Task One Reading

Teachers need to consider curriculum because it is the goal of what students are to learn and be involved in during their educational experience. Curriculum is the vehicle of how educators provide experiences for students to grow as thinkers and learners. Teachers need to be knowledgeable on what they are providing instruction for, and be able to allow students to have thought provoking, challenging inquiry and responses to the instruction. When I first thought about the question "what is the goal of curriculum", I honestly wanted to say that the goal is to design my instruction in alignment with district and state guidelines to meet the needs of my students. We are given a large list of core content for teach subject that is disconnected. Some of you may disagree, however, I will give you an example of how I think my district is not truly considering curriculum in a truly appropriate way.

We met as a district back in June to create a strict curriculum guide for each subject for each grade level. Teachers voted on what time of the year they want each core content to be taught (majority ruled), and there was no thought to "hey, why don't we align our Science and Social Studies or Writing core content with our Reading content which is delivered through stories with specific skills". For example, 2nd grade presents a story called Julius where a little girl gets an Alaskan pig that her family doesn't like because he is messy; which covers skills like predicting and monitoring, persuasion, syllables, compound words, short e, o, u words. Now, you would think we could incorporate Social Studies content about family, 1950's Jazz records, time-era discussion about what type of dress and music people from that time period used and listened to; or Science content about the temperature and weather of Alaska or Alabama (which is where the girl lived), or animal habitats, or even map skills? Instead, we are spending two weeks on this story, weather will be taught next month with stories about nature walks; and plants and animal habitats will be taught at the end of the year when we are teaching stories about families and children's talents.

This disconnected learning, just like what is mentioned in Applebee's article. On p.9, he states that "experienced teachers operate our of such frameworks, reflected in their tacit sense of what is important, what is less so, and of how to create a sense of unity and coherence across a school year". This is not allowed in my district. We have to teach exactly what is listed on the curriculum guide at exactly the same time, to the same core content bullet, and now they are even giving us what unit assessments we should be using for each subject. Are the people from Central Office in our classrooms to know what worthwhile discussions we are having with our students? They just gave us an assessment for our students next week, about a Native American legend. However, on our curriculum guide, we aren't supposed to cover Native Americans until November! It is total madness I tell you! Where is the allowance for thought provoking questions and conversation when you have endless core content bullets to fit in for each and every subject every day of the week?

The model of curriculum that I feel best fits my current role is a mixture of traditional and inquiry based instruction. It is a traditional in the sense that I have to list in my lesson plans, every single thing I am going to do and say, for each subject, every day. If someone from C.O. comes in for a walk-through, I better be doing what my lesson plan says I am going to be doing at that time. How does this allow for a more modernized curriculum where students are meeting and working together to answer questions, or create questions on their own that they want to investigate? I meet all the deadlines, and cover all of the core content bullets that are required, but we are always reminded "don't teach and find core content to go with what you are teaching, you should be using the core content to guide and design what you will teach each lesson".

However, I am working towards a more modern curriculum design this year. I have implemented research-based student centered activities in my classroom, and I am very interested to see what would come from a "walk-through" from C.O. My students are engaged, they are working together and they are still learning. It is not a quiet environment where they are sitting and listening to me lecture all day. Actually every time my principal has dropped in my room this year, my students have been working together and I have not been lecturing. I have started to feel guilty about it, wondering if I should be doing more whole group lecture! I feel that I still have room to grow before I could reach a total inquiry based classroom, but how can I do that with all of these lists and bullets of content that must be covered that are disconnected? Central Office is more concerned with "students who move throughout the district not receiving the same instruction "twice", but yet the content is disconnected, not allowing for a total immersion in a connected curriculum.

Well... okay, what if we used a connected core curriculum method called for by Wraga? We could take core content from different subjects that cohesively went together and produced thought based inquiry instruction where students would truly gain a depth of knowledge. This type of curriculum design would definitely be what I am most attracted to. This would be my preference because every student on every level could learn.

We spend so much time targeting the needs of lower achieving students, rote and memorization, word attacking, etc., because they are struggling in reading and math, and we are missing the opportunities to enhance inquiry for all of the students. I say this because if the students were able to "think and question" statements, they could work together and through teacher modeling and scaffolding, they could begin to think for themselves, and participate in higher level thinking conversations, whether they are struggling readers or not. All children in public school have the ability to think and question; and yes, I say this would be a better approach to curriculum design. Instead of rote memorization and lists, children need a more engaging experience in education, seeing how subjects can fit together and why it is useful to them.

I agree with Wiggins that "students can't possibly learn everything of value by the time they leave school, but we can instill in them the desire to keep questioning throughout their lives" (p.1). Students do not retain a skill they had to memorize in 2nd, 5th or 8th grade later on in life, but they can learn how to dive into deeper thinking with problem solving skills that will equip them for readiness into adult life. If we could shift towards this type of curriculum design, it would benefit all students greatly, and our society because we would be producing more skillful, successful students ready to take on great challenges in life.

So my next question is: how do we achieve this as teachers when we are told exactly what to do by our district and state officials who are not the ones working with the students on a daily basis? I'm not sure what this would look like as a whole, but educators would need resources to provide a modern curriculum for their students, and right now what we are being provided with is scope and sequenced textbooks and disconnected curriculum guides and maps. I think the people who also need to read these types of articles are the people in charge of designing the state and district guidelines that get passed on to the classroom teachers. :-)