and gays are the only ones receiving Taliban oppression, when those who convert to Christianity are also being unjustly persecuted and sit on death row simply for the crime of converting to Christianity, and yet we stay silent. As educators, we need to be non-biased; meaning we can’t pick an agenda (such as gay rights) and call everyone who ignores us wrong for silencing parts of history and then simply ignore the plights of others. We could easily make the same argument for the Holocaust; schools teach that Jews were sent to concentration camps and killed, but so were thousands of Gypsys, those who were disabled and mentally ill, Jehovah’s witnesses, freemasons, Soviet POWs, ethnic Poles, and many others numbering conservatively at 8 million, also died. The evil it takes to slaughter that many people needs to be counteracted by educating students that everyone has value.
Educators need to be willing to ask good questions: “How had Addams, who rejected some of the gender conventions of her day helped to shape her time and legacy. “Her significance, in this scheme, incorporates the complexities and controversial aspects of her life as well as speaking to different but nonetheless related questions today,” (365) or simply, “ What if you were mocked/teased/ harassed simply for being who you are? Are you a lesser person? Who are you giving control to? Did they earn it? How would you fight back? Would you fight back, or just lie down and die?’
One thing teachers do need to consider when choosing what to teach, and is often the nail in the coffin of controversial curriculum, are parents’ rights. Being an educator, but not being a parent myself, I looked to social media (Facebook) to help me look at the topic from another point of view. I asked my Facebook friends, who are all parents and swing the gamut from conservative to liberal, the questions: “Should controversial subjects be part of school curriculum? What do you think about your children learning about such subjects as sex, tolerance, evolution, HIV/ AIDS and gender issues at school?” I got back varied responses (I have included some of them below) that all seemed to rally around one point: each parent wanted to be able to talk to their child about these important topics and to have a dialogue where worldview and culture could meet in a safe environment. Just reading the curriculum goals in the New York Times article “Early Lessons in Tolerance”, I can’t imagine being a parent and being forced to explain to my child earlier than the 5th grade what sexual intercourse is and how that may include vagina, oral, and anal penetration. In a 2004 PBS poll, 27% of respondents thought it was inappropriate to be teaching about oral sex to high schoolers and a majority (57%) thought it was inappropriate to be teaching it to middle schoolers (who are at least 1 grade older than the Montana 5th graders).
Blogs on controversial sex education in Montana
There are ways in which districts have gotten parents involved, giving them a voice, and in turn, allowing controversial subjects to be taught with little criticism. During the late 1990s and early part of the 2000s, my mother was a member of a panel known as the “PA 226 committee”. Members of this committee included parents, clergy, people from the health department, someone from the school district, and students who previewed materials to be used in health and science classes to cover topics such as sex education, menstrual cycles, and sexually transmitted diseases. Barb Fils, who works with parents and is a technical advisor for PA 226 committees is quoted saying that through her work it has been, “proved the point that if you talk to (parents) and you don’t hide anything, they want more.”
One topic that came up when dialoguing with my friends through social media, and while reading through the articles for this week was how the teachers themselves needed to approach the subject. They all agreed that the topics do need to be addressed in schools, but in a fair, unbiased way. (Read Joanna’s comments below to get the opinion of one teacher in the field.)
As a science teacher, I have taught two controversial subjects—global warming and evolution. My first brush with this was during my student teaching. I was teaching Biology at a Christian school in Grand Rapids and as part of a lesson I had the students watch a film on amphibians. When I previewed it, I noticed that while it had good pictures and information, it also came to its information from an evolutionary standpoint. I contemplated not showing the video, but then decided to use it and test my students understanding of evolution. (Having received some background on the school curriculum, I knew evolution was a subject that these students would have learned about in some detail previously). If they had issues with the film (and I knew they would), I asked them to write a paragraph to the narrator explaining flaws in the science. I got back a lot of papers that said “You are stupid. Don’t you know evolution is wrong.” and “Evolution is not Science.” Having read their responses to my cooperating teacher, I asked permission to create a short unit on evolution. He agreed and I spent 2 weeks teaching on Darwin, natural selection, Lamrack, carbon dating, micro and macro evolution; teaching my students to think critically, and to understand that in order to argue effectively they needed to be just as educated in what they did not believe as what they believed. We had lots of lively discussion and as the unit progressed there were fewer debates with the words, “well that’s stupid” and more use of scientific facts as rebuttal. In the end, most were able to find a happy medium between faith and science.
It is important for schools and parents to come together and educate students on controversial subjects so that we are raising educated citizens who can live in a free and peaceful world.
Curriculum helpers—Pro-evolution for teachers
Teaching origins in the public schools
Interesting article on a Gay Health class
----------------------
Parents comments
Amy - i think teachers and schools already have a lot on their plates but if they have time and it can be integrated than sure these are topics our kids are going to be around and experiencing their whole lives so why not make them
Bethany- Since there is likely to be a wider difference in opinions when it comes to these topics (as opposed to math, science, music, etc) , I would rather parents educate their own children. I want to approach those subjects with my kids from my own world-view. I think it would be very hard for the public educators to teach those topics from a purely objective stance.
Rhonda- I "think" that if they're teaching about the existence of these topics, that's one thing. I think schools cross the line when they try to teach our kids how to feel/act/respond/accept them. I really don't even think they have a place in curriculum. Sadly, some parents do Not have important conversations with their kids regarding these topics, but I don't think there is a way to teach them without sharing a personal opinion. That's how I feel about it anyway!
Erin- I really agree with all of what Rhonda said. it's so hard to say what should be done. but just as parents have their own opinion on these issues, so do teachers. So, while it would be great for students to learn the FACTS of how HIV/Aids is contracted and so on and so forth, you never know what kind of "spin" the teacher is going to put onto it. Id rather educate my children about these things myself since I bare no hate and love people of all races/sexual orientation.
Jessica- I'm with Bethany in that parents ought to educate their own kids... but too many don't. Schools are right to pick up the slack, and good parents will continue to educate their kids as they ought, ideally preemptively to any disagreeable content in a school curriculum. I don't mind my kids learning about other viewpoints, because they've already learned mine, and I don't like the idea of leaving my kids unprepared to encounter different views and ideologies when they're no longer under my care.
Joanna (teacher, not a parent, who brought some thought provoking insights for the parents to consider) - As a geography teacher, right now I am teaching about the Middle East, which forces me to teach about religions such as Islam and Judaism. I think it is necessary that students know about these things and not to call them "weird" or "stupid...". I have to teach tolerance for differences, especially religious differences. I want them to know about these things so that they are not ignorant in the future when they may come in contact with a person of another religion. I am not teaching that one religion is wrong and another is right, just that these religions exist and they are different from and similar to each other on certain points. Without being taught how to be tolerant, from school or home, kids just dont know how to handle difference, and often handle it poorly. Unfortunately, many parents (not all parents!) are not able to teach about this because they either dont know the information themselves or dont have the time or desire to do so. I think the best way to ensure that peace endures in our country is to teach tolerance, not hate.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Cycle Two: The Contents of Curriculum
This weeks readings had us thinking about what the content of curriculum should be. What do we put in and what do we leave out? In a nut shell, Dewey wanted more exploration and experience, Hirsch wanted students to all memorize the basics and allowed practical application to be flexible, while the article from the New York Times showed a new way to teach with video games.
John Dewey’s (not the Dewey of the Dewey decimal system) philosophy, as found in “Child and Curriculum”, is that curriculum content needs to be experienced. If it is not, the lack of connection with what the child already knew, felt, and loved would make the curriculum “formal and symbolic,” having no real lasting impression on the child, leading to a lack of motivation and ultimately, “the child’s reasoning powers, the faculty of abstraction and generalization, are not adequately developed,” (118-119). According to Dewey the value of experience is not merely found in the experience itself, but also in the “standpoint, outlook, and method,” (116) of the student, allowing for continued growth in that role.
Not surprising, Dewey also seems to be against textbooks. Especially in comparison to the teacher, textbooks generally reduce the student to a “lower intellectual level,” (118). The material that is presented within the textbook is not translated into life-terms (a way for the student to see how it relates to him/herself), but is a substitute for experience.
I think Dewey’s ideas are relevant for today, especially among the youngest of learners, those in the pre-school and kindergarten age range. Young children should be learning by doing. While there are some things that most readily lend themselves to rote learning—the alphabet, days of the week, months of the year, shape and color names—others can simply be learned as children move around the classroom, exploring their surroundings and using problem solving skills when the needs arise. While we have daily curriculum activities at Tutor Time, a majority of a child’s day is spent engaging in self-directed play/learning. Outside of directed learning times, we as teachers, simply explore with the children, becoming part of their play, and encouraging them to follow their own interest. While one child might be exploring magnets, trying to figure how to make them go together and pulling them apart (early science), another may be using blocks to symbolize a birthday cake (cognitive thinking), another maybe looking at books in the book center (basic literacy), while still another is counting with pegs (early math). Each is self-directed and each is learning. The curriculum at that moment is varied and exciting.
I think it would be more difficult to incorporate Dewey into a high school classroom. It would be costly to have all of the materials necessary for students to be working on multiple projects and lessons at a given time. Teachers and students would have to conference about what was going to be studied, what the outcome was going to be, and how the student would be graded. Students would also find it harder to jump with a subject such as math where one concept would rely on the knowledge of another.
(For Further reading on how Dewey is still influence education around the world: Dewey in Turkey: Lessons for today)
Hirsch’s chapter “Cultural Literacy and the Schools” outlines a different approach to curriculum. After exploring curriculum of the past, his plan was to incorporate extensive and intensive curriculum. The content of the extensive curriculum is “traditional literate knowledge, the information, attitudes, and assumptions that literate Americans share—cultural literacy.” (127) It would be a minimum of what all students should know; for example, who is Shakespeare and who are Romeo and Juliet? In contrast, intensive curriculum “ensures that individual students, teachers, and schools can work intensively with materials that are appropriate for their diverse temperaments and aims.” (128) So while all students will know about Romeo and Juliet, they don’t need to read that play. If the students are more into history, they could read “Richard III”; if fantasy, “A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream”. Differentiating would seem to work better with Hirsch’s model.
Hirsch and Dewey do share one similarity: that student likes and dislikes should be at least a consideration when choosing curriculum. Additionally, “[ The intensive curriculum] coincides with Dewey’s recommendation that children should be deeply engaged with a small number of typical concrete instances.” (128)
A core list of knowledge to fill the extensive curriculum that all Americans would know does seem a lofty goal. However, with No Child Left Behind and standardized testing, each state has already determined what they think is important for their state’s students to know. For instance, in Maryland, all students will know about Mendel and his influence on genetics. So, it is possible. And while this would help cement cultural literacy, there is also an element of this cultural literacy that is passed on within social context as well. I learned how to spell the color orange not because I was required to by my school, but because of the crayons in my coloring box.
I found the New York Times article “Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom” to be very interesting. Using what a student is interested in has been a common theme among both Dewey and Hirsch, and students today are interested in technology. I also believe that students today, more than at any other time in history, are going to have to be able to function in a world where they will need to video conference, Skype, create blogs, and podcasts.
Going to school in the 90s,my friends and I reminisce about being excited when we got to go to the computer lab to learn about the realities of pioneer life by playing Oregon Trail or practicing our geography skills while playing Where in the World is Carmen Santiago? These forays were the exception to our school day and a great treat. Through computer games of all types, I learned how to type, do math problems, dissected a frog, and create stories. Games are a valuable tool to reinforce concepts and ideas, but they are not a substitute for education.
My biggest disagreement with the article came when Doyle suggested a shift in teaching and learning because of what is being done by students outside of school. “Why”, he questioned, “memorize the 50 states and their capitals? Why, in the age of Google and pocket computers, memorize anything?.... He took aim at spelling, calling it “outmoded.”” These “outdated” skills are more useful than Mr. Doyle believes. Memorizing the times tables, something Doyle might suggest would be more easily done with a calculator, may in fact take more time and result in keying errors. Times tables are a building block to higher math skills, such as division, long multiplication, and fractions and algebra. Memory is also the key to oral traditions that are part of many cultures. Spelling improves reading and writing fluency and also improves vocabulary and comprehension. Spelling is also important to those journalists and communicators that Doyle feels he is educating. Transcripts and articles will be turned down when an editor realizes the piece of writing is full of errors that a spell checker could not correct, for example homophones.
I was also a little wary of basing a curriculum on spending so much time in a fantasy world, as were many of the primary examples in the article. My friend Dave and I were discussing this article. He relayed a story about his nephew(whom I will call Jake) who learned to read and do basic math skills(through buying and selling) at a young age with the help of a video game. However, Jake soon began to have trouble separating fantasy from reality and wanting to continuously be in the other world. I have trouble with a curriculum that spends so much time in the creative. Studies have shown that people who spend too much time playing video games often confuse reality and fantasy, have allowed the sedentarism to have a negative effect on healthy, and that these games often portray women and minorities in a poor light.
Curriculum is ever changing and so our views on what it should be. It is up to us, as teachers, to dissect best what will help our students learn and grow and use whatever means possible.
---------
Lesson Planning websites:
Multi-disciplinary
For science teachers
John Dewey’s (not the Dewey of the Dewey decimal system) philosophy, as found in “Child and Curriculum”, is that curriculum content needs to be experienced. If it is not, the lack of connection with what the child already knew, felt, and loved would make the curriculum “formal and symbolic,” having no real lasting impression on the child, leading to a lack of motivation and ultimately, “the child’s reasoning powers, the faculty of abstraction and generalization, are not adequately developed,” (118-119). According to Dewey the value of experience is not merely found in the experience itself, but also in the “standpoint, outlook, and method,” (116) of the student, allowing for continued growth in that role.
Not surprising, Dewey also seems to be against textbooks. Especially in comparison to the teacher, textbooks generally reduce the student to a “lower intellectual level,” (118). The material that is presented within the textbook is not translated into life-terms (a way for the student to see how it relates to him/herself), but is a substitute for experience.
I think Dewey’s ideas are relevant for today, especially among the youngest of learners, those in the pre-school and kindergarten age range. Young children should be learning by doing. While there are some things that most readily lend themselves to rote learning—the alphabet, days of the week, months of the year, shape and color names—others can simply be learned as children move around the classroom, exploring their surroundings and using problem solving skills when the needs arise. While we have daily curriculum activities at Tutor Time, a majority of a child’s day is spent engaging in self-directed play/learning. Outside of directed learning times, we as teachers, simply explore with the children, becoming part of their play, and encouraging them to follow their own interest. While one child might be exploring magnets, trying to figure how to make them go together and pulling them apart (early science), another may be using blocks to symbolize a birthday cake (cognitive thinking), another maybe looking at books in the book center (basic literacy), while still another is counting with pegs (early math). Each is self-directed and each is learning. The curriculum at that moment is varied and exciting.
I think it would be more difficult to incorporate Dewey into a high school classroom. It would be costly to have all of the materials necessary for students to be working on multiple projects and lessons at a given time. Teachers and students would have to conference about what was going to be studied, what the outcome was going to be, and how the student would be graded. Students would also find it harder to jump with a subject such as math where one concept would rely on the knowledge of another.
(For Further reading on how Dewey is still influence education around the world: Dewey in Turkey: Lessons for today)
Hirsch’s chapter “Cultural Literacy and the Schools” outlines a different approach to curriculum. After exploring curriculum of the past, his plan was to incorporate extensive and intensive curriculum. The content of the extensive curriculum is “traditional literate knowledge, the information, attitudes, and assumptions that literate Americans share—cultural literacy.” (127) It would be a minimum of what all students should know; for example, who is Shakespeare and who are Romeo and Juliet? In contrast, intensive curriculum “ensures that individual students, teachers, and schools can work intensively with materials that are appropriate for their diverse temperaments and aims.” (128) So while all students will know about Romeo and Juliet, they don’t need to read that play. If the students are more into history, they could read “Richard III”; if fantasy, “A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream”. Differentiating would seem to work better with Hirsch’s model.
Hirsch and Dewey do share one similarity: that student likes and dislikes should be at least a consideration when choosing curriculum. Additionally, “[ The intensive curriculum] coincides with Dewey’s recommendation that children should be deeply engaged with a small number of typical concrete instances.” (128)
A core list of knowledge to fill the extensive curriculum that all Americans would know does seem a lofty goal. However, with No Child Left Behind and standardized testing, each state has already determined what they think is important for their state’s students to know. For instance, in Maryland, all students will know about Mendel and his influence on genetics. So, it is possible. And while this would help cement cultural literacy, there is also an element of this cultural literacy that is passed on within social context as well. I learned how to spell the color orange not because I was required to by my school, but because of the crayons in my coloring box.
I found the New York Times article “Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom” to be very interesting. Using what a student is interested in has been a common theme among both Dewey and Hirsch, and students today are interested in technology. I also believe that students today, more than at any other time in history, are going to have to be able to function in a world where they will need to video conference, Skype, create blogs, and podcasts.
Going to school in the 90s,my friends and I reminisce about being excited when we got to go to the computer lab to learn about the realities of pioneer life by playing Oregon Trail or practicing our geography skills while playing Where in the World is Carmen Santiago? These forays were the exception to our school day and a great treat. Through computer games of all types, I learned how to type, do math problems, dissected a frog, and create stories. Games are a valuable tool to reinforce concepts and ideas, but they are not a substitute for education.
My biggest disagreement with the article came when Doyle suggested a shift in teaching and learning because of what is being done by students outside of school. “Why”, he questioned, “memorize the 50 states and their capitals? Why, in the age of Google and pocket computers, memorize anything?.... He took aim at spelling, calling it “outmoded.”” These “outdated” skills are more useful than Mr. Doyle believes. Memorizing the times tables, something Doyle might suggest would be more easily done with a calculator, may in fact take more time and result in keying errors. Times tables are a building block to higher math skills, such as division, long multiplication, and fractions and algebra. Memory is also the key to oral traditions that are part of many cultures. Spelling improves reading and writing fluency and also improves vocabulary and comprehension. Spelling is also important to those journalists and communicators that Doyle feels he is educating. Transcripts and articles will be turned down when an editor realizes the piece of writing is full of errors that a spell checker could not correct, for example homophones.
I was also a little wary of basing a curriculum on spending so much time in a fantasy world, as were many of the primary examples in the article. My friend Dave and I were discussing this article. He relayed a story about his nephew(whom I will call Jake) who learned to read and do basic math skills(through buying and selling) at a young age with the help of a video game. However, Jake soon began to have trouble separating fantasy from reality and wanting to continuously be in the other world. I have trouble with a curriculum that spends so much time in the creative. Studies have shown that people who spend too much time playing video games often confuse reality and fantasy, have allowed the sedentarism to have a negative effect on healthy, and that these games often portray women and minorities in a poor light.
Curriculum is ever changing and so our views on what it should be. It is up to us, as teachers, to dissect best what will help our students learn and grow and use whatever means possible.
---------
Lesson Planning websites:
Multi-disciplinary
For science teachers
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Additional Resources for Cycle One
Values: The Implicit Curriculum A journal article that talks about fostering personal and social responsibility and teaching students about respect through respect.
Curriculum Index highlightening 11 types of curriculum, including explicit, implicit, and null.
Teachnology curriculum ideas for all school subject areas
Parents should have control or influence of school curriculum opinion article on reasons why parents should have a say in curriculum
Integrated Curriculum a book which highlights other ways for parents to be involved in curriculum
For help with inclusion and understanding of special needs students, I would suggested taking a look at the IRIS Center website. The IRIS Center for Training Enhancements has free online interactive resources that translate research about the education of students with disabilities into practice. Materials cover a wide variety of evidence-based topics, including behavior, RTI, learning strategies, and progress monitoring (text from website itself) Inclusion based.
Has special-education inclusion backfired? Blog thoughts on special-ed inclusion. Highlights include a discussion on preparation program for teachers.
Curriculum Index highlightening 11 types of curriculum, including explicit, implicit, and null.
Teachnology curriculum ideas for all school subject areas
Parents should have control or influence of school curriculum opinion article on reasons why parents should have a say in curriculum
Integrated Curriculum a book which highlights other ways for parents to be involved in curriculum
For help with inclusion and understanding of special needs students, I would suggested taking a look at the IRIS Center website. The IRIS Center for Training Enhancements has free online interactive resources that translate research about the education of students with disabilities into practice. Materials cover a wide variety of evidence-based topics, including behavior, RTI, learning strategies, and progress monitoring (text from website itself) Inclusion based.
Has special-education inclusion backfired? Blog thoughts on special-ed inclusion. Highlights include a discussion on preparation program for teachers.
Cycle One: What is Curriculum? What is it's purpose?
What is curriculum? It is more than just what is taught. William Schubert in his article on curriculum ideologies attempts a definition, “Curriculum, at its root, deals with the central question of what is worth knowing; therefore, it deals with what is worth experiencing, doing, and being.” (169) It deals with such important, but broad ideas such as justice, what makes life good, and how humans interact with one another. This definition may seem idealistic, especially if one is thinking that curriculum simply means choosing whether to have students read through Socrates or EB White. When I chose to read to my two year olds “It’s Okay to be Different” by Todd Parr at circle time I am not just focused on language development, but am introducing my young students to imagination, diversity and tolerance.
The purpose of curriculum is as varied as the subject itself. Schubert introduced us to 4 theorists in the field. The intellectual-traditionalist would say that we need to teach students the classics in such a way that we take full advantage of the great ideas that accompany them. “Education should not be primarily vocational. However, the kind of curriculum I advocate teaches students to be interested in the great questions that penetrate all aspects of understanding the world. A great works curriculum enables students to think more carefully and to appreciate more deeply” (Schubert, 171). The social-behaviorist would argue that the we need to re-examine curriculum in every generation so we know what successful people are doing and teach that to our students. The experimentalist speaker would take a different approach that “Learning springs from our genuine interests and concerns.” (Schubert, 173) and that through this methodology one learns important skills about learning and pursuing one’s passions. Finally, the critical reconstructionist would say that “students should learn to become activists who strive to overcome injustices that they face,” (Schubert, 174) and that that would result in consequential and valuable education.
As a pre-teacher, I was educated in the social-behaviorist camp. Teachers are expected to produce favorable outcomes- students who go on to college or are successful in finding employment. It forces a teacher to be continuously learning and continuously evolving to find the best practices.
In lesson planning, I have always had a little of the experimentalist in mind. It is very true, especially in middle and high school, that students arrive in the class with a lot of baggage. The fight with the parents the night before about cell phone charges, a fight at a shared locker, a bad grade in another class, are not just forgotten as the student enters your class. However, that does not have to be the focus of the class itself. I have found that anticipatory sets and warm-ups help to engage students and draw them in to what is being taught.
Regardless of what is taught, what isn’t taught sometimes speaks louder. Eisner suggests, in his chapter “The Three Curricula That All Schools Teach” that through positive reinforcement and moirés schools are teaching children the importance of competition, compliant behavior, and a neglect of imagination. The reason behind this movement is that it is believed that most jobs require workers to be extrinsically motivated, those jobs do not allow the worker to find his/her own purpose, and depend on routine. While this is true for traditional cubical or factory line jobs, what about those of upper management who need to find creative cost cutting techniques, or business owners/creators who developed these organizations to begin with?
Schools have gotten better with the null curriculum since the writing of Eisner’s article. One local high school offers classes similar to those mentioned in the article, and many more, including: Webpage design, policy debate, tv studio, technical writing, sports literature, exploring music, stress management, economics, and technology education. A student could learn about almost every interest and career possibility within the classroom environment.
I found nothing more thought provoking in this week’s readings as the story of Donovan and through his story questioning the purpose of curriculum. Donovan is a 21 year-old, who due to a traumatic brain injury, is cognitively aged at 6-months, and has been labeled severely disabled. He is legally blind, cannot speak, and is confined to a wheel chair. Though his 15 years of formal schooling has changed Donovan socially, being less reserved, he has shown no significant educational progress. If his mother had her way, Donovan would be focusing on more self-help skills. “Instead of having him work on basic academic goals, like identifying shapes and coins, she wishes he had physical therapy more than 30 minutes, twice a week, because it is generally the only time during the day he is taken out of his wheelchair, except when an aide takes him to the bathroom to change him.”
The principle, on the other hand, wants these high school aged special education students to have an experience similar to their general education peers, changing classes every 50-minutes and going to adapted versions of English, math, social studies, and science. “For example, Donovan will never be able to prepare breakfast, but he should be allowed to help stir a pot in cooking class, even if an aide must move his hand. He might not be able to call 911, but if he learns about firefighters in social studies, he might be able to recognize a siren when he hears one.”
So, who’s right? It is clear that we should choose the most suitable instructive supports and interventions for each child depending on their disabilities. A great majority of the people who commented on this particular article agreed that more time should be spent on Donovan’s occupational therapy than academic goals. It is intensely optimistic to believe that Donovan would be able to function on his own and would need the skills to be able to count change, or need to know the difference between a seed and a fruit. Music, on the other hand, stimulates brain activity and memorization. (http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n15/mente/musica.html) Is it really a surprise, then, that Donovan responded so favorably to “Old Mac Donald”?
The story of Donovan made me think of the special education students I taught in Maryland. In Calvert County, all high school students are required to take a county written mid-term and final exam. The exam for the special education students was shorter than the test given to traditional education students, but was none-the-less challenging. I was told by some of my colleagues that the special education students had no prayer of passing these tests. I had to make the decision whether to challenge my students to achieve something that may have been beyond their grasp, or teaching them to only accept from themselves mediocrity. The first option opened them up for failure, but the second would teach through implicit curriculum that they could not achieve what their peer’s were able to. I chose option A: pushing them through a lot of curriculum, and pushing them beyond their own beliefs in themselves. In the end, a majority of those students did poorly on that test. So, I am left to question: did I fail them in wanting them to show that they could do well on this test, or did an educational system with unreasonable expectations fail them?
Readings for Cycle One:
E. Eisner. “The Three Curricula That All Schools Teach”
S. Otterman “A Struggle to Educate the Severely Disabled.”
W. Schubert. “Curriculum Ideologies”
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Me (in a nut shell)
"Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers." -- Richard Bach
I was born and raised in St. Clair, Michigan were I was educated by a number of excellent teachers. They taught me to believe in myself and reach for my dreams. I took these thoughts to Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan where for my freshman year, I was pre-med. The summer after my freshman year, I took a job at a summer enrichment program and fell in love with the idea of teaching: the little bursts of energy that were so curious about the world (students) and designing ways to both increase their curiosity and knowledge (curriculum).
I graduated from Cornerstone University in 2002 with a B.A. in Secondary Education with a major in Biology and a minor in English. With a scarcity of jobs in the educational field available, I spent my first few years out of college substituting in many of the fine public schools in Kent County and later as a teacher assistant at Tutor Time. It was during this period that I also began taking Graduate level classes at Michigan State University in their Graduate Life-long Learner program.
My only professional teaching experience came during the 2007-2008 school year while teaching at Calvert High School in Prince Frederick, Maryland. I taught 1 period of High School Biology (HSA), 3 periods of Earth Science, 1 period of Honors Earth Science, and 1 period of Special Education Earth Science.
Since leaving Calvert County Public Schools, I have returned to Tutor Time where I teach much younger children in a learning center setting. I am regularly involved in curriculum planning, implementing, and supplementing for children ages 20-36 months.While still seeking a job in secondary education, I am content with where I currently am.
During my down periods I enjoy reading, writing, photography, swimming, hiking, and spending time with family and friends. Traveling is also a passion of mine and I am proud to report that I have visited 24 states as well as Canada and the United Kingdom. Additionally, I volunteer at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans and am active in my local church.
As a firm believer in life-long learning--something I hope I have instilled in all of my students-- I am excited to be back in the classroom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)