The Curriculum

As my semester in ESPY 556, Analysis of Advanced Instructional Technologies, comes to a close, I continue to ponder the question of where education is heading. What is the future of education? Will it look anything like it does today? Should it? If it doesn’t, are we teaching wrong, or are we just now getting the tools necessary to actively and effectively teach in the 21st Century?

In my district in Elmhurst, a unit district made up of several grade schools, less junior highs, and one high school that most students are funneled in to, some of the lower levels, particularly the junior highs, are adopting an alternative curriculum. The curriculum they are adopting is not teacher-made like the curriculum that has been tested and refined at the high school level English courses. Instead, the English courses in junior high are going to adopt a packaged curriculum, one that is made by outsiders, and comes in a box, that gives teachers step by step lessons, and daily procedures, on the best practices for teaching students English. This curriculum is called SpringBoard and is pretty expensive and proven to work. As their website boasts, “The SpringBoard English Language Arts program provides the rigor you want with learning strategies and scaffolding activities that develop your students’ critical thinking capabilities”.

While I can’t really deny the claim that they “develop your students’ critical thinking capabilities” I do wonder whether they are selling an idea more than a curriculum. Because a curriculum is based around a pedagogy, an insight that the teacher gains, lessons failed and lessons succeeded, and a general understanding of what students need in order to learn. I just doubt whether a packaged curriculum can really enable a teacher to achieve that kind of success.

However, the teachers from the junior highs are very excited about the prospect of their curriculum becoming a SpringBoard curriculum. They insist that it promotes critical thinking skills, just as the advertisement suggests, and that there are media files and audio files that come in the package that you can just pop right in when the instruction instructs you. I thought the role of the teacher was to provide opportunities for learning and prepare students to succeed in the real world, but SpringBoard seems to promote teacher passivity, and only seems to further propel the idea that students are simply receptacles of learning, heads open and waiting passively as content is shoveled into their brains.

I will attest that upon further reading of the SpringBoard website, it includes the varying inquiries in each level, from Grade 9 through Senior year. For instance, one year students will explore the concept of the American dream, and while that is a focus, I wonder if this inquiry is being set up for students to actively participate in a discussion about what constitutes the American dream and where can their claims regarding said inquiry be promoted or dispelled? This kind of inquiry-based learning can not be simulated, not through a package, and not when it is simply given to a teacher. Research proves that teachers are the least effective when they are not familiar with the content they are promoting. What is SpringBoard then but a mast the teacher wears, posing as the brains behind the curriculum when all they are is simply the waiter. Not the cook.

As the future of education looms in my every waking second and my final paper is chipped away at and polished for presentation next Wednesday, I pause to think that maybe SpringBoard is the future of education. After all many schools have adopted this program, or one similar to SpringBoard. Teachers believe it is tested, proven, and thus effective. Scores improve in the very tests made by the people who make both the curriculum and the test. But are students learning? Has it not been proven time and again that teaching to the test is bad. The previous link tells the story of a low-income school that is forced to teach to the test in order to increase school scores, and what was left out? The writing curriculum. A communication skill so essential to success as writing is being left out. I just wonder what this spells for the future of education. Will we as teachers be told to teach more and more until, one day, teachers are not trained and needed, rather lessons are mapped out by facilitators who simply deliver the curriculum?

In my mind, I see teachers casting aside these rote curriculum’s, and instead focusing on the skills necessary to garner success in the future. Teachers will understand their curriculum’s because they will be the ones part of the dialogue that created the curriculum, and it will be tested, and revised, and adapted, over and over again, as time and technology bring about new faces of learning, new notions of student, and new means by which to communicate and learn. I see the teacher as the key to this equation however, not simply the waiter, but the cook, the waiter, the restaurant owner, and even the mayor that sees how the restaurant interacts and helps the community it resides in. Though this ever-evolving, out of my hands, metaphor is a little hard to grasp, I do believe that the teacher needs to see how the student sitting in front of him will also merge with the world outside their classroom, and how will that student effectively take on that world, exist in that world, more than just occupy it, but make it better. Teachers need to know the skills, not just present them, otherwise we can’t clearly articulate the need for the learning. After all, a teacher can not be effective if they can’t actually explain the importance behind their lesson.

SpringBoard may be the perfect curriculum. It may incorporate years of research, from thousands of case studies, with the best instructors writing the programs, but it lacks one thing. It can’t make the teacher a better teacher just by putting SpringBoard into the classroom. Teachers need to understand their place, their need, and if a box can come in and replace them then they aren’t prepared as teachers. Teachers are founded, they are built, by they build themselves as pedagogy’s are instilled and developed, and I simply believe that something like SpringBoard can not be the future of education. If it is, then the future of teachers is in despair. Teachers can meld with the program, but they must understand the curriculum, dialogue with it to develop a sense of what is being taught, and why, and what students need to succeed, outside of the curriculum, and in the real world.

Recently I read a great blog regarding the Web 2.0 video “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” a personal favorite of mine, and I was impressed by his reactions to how his colleagues view the inevitable integration of technology into the educational arena. Michael says;

“Along with the “scaryness” of just learning technology, how to integrate it is an even bigger one. “Ok, I have all of these tools, software, hardware, what do I do with it all, who will show me how to use them?” I see this all the time at UIC. It may not be actually said, but I can see it on the professors faces.”

These professors with too much technology at their disposal are the ones who need to lead the way, same with the teachers in all classrooms. As the video suggests, technology is learning from us, and our students are the ones who are going to create the next definition of technology. If we are not teaching them how to use technology, how to appreciate it and utilize it effectively as a means of literacy and living, we are not preparing them to create the next definition of technology. There is no use in turning a blind eye to technology, as Michael suggests so many teachers seem to try to do, we are in a time where the machine is using us to move forward, and our students seem to be embracing it. We need to do this as well to adequately prepare them to serve and be served by the machine.

I felt inspired to write this week because of the time of the year we find ourselves, teachers, in. It is the November slump, and it seems with two CTER classes, two new preps at school, and a new house, the word slump barely touches on the feeling I have; black hole of despair more acutely spells out where I am.

Okay, that’s depressing and I hardly believe I am in that much over my head, but I will admit that this second phase of my CTER program is much harder than the first, and the reason is because I am also teaching at the same time. Over the summer I was able to focus all of my free-time, oh the copious amounts of free-time over the summer- such bliss, I was able to focus my free hours towards the CTER program, and the benefits came pouring in. I was relaxed every week as I would get my papers in by Thursday night (three whole days before the Sunday deadline) and I held back and forth discussions with many of my peers on our papers, sometimes discussing well into the wee hours of the night. These were good times. These were ignorant times. And with the leaves changing, and the air getting crisper, the change would also come to my own learning.

Over the last two months, CTER and teaching high school English, plus two Broadcast classes, have been engaged in an epic battle of rank, vying for my undivided attention at every minute of the day, even when I dream… you ever have a dream where you’re stuck in Elluminate and you aren’t raising your hand, but your hand icon keeps blinking and everyone thinks you have something to say? 90 freshman have three 50 minute discussions followed by each writing a three-page essay, work wins. I get a group project in 556, we have a project topic and outline due by Saturday, CTER wins. And so it goes. Read, write, plan, write, read, post, read, comment, and yet, I enjoy all of it.

I will wrap this up by swinging to the positive. Yesterday the battle raged on, grades were due in 24 hours at school, I had a meeting online at 6:30 with my group to discuss our final project, my other class has me writing up a hypothetical evaluation on wiki-use in the classroom, and on top of all this, I had two tickets to the Obama Rally in Grant Park. Well, last night, the Obama Rally didn’t even have to vie for my attention, I donated it (keeping with the theme of the grassroots movement). But I did have to get everything done, and I did, to the best extent that everything could get done. Yes, I was online talking to my group even as I was getting ready to walk out the door. Yes, I was grading all day on my days off, to ensure CTER would get it’s appropriate time during my nights. And yes, I made sure I wasn’t bogged down by all I had to do for CTER during the rally. And in the end, I walked away last night feeling something I hadn’t felt for the last two months… fresh.

By fresh, I mean I felt rejuvenated. I know Obama is big on Hope, his strategy practically rested on the slogan, “Just hope,” so I realize that seeing him speak might have had something to do with this idea that I will survive this trying semester. However, I also realized how invested I am in the things that matter to me, and that no matter how crazy I feel at times, these important components of my life aren’t necessarily fighting each other for top rank. Rather, they are all working together, or at least they should be. When I have grading to do, I should be getting better at it because of my time in CTER, especially now as we study evaluations and inquiry-based learning and assessment. And when I’m in school at night, I know that I reflect back on my hours in front of the classroom, privately assessing myself in my head, revamping lesson plans to better suit what I believe is essential 21st Century learning. And as I watch President Obama leave the stage of senetor and enter the halls of Commander in Chief, I need to remember that my beliefs all rest on the laurels that he holds dear, that we are to take care of each other, and we are to help make this world a better place.

I realize I have gone into the sappy, and I feel that November 4th, 2008 excuses that. As a young teacher in a flawed system living in even a more flawed system, I’ve never been more excited to deliver to the future generations what I stand for, what I’m learning, and what I believe are the essential components, not just of a 21st Century education, but as human in living in this world.

I created this movie using PhotoStory for Windows. This was one of my first attempts at using PhotoStory and I was impressed by the simplicity of the program. Given the option, I chose PhotoStory over using iMovie from mac for this project because the high school I work at has PhotoStory on the computers in all the labs. While I love iMovie and the more complex editing components it offers, PhotoStory allowed me to focus on the story line and the narration rather than a lot of editing tricks and film capture.

Overall, I really enjoyed this project. First and foremost, I can see how PhotoStory can be accessible to students of all ages, but especially with older students in high school, some quality and insightful work is possible with the focus almost solely on images and music to successfully convey an image.

I have attached the link to the YouTube site my video can be found at:

PhotoStory YouTube Site

Enjoy!

Brendan Chambers

Though corny, I believe whole-heartedly in the sentiment that children are the future and our future depends largely on how we teach those children.

Why?

As a teacher I feel the unique opportunity, and stress, to instruct students not in the traditional canon of English and Literature the way I was taught but the added responsibility to account for technology, at times trying to catch my curriculum up with what students are using at home to communicate, to learn, to entertain themselves. I am responsible, in this new age of education, to fortify students with an education that will account for triumphant success by online ventures like Google, Facebook, and YouTube. These new giants in technology industry are the standards for success, or at least the golden ticket that was once promised by the perfect ACT score and an Ivy League education. And no where on the ACT, or any other standardized test, is there a question about URL’s, linking websites, or social networks that have made billions in the past few years.

My problem

My problem, in the big sense, is that I have to attempt to infiltrate a curriculum founded primarily on the traditional with the skills necessary, and demanded, to make it in this new, digital age. And I whole-heartedly agree with Clay Shirky’s sentiment about being on the verge of a tectonic shift, that the public is embracing, and has been embracing, a new way of interacting, through social networks, primarily through the use of their home computer, and this communication is the means by which people discuss, collaborate, research, learn, and evolve. The shared network known as the internet can be compared to nothing we have encountered, and yet my curriculum, though ahead of many in terms of English Language Arts Standards, is devastatingly lacking in preparing students to compete with the engineers and creators that exist in the online world. After all, Facebook was invented by a Harvard student who took a late-night idea and turned into an online empire.

With this in mind, what is my responsibility?

The Fuure of Education

The future of education is definitely in my hands. The mere fact that I am cognitively aware of the importance of technology towards the democratic education makes me feel like I’m the right track. I feel that the future of education is going to move from a discourse centered around the conversation happening between one teacher and about 28 students within a brick room and will soon encompass many teachers, fascilitating exploration through social online networks that prepare students not only for the problems of a real world but also how to communicate effectively in that real world. The teachers are going to exist in the school, I can’t see that changing, but they will be responsible for responsibly showing the students a new world, moving through a real world that is fast-paced, ever-changing, and constantly evolving because of participants. And by no means does this take away from the responsibility of the individual teacher. Far from that, teachers are going to have to raise their game, as communities (and countries) expect children to be able to communicate and participate in a global economy, a global network. With that being said, teachers are now responsible not for a curriculum or canon that is set in the stone of the past but instead in a program, an institution, that is founded on the wings of change, if I can be so cliche. The time is now to change. We are at a moment of change. The future president knows this change is necessary, other countries seem to have adopted this change, and our teachers are now holding this responsibility in their hands. Will higher wages make the change happen? Will teacher training make this happen? I don’t have all the answers, but I know that the way I teach now will, and should, be a foreign concept ten years from now, and hopefully we will be the new leaders in educational reform, and technology standards.

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