First let me say that I love snow! I love snow days! And if it is going to be cold, it might as well snow! My kids love it and so do I! Sleigh riding, snowman building and snowball fights are favorite activities at our house. I am also looking forward to the Super Bowl tomorrow and hoping for a snow day on Monday because we will be up late. Now I will try to refocus my mind to comment on curriculum. Enjoy the weekend!
While recalling the articles for this week’s readings I am pondering on what the purpose of curriculum is and what role do teachers have in this purpose? My first thought is that teachers have a huge role in the purpose of curriculum whether we like it or not. In the Morey Schwartz article, he states that all curricular materials are subject to the interpretation and individual application of the teacher. Wow…what pressure that places on we the teachers! The purpose of curriculum revolves around the student and is used by the teacher to organize the year in order for the students to cover the necessary material. As the article, “Put Understanding First” states that curriculum is not just about covering material but preparing students for the world beyond school allowing them to apply their learned skills to issues and problems they will face in the future.
In considering how much control we have in designing the curriculum, I have to say we have very little control. Up to this point teachers in our district have been encouraged to follow the curriculum that has been laid out for them. It seems the administration likes this tool to help evaluate the effectiveness of the teacher. Change is in progress where a new curriculum coach is encouraging teachers to branch out and find new ways to enhance learning while still using the curriculum as a guide. Ultimately the teacher should have a lot of control in designing the curriculum since they live it day to day and are aware of the changes that need to be made in order for all students to be successful. A lot of documents look great on paper but the execution of those plans depends on the intuition and insight of the teacher of what works and what doesn’t.
It is hard to say what curriculum looks like in my classroom since I have students for very short periods of intense instruction. Curriculum throughout the school in which I teach and which my own kids attend seems to be quite rigid. Teachers are expected to finish certain units in a given nine weeks in order to cover all material in the curriculum for the year. Hopefully our school is beginning to move toward some of the advanced new ideas in curriculum design. I feel we have a successful curriculum in place but the different approaches and expectations I read about in these articles reiterates that we need to be more flexible to individualize the curriculum to make our students more successful after graduation.
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We had snow last weekend and we had so much fun sledding and innertubing. Unfortunately, my body felt the effects of it on Tuesday and Wednesday. Enjoy!! I agree that teachers have little control over the design of curriculum and that many things look great on paper. I am grateful that we have the freedom to decide the best methods of engagement for our students to succeed in achieving this knowledge. I feel that the ability to do this is our means of contributing to the curriulum. :)
ReplyDeleteYep- I too like snow but this snow although pretty has not been a good sledding now (or at least not yet - maybe today since it is colder it will be better).
ReplyDeleteTwo words stuck out at me as I read you post and those are intuition and insight. I think you are right that teachers need to have these in order to translate curriculum into meaningful instruction in their own specific classrooms. But these are two qualities that can not be taught. Sure we (teacher education) can equip you with theories and strategies but ultimately it is the teacher's gut feelings and disposition that rule at the end of the day. I know that in teacher education we talk a lot about dispositions and as I work with pre-service teachers sometimes it is clear who has that intuition and insight and who doesn't but that is so hard to quantify. Can we teach intuition and insight??