"What is a curriculum guide? A well-intended fiction." When I first started at NHS, my curriculum guide sat unopened on the shelf. Its kinda a scary thing to look at--3 inches thick with seemingly no end in sight to the expectations. However, if there is one thing that HSAP and EOCEP have helped us do, they have helped us follow pacing guides throughout the school year. Each year that this accountability system is in effect, we do more and we do it better.
A research group "found redundancy and inconsistency at every grade level." I'm sure that we are covering material over and over again, but what are we supposed to do when students don't retain what they have learned in the past? When they come to us, its almost tabula rasa--we have to start from scratch.
"The bottom line is that if we taught math, writing, and critical reading effectively, exactly as we know it should be taught, then students would do exceedingly well on state assessments. On a cautionary note, I'm not as sure of this approach in science and social studies." Yet we are still testing our students on 300+ years of history. Hmmmm.
"An inordinate amount of class time was spent completing worksheets." A thought has intrigued me over the last several years--our lower level students love a worksheet. If you ask them to move away from their comfort zone, then, as another teacher put it, all hell breaks loose. But these are the students who need alternative activities the most! How do we balance? I've been struggling with one of the abandoned English classes over the last few months. They were mired in worksheets for 3 months and now I want to do "fun stuff", for lack of better phrasing. Its been a daily battle with them and their behavior. However, I am winning. Slowly, but surely, I am winning.
"Students didn't use and were not taught to understand the state writing rubric." This is not happening at NHS. All of our sophomores have spent a great deal of time with the HSAP writing rubric--looking at examples, studying the different parameters, and even grading their own writing.
I am reminded every day that we are doing some great things at NHS--content area book clubs, writing across the curriculum, reading incentives...the list goes on. The day to day battle is not with the desire to be effective--its with time constraints, parental involvement (or lack thereof), state-mandated testing, too many committees and not enough time, etc. I feel like we all want to be good but feel ourselves fighting all the other outside sources. So what do we do about that? Where do we go from here?
What from the chapter caught your eye?
9 comments:
Some of the same things caught my eye. I was a member of the team that produced the most current (but now outdated) curriculum guide for ELA. For me, the pacing guide is useful, especially for the HSAP and EOC classes. Mostly, though, I'm afraid that the CG remains what Regie Routman calls a "shelf document," something we put on our shelves to collect dust. And even though we are using at least that much of the pacing guide, I don't know that students are really "learning" how to make the standards work for them.
I've noticed, too, the worksheet mentality among the lower level students. The more I try to move away from worksheets to graphic organizers to other "fun things," the more they rebel. I'm struggling with one of the orphan English 3 classes as well.
Redundant curriculum? Yes, it does appear that students do not retain even the most basic content. We do teach the same terms, the same strategies every year. Sometimes, I feel that I reteach the same content every other week! How do we get away from teaching the same things over and over?
What really struck me near the end of the chapter is this: "A caveat: when it comes to curriculum and standards, teachers need and deserve some flexibility; we need to allow for personal and creative variation--some serendity--and the right to simply reject a standard on plausible grounds" (39). I wanted to cheer. I like our common planning time as a way of sharing ideas; however, I rebel at the idea of a lockstep curriculum when every teacher of like subjects is teaching the same page, the same skill, the same standard in the same way at the same time. What does it matter whether I teach American literature thematically while the teacher down the hall teaches it chronologically? If we are teaching the same STANDARDS, the methodology should not matter.
The section that caught my eye was the section about the overwhelming evidence of inconsistency. The author quoted that "one teacher taught 28 times as much science as a teacher down the hall, and no one knew this until the researchers went in." I think this can be true in many schools. I know we have common planning to try and stop this from happening. Common planning allows for the teachers to work together and paced their classes (and standards)together as well. I like the idea of common planning. My only concern is that each class and each teacher may move at a different pace. I don't think one teacher should teach 28 times more science than another teacher does during the year. But, I don't think each teacher has to be "day-to-day" teaching the same material as the next teacher. I do agree they need to be paced similar but with the example in the book, the science teachers weren't doing that and should have been. Common planning could have helped them.
I also noted in this section where the author talks about teachers teaching isolated preferences. Often I hear teachers "like" or are "experts" on certain topics so they teach that material more but it doesn't relate to the standards. I see good and bad points in this. The good aspects include the teacher really being enthusiastic and that can come across to the students. Thus, the students may become more interested because the teacher is. Teachers, and people overall, usually perform better if they are more interested in their job. I don't think teachers should stop deviating from the standard to teach something they really like BUT I think this deviation should not drastically affect a pacing guide and it should not interfere with the student's learning the standards. A negative point is that teachers may spend too much time on their preferred teaching topics. This would cause students to not learn the standards and for the EOC classes, that would reflect poorly on the students' performance on the end of year test. Teachers should not deviate from a standard if it will cause them to not teach all the standards. The best scenario is for a teacher to teach a subject they truly like and their "preferred topics" are included in the standards. Unfortunately, teachers are not and maybe can not be assigned the subjects they want to teach every year. Even if we teach something we may not like, we still must do our best and do what is best for the teachers. It was disappointing to read the case where the math teacher was asked why she didn't teach fractions and her reply was "I don't like fractions." We can not allow that to happen and that is good example as to why we do need more monitoring, observations, and common planning.
The section that caught my eye was the Overwhelming Evidence of Inconsistancy. The study showed that there is a huge inconsistancy of what one teacher is teaching and another. This at first seemed to be a surprise to me then it also makes sense. Some teacher like to teach and emphasize one area and another teacher does not. I think teachers teach what they feel real comfortable with and they role with it. I think it goes back to who and where you were taught. If you had an interesting teacher in high school or college you try to do it the way they did, especial;ly if it were successful. I think this where early release could come into effect. Teachers then can plan and monitor the success of each other. I think this inconsistancy can become more consistant thru better planning and teacher observations.
I agree accountability in SC (HSAP,PACT, and end of course) are making us much more conscientious of "What is getting taught" and following the standards. The guides are certainly overwhelming, especially for new teachers. The total teacher curriculum has teachers cut apart the standards and paste them out for the year as part of the long range mapping actrivity(done in the Summer). I don't agree with everything in the total teacher curriculum, but this activity was fascinating. Both the teachers at PGE and Mid-Carolina Middle were amazed during this activity at the standards based curricula that we were covering or not covering. We also found gaps between grade level curriculum, etc. This activity helped us really look at what we were teaching.
I agree with the author that what we teach (curriculum) is the essential, but also I think just as important is how we present it and differentiation. Maybe he will get more in to this topic later.
Like you, Dianne, I thought about the thick dusty curriculum guides that our district has created and updated over the years. They are cumbersome at best and never quite get to the heart of what we ought to be doing. I compare this with the published curriculum for courses like Teacher Cadet. Within that curriculum there are numerous choices for activities to address the Cadet standards while maintaining the personal touch of the instructor. It is quite user friendly. I think all of our curriculum guides need to be user friendly if they are actually going to be used.
The other thing that came to mind with me is the use of computer based learning. With students using virtual high school courses, APEX courses, and even the A+ courses on computer, the teacher is freed from being bogged down with some of these curriculum issues. The teacher gets to be the facilitator knowing that the computer keeps track of the standards and even the student scores. I foresee more of this happening in the future.
I know we have to address standards based on our state guidelines and EOC tests, but I liked the statement by the author that teachers ought to have flexibility to omit a standard with valid reasons. We have discovered that certain standards don't even get tested! What better reason to spend less time focusing on those.
Like everyone else, I, too, was struck by the comments on worksheets. I know there is a time and a place for using worksheets. In math classes, why reinvent the wheel? If your students need practice in a particular area, why wouldn't the teacher select a worksheet to give that practice? I'm convinced that some teachers have not figured out the difference in useful and frivilous worksheets. If worksheets accomplish a genuine purpose, then they should be used. If they are just used to keep the students busy, then of course they should not be used. Seems that we use them as a crutch sometimes in order to be able to complete the pile of "extra tasks" that our jobs include. If we can eliminate those tasks, we may find fewer useless worksheets being used anyway.
There were several quotes that grabbed my attention. The first was "it is heartening that state reading assessments are increasingly dominated by skills such as the ability to infer; to identify an author's bias or persuasive techniques; to support interpretations or main ideas with evidence from the text; and to summarize, synthesize, analyze, and evaluate." While I am very pleased to know this, it is troubling at the same time. My students will be taking the EOC in a few weeks, and most of them can't even answer basic questions about a text, much less higher order thinking skills. The problem is not in their intellect, because they are very bright, but instead with their refusal to read. Every single text we've read this year takes 2 to 3 times longer than I had anticipated simply because the students drag out the reading. And, we've done every type of technique or strategy imaginable to get them interested, and still, they refuse. Even on practice tests, they refuse to read the entire selection. They want to answer the questions and get it over with. With the last novel, the students simply skipped around looking for answers to their chapter questions, and would leave the ones blank that required them to analyze anything. How do we fight that total apathy? And, it can't always be the texts, because we've read modern to classical. Some students like both, some neither, some only one. However, no matter whether they like it or hate it, they REFUSE to READ it!
Another thing that really made me think was this quote: "that the tests 'really did measure the kinds of skills and knowledge students needed to be successful.'" I've flipped through some of my sample tests and my EOC book since then (neither of which I use very often) and really, really looked at them. Using these tools, I've created lessons appropriate for reviewing the skills tested on the EOC. And, they really do test the skills that I feel are vitally important in the English content area! Why is it that I never remembered that from when I took all of those standardized tests myself?
The final thing that permeated my brain fog was that "the key to education may very well be literacy-which, I'll argue, we don't yet adequately understand." I'll definitely agree with that. Literacy may be the key issue that will help me in reaching my students who, in general, refuse to read. Sometimes I think we all forget that most students and their families don't value traditional literacy as much as we do. Everything from blogging to television to the radio has changed the perception of literacy in the world. How do we teach the basics of literacy (which the professional world will expect of our students) to a group of children who have a very different, very modernized, very instant-gratification type of literacy? How do we make them understand that both types of literacy are valid, but not necessarily valuable or applicable in every situation?
I found it interesting that several of us apparently "marked" the passage about the inconsistency. :-) Great minds...
I wanted to cheer when I read the "caveat" in the section "The Good News". It is reassuring to me that even an expert feels that there is room for personality in our teaching. With Dianne's help/guidance I'm reading a novel to each of my history and sociology classes. Most of the kids seem to really enjoy hearing the stories and frequently remind me if we miss a day. If I had an EOC/AP exam to prep for this luxury would not be possible.
I also have only just started using the curriculum guide to help me plan. I admit that last year was the first time I tried using it and the pacing guide in it helped me until about Feb. I wonder if the state's standards are not too full for social studies courses...Even Schmoker states "...not as sure of this approach in science and social studies...too many facts at the expense...understanding" That quote really made me want to cheer [in fact I woke the cat]. This is the first year since the start of the US EOC that I've not been in a complete "got to cover it" panick at this point of the year. I don't know if it is possible, but maybe the powers that be in the state depts of ed need to think about which is better...quantity of facts or quality of the learning.
The biggest concern for me was just how much curricular choas there actually is. I find it hard to believe so many others fail to follow established curricular guides, especially now that you are held accountable for your students. I agree with Mrs Fulmer, there is a worksheet mentality imbedded in many of our students. They would rather be spoon fed. They see class and teacher discussion and higher thinking activities as too much work, to them worksheets are easy, they fear having to think for themselves. I also think the author is right about one thing. Techers working as teams to help one another 1. develop lessons 2. monitor progress 3. ensure the right skills are being taught and 4. make sure they teach standards will do away with the inconsistancy between teachers and what they teach. Leadership, clear standards, and teaming are the cornor stones of successful schools and students. If someone wants to be the best teacher they can be and truely help students then they should be open to these concepts.
You would think that the problems with "inconsistency" would be solved with South Carolina Standards for teaching. As much as they stress teaching to these standards, and as much emphasis that has been placed on EOC's, one would assume these specific standards would be stressed. It surprises me that there are such great inconsistencies.
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