Enduring Understandings

One of the most rewarding things for a teacher to experience is when you can actually see the moment your students begin to understand a concept that you are trying to teach them. It can become very trying to get your students to reach that pivotal point in the learning process, and thus it is important to acknowledge that there are a number of different ways to get there. I have and always will be against the traditional method used to gauge understanding and learning which is by "testing" our students. Most tests don't even begin to assess whether the students are understanding something, which is why I have done away with all forms of multiple choice, true/false, and fill-in type questions for my students. Life doesn't work this way, so why are we making our students?

Yet I have found in my experience as a teacher that most students don't really care to understand. They only want to know what to do to get an "A" in the class. "Is this going to be on the test?" - has to be by far my greatest pet peeve question asked by students. Students are this way because sadly, their teachers made them like that. And most of us teach the way that we do because that is how we were taught. The system is breaking down as time goes by and unless ALL of the teachers get on board with changing the way they look to teach and assess understanding, it will only continue to be this way.

The Ubd readings went into a number of different positions about understanding and how we can get our students to reach that point. Each facet has its own level of importance on the different types of ways that we can get our students to understand. The hurdle in this process is finding ways for our students to reach these levels, and then coming up with creative ways to assess their understanding. Authentic assessments, such as projects, debates, skits etc., are just some examples of things that I do in my classroom to gauge the level of understanding of my students. On quizzes, I always give my civics students real life situations to see if they cannot only understand the laws that we discuss but to also see whether or not they are being applied correctly. Unless we change the way that we teach and assess, we will never even begin to change the way that our students think and understand.

Novice Teacher

In order to begin to "understand" the characteristics of a successful novice teacher, I think that it's important to differentiate between a novice teacher and a "master" teacher. Personally, it's my own belief that there really is no such thing as a "master" teacher, because to me, someone who is a master possesses now flaws whatsoever. Tiger Woods may be the greatest golfer ever to play the game, but he doesn't win every single tournament that he enters. Even when he shoots a great round of golf, he always keeps himself grounded by recognizing that his game had flaws in it and that he has to continually work hard in order to improve.

As teachers, I think that it important to understand that even the most experienced and well-rounded teachers are still novice in their own way. If they have settled in and become satisfied with their instructional methods in the classroom, even if they are successful in their own way, they still aren't "master" teachers. Whether in your first or your 30th year of teaching, we can always continue to grow and become better. Therefore, I feel that these following characteristics best embody a successful novice teacher (no matter what level of experience they may have):

• Eager to learn and grow (in terms of their content knowledge and pedagogical skills)
• Hard-working
• Passionate about learning and teaching
• Patient
• Risk-taking
• Willing to accept failure
• Humble

Clearly there are more characteristics that can be attributed to a successful novice teacher, but I feel these characteristics do a good job of capturing the most important quality of a novice teacher which is the never ending quest to continue to improve upon their craft.

What is curriculum? Who should design it? Who should control it?

What is curriculum?

To me, curriculum can have many different meanings. In actuality, curriculum is supposed to be a guide for the teacher on how they can approach the subject matter in the content area that they are teaching. In this setting, when constructed appropriately, it should provide teachers with learning objectives and goals that they have for their students, as well as a variety of ways that these goals can be assessed and measured. In reality, most curriculum is completely useless. My own personal curriculum is an outdated piece of dribble that is essentially a vague list of the different sections outlined in the textbook. This type of curriculum, to which most teachers are exposed to, does nothing to provide practical or even useful learning objectives for the students, nor does it pose any way for the teacher to assess whether the students are understanding the material they are being taught.

Who should design curriculum?

Well, people who shouldn't design curriculum are politicians and or people who don't know and understand the logistics of being in a school setting or a classroom. Sadly, the reality is that much of the curriculum in our public schools is designed or at least greatly influenced by these types of people. Therefore, it would only make sense that the people who design curriculum are the stakeholders involved in the educational process. Who are they? The teachers, administrators, the students, and even the parents. It is important to weigh the opinion of the students in developing curriculum because they are the ones who can truly give an indication as to whether the design is working or not.

Who should control curriculum?

The ones who should possess the control over curriculum are very similar to those who design it as well. Clearly the teachers and administrators should be involved in this process again, and to a certain extent, so should the state. Each party should ensure that the curriculum is measuring student learning and understanding in accordance to not only the state standards but also to the learning goals and objectives that have been established by those who design the curriculum.

Designing, Understanding Designing, and Politics?

I wonder....how can the three things all be mentioned in the same sentence? For starters, as mentioned in both the UBD and SBD readings, in order for one to design curriculum, you have to start with a desired end result first. All too often though, we see that teachers, particularly some of my closest colleagues, often just push through the material so that they have covered it and can say that they are adhering to the curriculum. Teachers like this aren't concerned with the end result...the big picture, which says "do the students understand the material that is being covered in class?" Instead, these "coverage" teachers push through the material without ever really coming up with a genuine form of assessing their student's understanding of the material because they are too concerned with keeping up with the curriculum and staying aligned with their time schedule.

I loathe these types of teachers, and I can see that the kids do too. My one colleague who teaches the same exact thing as me is "way ahead" of me according to the curriculum because all he does is simply take out the textbook, read aloud, and then pass out dittos. Where is the creativity in that? Where is the engagement in the material that you are covering? With history (my content field) the kids won't care anything about the material that you are covereing unless you can somehow relate it to today or to their lives. Although I often admit that this is difficult to do all the time, it certainly doesn't mean that this path of teaching should be avoided at all costs as this one particular colleague of mine seems to do. For him, the curriculum drives him to teach a certain way. For me, it's more of a guide. My curriculum was last updated in 1999, so its needless to say that it is outdated. Sure there are some good ideas in there, but there are also many things that I myself have just completely scrapped because they are outdated. Kids today are constantly changing, and the way that they understand things and can relate to things around them is also changing as well. Therefore, we need to always constantly adapt and update our teaching methods and the way that we implement the curriculum in our classrooms in order to keep up with the kids and give them any sense of justice about how they are going to be educated.

Shifting gears for just a minute, my one thought about the UBD template is that it is nice, but it also looks incredibly time consuming. I've got a million and one things going on in a single day, night, weekend etc., and I really would like to bring into question just how long a process such as this one would truly take. I agree in utilizing the technique of "working backwards" and starting off witih identifying a desired result first. Each day when I figure out my lesson plan, it is my learning objectives and how I am going to get my students to reach and accomplish these goals that I have set up for them that drives me to focus on how I will conduct that particular lesson on that day. I also like using the concept of essential questions. Whenever I start a new unit, I always put a few questions up on the board that by the time we reach the end of the unit, we will have come to answer. When we finish the unit, we revisit the questions.

My final thought will go towards politics and education. I'm a firm believer that the political involvement in the field of education has come to handicap us as educators, and has turned our students into robots. I do think that it is important to assess the students' knowledge and skills in reading and writing, but let their teachers, the ones that are in the trenches with them everyday do this, not some "suit" up on capitol hill, or someone or works for the department of education that may have never sniffed the inside of a classroom. I don't go into their office and tell them how to do their job, and so, they shouldn't do the same to me and my students. Likewise, those who design the curriculum should be the very ones who get to implement it in their classroom. If I have no stake in what I am teaching because I did not have a hand in the process of designing it, then whose to that I even know how to implement it properly, or that I even care to do it the way that it was designed for me to do? The system is backwards, and has been for quite some time. As I say to my students all the time, how many things in life are multiple choice? My retort back to them is that only the dollar menu as McDonalds is, which is why I never use any sort of multiple choice questions on any of my assessments. Ironically, our standarized tests do! Go figure.