How should curriculum be generated?
Is it worrisome that I am the curriculum coach, as well as a full-time first grade teacher, at an elementary school and I am struggling to write an answer to this question in simple black and white? I am going to stick with a modest answer – not at all. The question, “How should curriculum be generated?,” is complex, complicated, and challenging. Currently, the school that I teach/coach at is in the process of re-evaluating and transforming our elementary curriculum for reading, writing, and math beginning with the preschool curriculum and continuing throughout kindergarten to the sixth grade. This isn’t an easy task that can be successfully accomplished by a single individual. According to Ralph W. Tyler, the renovation of a school wide curriculum should include the participation of the school’s faculty. He wrote, “Unless the objectives are clearly understood by each teacher, unless he is familiar with the kinds of learning experiences that can be used to attain these objectives, and unless he is able to guide the activities of students so that they will get these experiences, the educational program will not be an effective instrument for promoting the aims of the school.” Our faculty consists of one school leader, one secretary, one office manager, nine highly qualified teachers, two assistant teachers, two interventionists, and an infinite number of parent volunteers and students – all in which are actively involved with this complex, complicated, and challenging evaluation and transformation process of our curriculum.
According to Ralph W. Tyler, “In planning an educational program to attain given objectives we face the question of deciding on the particular educational experiences to be provided, since it is through these experiences that learning will take place and educational objectives will be attained.” As our tiny, yet extremely knowledge and highly educated staff, attempts to successfully tackle generating a curriculum perfectly suited to meet the individual social, emotional, cognitive, physical, and language needs of our student population, we are quickly discovering that this is a task for educational experts, which can include members of your own faculty, specifically teachers. Teachers are the ones that are required to maintain their certification with continuing education courses, to uphold and implement current educational theories and trends, and to reexamine methods of teaching in order to continually meet the individual, educational needs of each and every student. Yet how much input do teachers really have in regards to developing and generating curriculum?
As I was reading the article, How Christian Were the Founders by Russell Shorto, I couldn’t stop thinking about this question. In reference to the educational system in Texas, Russell Shorto stated, “The board has the power to accept, reject or rewrite the TEKS, and over the past few years, in language arts, science, and now social studies, the members have done all of the above. Yet few of these elected overseers are trained in the fields they are reviewing.” Really? Why are untrained, uneducated amateurs, in the educational field, controlling educational issues? I am a teacher specializing in early childhood development. I am a trained, educated specialist who understands the manner in which young children learn. I, also, effectively educate early elementary teachers with skills, strategies, and best practices for teaching young children. However, I would never even consider stepping into a college classroom with the intentions of teaching teachers to teach. This is not my field of expertise. In the article, How Christian Were the Founders, Russell Shorto quoted Tom Barber stating, “In general, the board members don’t know anything at all about content.” Isn’t it common sense that the people “in charge” have some type of content knowledge? Shouldn’t the educational experts be “in charge” or at least have some input regarding matters of education? In my personal opinion, I believe that the state of our country’s educational system has a lot to do with this travesty – the people in charge simply do not know what they are doing.
For now our tiny curriculum committee, consisting of our entire staff, as well as representatives from our parent and student populations, has decided that we are just the educational experts that our students need in order to re-evaluate, to transform, and to generate the ideal curriculum for our school. To be honest, before reading Ralph W. Tyler’s Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, I slightly doubted that our staff could accept, let alone accomplish, the daunting task of generating a school-wide reading, writing, and math curriculum. However, Ralph W. Tyler stated, “The program may be improved by attacks beginning at any point, providing the resulting modifications are followed through the related elements until eventually all aspects of the curriculum have been studied and revised.” What a breath of fresh air!
Amy,
ReplyDeleteI appreciated and enjoyed reading your blog. You are right, creating a curriculum is a complex, challenging and complicated task. However it must be done. It is refreshing to hear many of your staff is involved as well as your parents! WOW! Parents participating in the process gives them the opportunity to look at what teachers do and allows them to voice their opinions on what should or should not be part of the curriculum!
It was just last year where we had an option to veer away from our mandated Reading First program. We were under a grant for many years so this gave us an opportunity to go a little outside the box, but we were still held accountable to the "book" which is the basal reading series. When you are re-evaluating the curriculum what are you looking at? The standards, GLCES etc? Do you create all of your subject area curriculum? I hate to sound like Debbie Downer, but I find it challenging to go outside our given curriculum because we have certain series that we follow such as the Lucy Caulkins for writing, we just adopted a new math curriculum.. It is frustrating because we have so many who "think" they know what is best for the students. I am pretty sure there are few parents on the committee. In addition, once we adopt a series, I feel like people are piloting a new series because the one we just adopted didn't work. ARGH! It is reassuring there are districts like your who have a teachers, parents, administrators, etc who can be part of the process.
I also give you props for being the curriculum coach, it takes a great deal of patience, time, effort, organization, and research! Like Ralph Tyler's article, we must evaulate our curriculum to make sure it is working for the students. If not, then there must be change.
Isn't it frightening there are people who are able to make decisions about curriculum but they do not have any experience or knowledge about the curriculum. They are using their "pulpit to bully people" into what they want. I am afraid of this and what could happen in our future as teachers.
Thank you again for your post!
Amanda
Hi Amy. I truly enjoyed reading your post. Much of what you had to say resonated with me. It must be very interesting, and honestly a bit scary to be a curriculum coach. I would imagine that you have found yourself second-guessing yourself in the decisions you are making. I know I would be. However, that is why it is so important when developing and changing curriculum that it is done as a group effort. I too wrote that when I am posed with questions of constructing curriculum I struggle to find a fast and clear answer to the question. Often, I am even left scratching my head. As I read your post I wondered how you found yourself in the position of a curriculum coach. It is great that you have the confidence to help make a difference. As an elementary art teacher I have helped develop my districts kindergarten through fifth grade curriculum with the help of my fellow elementary art colleagues. To create our new curriculum we looked at the states new standards and benchmarks and condensed them into broader key points to create 10 main curriculum standards for each grade. I would be very curious to see how a classroom curriculum revamping occurs. Do you attend additional meetings as a curriculum coach, or do you use the meetings that are built into your schedule to develop?
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you wrote about TEKS. The simple fact that people who have no background in education, or knowledge of content, are the one’s in charge of deciding what Texan students learn is quite frightening. However, what bothers me more than the fright factor is the thought that maybe our country doesn’t truly value education as we hope it would. If these unknowing (but probably well meaning) people are proposing a curriculum that is unfounded, we need to ask ourselves why the heck this is being allowed to happen. Even though I am only a third year teacher, I am beginning to see that the purpose of education (on a national level) may not be to truly provide students with the foundations for a successful and meaningful life. As Ralph W. Tyler wrote, and as you quoted in your post, ““Unless the objectives are clearly understood by each teacher, unless he is familiar with the kinds of learning experiences that can be used to attain these objectives, and unless he is able to guide the activities of students so that they will get these experiences, the educational program will not be an effective instrument for promoting the aims of the school.” It is beginning to look like education is a pawn in a national game of business chess. However, this issue even more difficult for me to wrap my head around than curriculum planning. I would hope that this issue is not the case, but when you witness moments such as TEKS it makes you think about way may or may not be reality, who to really invest your trust in and what value does our job as educators really hold.
Thank you for your thoughts, comments and idea! And as a side note, I really like the background design of your blog site!
Becky Treblin
Hi Amy,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your work on this post!
Your post was really inspiring. It is so cool to read about a person doing this work, and who can find some inspiration for their work in Tyler. I hope you will continue to write about your work and the success your school has (as well as the challenges you continue to face).
I think it bodes well for your work as a curriculum coach that what you seem to most take away from Tyler is his stress on broad involvement, support and understanding from teachers. Getting the school to act like a team, all sharing broadly similar goals, connected to parents and other community groups, this seems like the broad organizational work of the curriculum coach that is likely to pay off in the long run.
It definitely must help that you have a relatively small number of staff that you need to coordinate! Small schools are preferable in so many regards--but this is definitely a key example of why.
What also seems really insightful is that you do not just view your students as minds to be filled up, but individuals with "social, emotional, cognitive, physical, and language needs." Thinking about kids in this multifaceted way helps drive our purpose--we seek to develop kids in all of these terrains.
What Tyler is pretty good at, and what you don't address, is evaluation. In our age of standardized tests, it seems to me key that curriculum coaches push the team to develop broader and more ambitious measures. Are you following your students out into middle school, and even into adult life? Are you documenting what challenges they face, and using that to inform your process?
You are so right that Tyler sees this as a circular process, whereby we continually adapt what we are doing to the situation as we strive to understand it. The world keeps changing, so curriculum must do. We are not so much generators of curriculum as we are adapters and improvers of it.
Again, so wonderful to see you at this work. You are inspiration for a whole nation of teachers--don't forget it!
Kyle