misconception alert!

The other day I had the opportunity to discover a child's misconception about light and heat! It was so cool. Here's the back story. On Saturdays I volunteer with a children's spiritual education program that is sponsored by the Baha'i Faith. Recently I have been working with the older kids, around 11-14 yrs. old. The program for their age is called the Spiritual Empowerment of Jr. Youth, and it's about helping the kids to develop their capacities in different areas of interest and helping them to carry out service activities for their community. Last Saturday we got on the topic of exercise briefly, and I shared my recent experiences going to hot yoga in Nashville. I explained what yoga is and that for hot yoga the room is heated to 100 degrees, which is supposed to be good for your muscles and lungs, etc. One girl asked me if I get a tan from going! I thought it was so interesting that she would think that way, that heat = a tan rather than sunlight = a tan. I felt pretty lucky to see a misconception out in the open like this...it seems that usually they lurk around in a kid's head, unseen by teachers.

virtual schools

The issue study presentation on virtual schools caused me to think about and reflect on my experience this year teaching Spanish II online, as well as my past experiences taking an online course as a student. I think there are some definite benefits to an online course. Students can access the course from anywhere with an internet connection. They can work at their own pace, at the time of day or time of week that works best with their schedules. They can take as much time as they need with assignments, instead of being confined to a 50 minute class period. The online environment also provides comfort for shy students to express themselves when they might remain silent otherwise and allows all students to participate in a more open and tolerant community than might exist in a face-to-face situation. Online courses also allow a lot of room for differentiated instruction in order to meet the needs of all students, without the stigma of ability grouping that can arise in a regular classroom.

As a teacher, I enjoy the flexible schedule as well. I also enjoy being able to communicate one-on-one with my students via email, phone, or instant messenger. In a regular classroom, it can be difficult to get one-on-one time with each student. However, there are some drawbacks to an online class, such as the technical difficulties that inevitably arise, as well as difficulties contacting students who aren't logging in regularly. Ultimately, though, the biggest drawback is simply the lack of face-to-face interaction. Although the online environment can be great for certain activities and discussions, the element of socialization is an important one that should not be forgotten. Students need to learn to work with each other in a variety of situations and communicate orally as well as through writing. In fact, students who are kinesthetic or auditory learners might be inhibited by the online environment and may need face-to-face interactions to learn best. Ideally, I think online activities should be a supplement to a regular class, not a replacement. I have loved classes that extensively used discussion boards, emails, etc, because it helps to extend the conversations and thinking outside of class and helped us to connect on a deeper level with one another, which we could then build upon in a face-to-face situation.

coming to a consensus

Ever since reading the articles on curriculum mapping, I have been obsessed with consensus and alignment. I feel that I have a pretty good handle on my curriculum guide, which plots out the sequence of standards to be covered for the year. But when it comes down to addressing the "scope" part of the assignment, where I detail to what degree these standards need to be met, I realize that I have no idea. I know that I want my students' reading and writing skills to improve by the end of the year, but to what degree? Unless I know exactly where they should be by the end of 8th grade, my goals for 9th grade are just an educated guess. Thinking back to my teaching experience, I realize that I didn't take into the slightest account what students might have done in previous years or what they would be expected to do the following year. Whenever we looked at a new skill or topic, I tried to gauge how much the students knew already and then tried to take them to where I thought they should be. I can see now that this is a very haphazard way of doing things.

Teachers tend to focus on the small world of their classroom, where they have control and make the decisions they think are best. And while I firmly believe teachers need autonomy and control of their classroom, I can see how inefficient education becomes if each teacher works alone instead of collaborating across grades and subjects to create the best plan for student learning. Some of the examples mentioned in the readings were that students might experience the same topics and themes over and over again, might complete similar projects, or even read the same texts. Along with unnecessary repetition, students may also experience gaps in learning when year after year teachers skim over or skip the same areas. Schools NEED consensus maps and curriculum that is vertically and horizontally aligned if they are to provide the high quality education their students deserve. I really hope that the school where I taught, which to my knowledge did not have a consensus curriculum or any kind of curriculum guide, is the exception. To me, this type of alignment seems most vital to a student's success.

Obviously, aligning curriculum is a bigger task than one person can complete, but I still want to try and have some type of alignment with my curriculum guide. We shall see...

textbook evaluation

When looking at textbooks and discussing their use in class, I began thinking about my previous experience with textbooks. As a student, I loved textbooks. They provided new and interesting information. They were places to look up information that maybe wasn't covered directly in class. And I especially loved English textbooks. I always flipped through them (often in class when I was bored) and read all sorts of things that weren't assigned readings. Yes, they were heavy and cumbersome, but I don't remember that really bothering me or being a huge issue. So it's a little strange that now, as a teacher, I don't really like English textbooks at all. I don't feel that the textbooks I have seen are not very high quality. There are not enough contemporary texts. The multicultural texts are not very representative - just the standards that are pretty much canon, like Langston Hughes' "Dream Deferred" or Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" or a couple Emily Dickenson poems. I also don't feel that a lot of the selections really appeal to students, and student interest should be a huge factor in text selection. Also, the additional activities provided with the textbook are not always the most interesting and may not reach a high level of Bloom's. Plus, students hate carrying textbooks around and complain whenever I say they need to bring their books to class. Or they forget their books, which can make classwork tricky.

Part of the reason I think the textbooks are so "blah" is because textbook companies must try to appeal to a wide range of interests, especially those of administrators and policy makers, and therefore include only texts and activities that will be noncontroversial and acceptable to everyone. A majority of "the people in charge" represent the dominant culture, which is more traditional and conservative. So multicultural texts and contemporary texts may not be valued and thus not placed in the textbook.

I do think that a high quality textbook would be a great tool and resource for teachers and students. But what would a high quality English textbook look like? First of all, it would include more contemporary (and yet still high quality) text that students could relate to language-wise. It would showcase a truly multicultural selection of texts that breaks out of the traditional canon to show the viewpoints, experiences, beliefs, and traditions of other cultures. It would also include activities and assessments that appeal to higher levels of thinking and are aligned with state standards, suggestions for content integration, problem-based learning, connections to prior knowledge and common student misconceptions that should be addressed. Maybe I should look into creating such a textbook...

technology reflection

When we discussed technology in the classroom during the last class period, I started thinking about the necessity of teaching technology skills in the content areas and not just in a computer or technology course. However, at this point, although teachers are encouraged to use technology to aid teaching, I don't feel they are equally encouraged to teach technology. Technology skills are not part of content area standards, and so teachers are not pressured to teach or assess these skills. In the TN Technology Standards, teachers are only expected to use technology as a teaching aid to improve student learning. I think this ignores the responsibility teachers should have to teach technology skills that are relevant to different disciplines. The fact that teacher education includes learning about technology as teaching aids is an example of the way disciplines on the college level take responsibility for teaching the technology skills that are needed in each discipline.

In my previous teaching experience, I admit that I rarely taught technology skills explicitly, although I did expect students to use technology to complete various activities. Students created PowerPoint Presentations to show their learning, used Word to type papers, used computer programs to practice skills for the state test, and navigated the Internet for research and learning. In none of these cases did I explicitly teach students how to use the technology. I assumed they already had some knowledge or that they would gain greater knowledge just through experience of using the technology. Clearly there were some students who knew the technology well and did a good job and others who did not. In retrospect, I think it was unfair of me to expect students to proficiently use the technology without giving them instruction in how to use it. This put students on an un-level playing field based on whether or not they had previous exposure to technology.

I did explicitly teach technology skills in one case when students were required to create a resume. I teamed up with the computer teacher to teach students how to use the templates in Word. But other than this, I mainly only used technology as an aid to my own teaching, such as the overhead projector, LED projector, iTunes, etc. I think now that technology should be incorporated into the standards for each discipline in order to make sure that all students are able to master required skills for the discipline, rather than just assuming that students will gain these skills elsewhere.

What now?

This past week, I have been working more on my scope and sequence and feeling a little overwhelmed. Deconstructing the state standards has not been too difficult, once I got the hang of it, but it's only helpful if I feel the state standards encompass what I want to teach, which I don't. I'm having difficulty seeing how everything fits together. I think I still don't have a clear idea of what is meant by a scope and sequence. I mean, I know what it means by definition, but I don't know what one looks like or what process I need to undertake in order to create one. After I have deconstructed each standard and written several scope and sequence statements for each, what do I do?

I decided to put aside the standards and just create my own mission and purpose of education, which I decided would consist of 5 things I believe education should accomplish:

1. Create life-long learners
2. Cultivate an appreciation of others (people, places, customs, beliefs, etc)
3. Moral/spiritual development
4. Develop and hone skills needed to be successful in a versatile career path or paths
5. Enable students to become agents of change

Then I broke down what would be needed to achieve each of these goals. The skills part was the hardest, because that's when I needed to decide not only how to teach the skills but what skills I felt were important. The skills that I chose for the most part overlapped with the state standards for English, although in several cases I am interested achieving higher levels of critical thinking than what is asked for in the standards.

So now I have an idea of what students should accomplish in a general sense as well as specific skills, but I need to know the degree of achievement that is appropriate for each grade level (or at least my focus grade and grades immediately above and below). And if that all encompasses the scope, now I need to figure out the sequence, which to me is most difficult because most English skills I believe should be taught concurrently. Also, although there is a certain degree of achievement expected of each grade level, reality dictates that not all students will have the prerequisites necessary to reach this level, so how do I build into the curriculum ways to help teachers fill in gaps in student knowledge?

thinking out loud on paper

I am feeling a little apprehension about Monday's class, when we will start working on our curriculum guides, because I don't feel that I have a clear idea of what a curriculum guide looks like. I found an example of a course outline on the MNPS website that I think may be similar to a curriculum guide, but I don't think it's as in-depth as this assignment is calling for. From my understanding, I'm supposed to take the state standards and put them into some sort of appropriate sequence for the year, then give suggestions for instructional activities and assessments that can be used with each objective. Is that it? If so, that seems intense because there are a LOT of standards. And I'm also concerned with the sequencing part, because I think that with English, the skills should be taught holistically, not in isolation. Students should be improving skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening concurrently, since these skills build on and complement each other. So I'm not sure what an appropriate sequence would look like or how many objectives should be covered in each lesson or unit. I think this was my problem as a teacher as well. I didn't think in terms of the standards and skills that I needed to cover. I thought about a topic that would be interesting or something I wanted to read with the class, and then I thought of activities that would improve reading, writing, and thinking skills through that particular topic or text. So I never had an overall idea of what skills students should have achieved by the end of the year, what these skills looked like, or how to measure them. Obviously, the purpose of having to create a curriculum guide now is to learn how to do it, but at the same time, I feel like I'm being asked to do something that I don't know how to do! I don't really know where to start or what steps to take. Hopefully this will be clarified on Monday....