Final Post: Slow Down, Reflect More!

      Dear Jane Doe*, (this would be directed to my ELA department leader)

I wanted to ask you for your support for a massive curriculum revision for our ELA department. I know this is only my fifth year teaching, but after being at Harper Creek for four years, I am noticing that many of our students often fail to see that what they are learning is accumulative; English needs to grow year by year.  I feel that our students often look at their core English classes as these hoops they must jump through to get to graduation rather than the building blocks they will need to grow intellectually in life.

What’s worse is that many of our students don’t seem to care about how they are growing year from year; I feel like their learning is rarely a celebration or a reflection of how much they are developing as readers and writers.  I feel like our core English courses and current curriculum have become all the same: we are all frantically reading through 4-5 classic pieces of literature, writing too many boring timed essays, and giving a multiple choice exam at the end of the semester .  I feel like we are all on a high speed train that has to cover so much ground, and you, me, our department, and our students are so stressed out that it is easier to “jump through these hoops,” rather than slow down and take the time to pause, reflect, and connect our learning unit to unit.

I feel like our kids have picked up on that too.  We are seeing more and more students accept that D- or 60% because at least it is passing—for them, that’s one hoop down.  We are seeing more students who are willing to cheat around our reading and writing expectations rather than take the time to sit down and really learn them.  I have seen this every semester when we go to read some of our core texts like The Great Gatsby or 1984.  I know you have seen the same things with Hamlet and Frankenstein. I also know you have seen our students become good at “faking” the class discussions and quizzes. It is so frustrating. I also know both you and I, and so many of our other department members, have resorted to reading most, if not all, of the books aloud in class—because, hey, at least then we know they are reading.

So, now that I have inundated you with the woes of our day-to-day classroom, I want to share with you some solutions I think will help…two in particular. Brace yourself because what I am suggesting will probably anger some of our department members: We need to change our curriculum by cutting down our classic literature novels by 50-70% and initiating electronic portfolios as an ongoing final assessment from English I-English IV.

I have been reading William E. Doll Jr.’s work (2009) and his idea of “richness”(p. 268) in curriculum creation and have wondered just how deep and rich our curriculum currently is. I believe that trying to barrel through 4-5 pieces of literature, like we are currently doing, is creating a type of surface learning that, as our beloved Kelly Gallagher (2009) would say, is “ a mile wide and an inch deep” (p. 10). I feel like we can’t truly invest in the books we teach because we just don’t have the time. So instead we teach them shallowly while also trying to teach them grammar and ACT and paragraph organization and choice reading and writer’s notebooks and…well you know how it is.

I believe we need to cut down two and maybe even three books from our curriculum and instead focus on shorter literary readings and nonfiction, choice reading, reader’s/writer’s workshop and  “soft skills.”  And yes, when I heard the phrasing “soft skills” I was anxious because I thought that might mean “soft lessons,” but I learned from a poll done in 2013 that many “Americans say U.S. Schools should teach ‘soft’ skills,” such as “…critical thinking, creativity, communication...” because they are “necessary for future success in higher education and in the workplace” ( Lopez & Calderon, para. 8). The poll also highlighted skills like “how to set meaningful goals” and “how to collaborate” (Lopez & Calderon, chart 1 ). 

Don’t get me wrong, I love literary analysis, and I still think we need to focus on teaching students reading strategies, especially with classic literature, as well as writing techniques and grammar, but I also think we need to help our students with how they are communicating in today’s very diverse technological world. We need students to think creatively about English as well as set goals beyond “reading chapter 2.” I believe that initiating electronic portfolios and making these portfolios an ongoing project from English I to English IV would be a great investment for our students.  By decreasing our required classic novels from 4-5 to 2-3 a semester, we would have more time to discuss the way students would organize their electronic portfolios and teach them writing genres beyond ACT (like blogs, personal narratives, letters, etc.).  I also would love to see students use a website like Weebly to create these portfolios to be an authentic place for students to reflect and celebrate their growth as they learn reading and writing strategies in all four English classes.

Just imagine if a student made a Weebly electronic portfolio their freshmen year and was able to revisit it in English II, English III, and English IV and build on what they are learning every year?

Now this is not something that will happen overnight.  It will take some significant professional development hours and experimentation, but I think it is worth it.  We need more time, so we need to consider cutting down the shallow reading we are currently doing.  We need more depth, so we need to show students that learning does not exist in a vacuum. We need more richness in our curriculum, so we also need to consider authentic and meaningful ways of reflection and celebration—like a Weebly electronic portfolio.

I would love to discuss this with you more and begin to plan how to share this information with our department and curriculum director.

Aren't you tired of watching so many of our students jumping through hoops? I know I am.

Sincerely,

Amber Rutan

P.S. Please refer to the following links which will show the electronic portfolios I am  currently implementing for my creative writing and AP Literature class:

http://mrsrutanhchs.weebly.com/

http://mrsrutanhchs.weebly.com/2013-2014-fall-spring-class.html

http://mrsrutanhchs.weebly.com/2013-fall-class.html

References:

Gallagher, K. (2209). Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse Publishers

 Lopez, S. & Calderon, V. (2013). Americans Say U.S. Schools Should Teach “Soft” Skills. Gallup Poll. Retreived from: http://www. gallup.com/poll/164060/americans-says-schools-teach-soft-skills.aspx

Doll Jr., William E. (2009). The Four Rs—An Alternative to the Tyler Rationale. From: A Postmodern Perspective on Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press. Reprinted D.J. Flinders & S.J. Thornton (Eds.). The Curriculum Students Reader (3^rd ed.).

Theme 5: Final Reflections

It is easy to see black and white here.  Literally—we often see the white paper and the black bubbles of the multiple choice tests.   It is also easy to pick one side, and zealous stay on that side and see nothing but the good, or the bad to this very complex issue of standardized testing and national curriculum—but you can’t. Or rather, you shouldn’t.

These issues will never be as simple as black or white, rather there is a gray area—and I mean a huge gray area—that needs to be considered.

I know I picked one side originally when I first thought about these issues, but we can’t try to classify the issue as entirely good, nor entirely bad.  I need to see the merit of both sides, even though that may be creating a great big hazy gray fog. 

The point is rather to appreciate this gray area as a balance.  I do believe having a national curriculum could create more accountability as well as diversity to our current curriculum. I know Common Core asks ELA teachers to explore several types of writing—like narrative and informative writing, vs. what too many teachers are focusing on—which is ACT inspired persuasive writing.  So in that respects, I see the value in CCSS.  I also believe that standardized tests give us quick and convenient feedback.  But there has to be a balance where these tests and standards don’t go too far one way or another.  We need to embrace the gray area, and find a creative way to mix the black and white together.  

Theme 5: Standards, Measurements, and Testing

Greed and Power.

Those two words seem to be the slogans for education today.   I have always know there is big money in education, and with the constant whisperings of the “school budget” with “staff layoffs” and “school resources,” you can’t help but know that money has been the fuel for our education system for a long, long time.

It’s a constant threat and pressure point; I feel like our schools are in saucepan on stove burner which is set to high, and every school district is waiting for that moment for the water to boil and overflow because there is too much to pay for, and never enough money to support it.

I did not—in my embarrassingly naïve way—realize that the greediness of the education system was also deeply intertwined with the fact that the standardized tests  we use and are so tightly bound to are also part of a “new and lucrative market”( Hoff, 24) for publishers.  I felt myself get slapped across the face when I was reading because I never put 2 and 2 together. I just realized that using tests like the ACT is very profitable for some people.  Sure, it is destroying the ambition, diversity, creativity, and passion of our children in the classroom, but hey…as long as someone is making money, what’s the real harm?

Excuse my sarcasm, but isn’t greed one of the seven deadly sins?  When has greed ever been positive or constructive?

My fear is that this type of greed is a political, social, and economical giant.  It is something that cannot easily be destroyed or changed.  And after doing our first four units, and learning that school is a basically another place for “big business,” I am worried about if this greed will ever change in American education.

It was also eye-opening to read that a “national curriculum is a mechanism for the political control of knowledge” (35) and how you could see that “in the top down curriculum…teachers and students have little recognized power” (Sleeter and Stillman, 43). I have always liked the idea of the Common Core Standards, but then I realized that it really does take the power away from me as the teacher, and worse—the students.

Students seem to have little say or choice in what they want to learn.  We have clearly seen that with what they must read, what they must write, and how they must demonstrate what they learn—which is through these standardized tests.

This idea of students and power has made me think about the attitudes of our students—they know they don’t have power or control over their educational surroundings, so they do one of two things: they resist and rebel; thus becoming those “disrupted, problem children” or they become apathetic and quit trying.

So is this what our educational system has come down to? A power struggle over money? A system where our students and future generations are nothing more than bodies to control and squeeze money out of? It makes me wonder what other deadly sins our schools will be willing to commit next.

Resources:
Here are some comics I thought would help add some humor to this my somewhat dark and tense discussion!

Theme 4: Final Reflections

We need to start thinking about our curriculum creation in relationship to an educational buffet, especially a buffet of the past verses the buffet for the future.

Currently, our students are led to this buffet with so many choices, and no directions. Very few things are labeled, food choices are mixed and matched in stomach-turning ways. The buffet changes every year, and for many of our students it feels like none of the same food appears as they go from freshmen to senior English.  And the worst of it, is the timing…students are rushed into the room, told to grab and eat on the go.  They might enjoy the food at one station, or might want another “taste,” but there is no time.  And thus, the meal ends and they go home with a devastating belly ache.

Things need to change.  This buffet needs continuity; that continuity should start with their freshmen year and builds up unit by unit, and more importantly semester by semester.  Students need to see that the lessons in English are not in a vacuum, and there needs to be more recursion.  There also needs to be more richness to the lessons and to do that we need to slow down.  Students need the chance to browse, sit down, and really digest the curriculum that is served.  We also need to think about choice—and maybe this is more for upperclassmen—and letting the students pick their own  reading so students can see they are also a part of curriculum creation. 

We all know “fast food” is not good—yet why are we still teaching a “fast food” curriculum?

Theme 4: Curriculum Creation

This week’s theme made me think about the curriculum we teach in relationship to eating out at a buffet.  Most of us agree that when you eat at a buffet, you take your time. You explore the choices, pace yourself by perhaps starting with the salad bar, and moving onto the main courses.  I think about curriculum today in the same light, but instead I feel like I have arrived at a buffet counter and I have two minutes to eat and get out. Where is the time to mosey and explore the different food options? Where is the time to browse and explore the different lessons in curriculum as well as decided which “food” choices are going to be the most “tasty” and beneficial, and worth going back up to for more?

Doll’s discussion of “richness…and a curriculum’s depth” (268) as well as his thoughts on “recursion” where “curriculum segments, parts, sequences are arbitrary chunks that, instead of being seen as isolated units, are seen as opportunities for reflection” (269) made me think about this idea of the curriculum buffet in relationship to two classes I am currently teach: creative writing and English IV.

My CW class is much more relaxed and is a curriculum that definitely builds unit on top of unit—it’s the relax buffet eating that we enjoy, where we carefully look at the strategies and options for writing/reading and those lessons are makes up the key curriculum we  go back up to for “more.”  More in the sense that we take the grammar, voice lessons etc. from the poetry unit and apply it the narrative unit, and then onto fiction. Everything has this fluid, easy progression, and the best part is the learning and experimentation I have seen every single student done this semester.  I would argue a huge part of that is because we are not bogged down by a pacing guide or tightly packed calendar, and also kids see the common threads in every unit.

English IV—well—that is a completely different story. We have been rushed. We also tried narrative like my CW students, but the lessons for narrative were in direct competition with the reading of The Great Gatsby, which was completely disconnected, and now we are on 1984 and doing research and…AUGGHHH…it is like we have thrown the salad bar, main courses, and desert all on one plate and are trying to eat it all in a few minutes time before the bill arrives.  

The richness and recursion that I clearly connect to and have seen in my creative writing class has create a room where learning is engaging and important; it has made me realize that I really need to step back and revise all of my classes to incorporate all four of Doll’s “Rs” in every classroom, as well as consider Tyler’s discussion of “educational experiences” and how they are “effectively organized” (1) so kids see that lessons from one unit still bear relevance to another.  

In the end, kids know when they have time to sit down and “digest” the curriculum verses when they have to hover it down—and that really does shape, and break, the learning experience.

Resources:

So this resource moves in a different direction to my response and addresses some new thoughts I have about school boards based on the NY Times article.  Below is a link to a website that discusses who and what type of person should run for the NY State School Board. 

NY State School Board

I know there is merit in having schools boards (like new perspectives, community involvement), but I am now wondering if the people on these school boards have the proper ethos and credibility to decide what a school should or shouldn't do.  No where on this website does it say if these people need to have a background/experience in education...and it somewhat scares me because there is an educational expertise that is needed when creating the curriculum in our schools. Also, I can see how different school board members might push some of these dangerous "hidden curriculum" items that are hurting our schools.

Theme 3B: Final Reflections

What is humanity?

Starting with that question might be the first step to better integrating the controversial curriculum that is emerging in our world.  However, defining humanity as one thing, and one thing only, is something we must be careful of as well as the hidden curriculums (like church, politics, etc.) that might diminish the humanity of others.  

It seems this discussion of humanity connects back to citizenship; social lessons are just as much a part of the curriculum as the textbooks we teach, or the standards we follow.   But these social lessons are something that I know I need, and in ways, have been trying to teach, but they seem very vague in my own district—it makes me realize that I need to find out where my own school stands on issues of multicultural learning as well as on the discussion of LGBT community.

I look at my district and realize that many students are still surrounded by these restrictive “bubbles,” and the first thing I need to ask myself is why?  I feel many parents want to protect their children from the harsh lessons of life and protect the youth and innocence of their teenagers before they are swept away into adulthood. And in many ways, that is justifiable.

However, sometimes these bubbles are created out of ignorance.  Some of that ignorance is based on the misunderstandings of culture, sexuality, and so on…

So in order to stop this ignorance, these bubbles must be broken, or rather expanded in some way—and we could start doing that by the social lessons we teach in our schools.

Theme 3B--What Should Schools Teach? "Controversial Curriculum"

(Just a reminder, I teach high school students)

When it comes to our students, we need to help them find a safe and enlightening education. We need to help burst the “bubble” that often isolates our students from the very real world. Life is filled with some hard lessons.  Sadly, we only make those lessons harder by ignoring them and leaving it to “after high school” or “at home” to figure out.

Both of the overall issues —the idea of multicultural learning as well as the gay community and culture—are lessons we need to teach. As stated in the reading by. Thornton, there is something called “ethnic content” and it “should be used to help students learn that all human beings have common needs and characteristics, although the way in which these traits are manifested frequently differ cross-culturally” (362).  The key phrase here is “all human beings”— gay, straight, black, white, male, female, and so on—all have “common needs and characteristics” and every one of American’s students deserves respect and support because every child in our classroom is a human being. 

Not to get side track here, but it burns me to hear the ways people judge and try to deem one type of humanity as being superior over another, especially when it comes at the devastating price of a child’s life because there are people who feel that being gay or being Hispanic is not part of the true human condition.

When it comes to what we teach, the ultimate lessons need to be focused on ways to promote student safety and help students see outside of their sometimes overly remote bubble (I love the idea of lessons of citizenship here).

Thus, enlightenment is crucial here.  After reading about Arizona, I could help but reflect back on my own school district. I work in a district that is mostly white, mostly suburban/rural, and mostly Christian.  I have noticed that the minorities in our school are as limited as the curriculum we teach.  We read mostly “white European dead guys” and I am afraid that the bubble my students live in is only exacerbated more by the “bubbled literature” we are teaching.  We do read books that show some of the racial issues of the past with civil rights, but we are lacking deeply—what about Native American literature? Or Hispanic? And the real hot question—what about homosexual writers or issues?

The stereotypes that we see our students use can only be fixed if we enlighten them, and help them see there is much more out there, but it needs to start at a younger age and the lessons need to be fully supported and encouraged in every classroom.  Now, I know, just thinking about my own school district, that there would be parent outrage, but can those parents look the school in the eye and say it is okay to let a 13 year old hang himself because of our currently limited curriculum?  

It proves that the only way to break these bubbles (especially, if the parents won’t) is for the schools to...because with enlightenment hopefully we can create  a safer school environment. 

Resources:
So I went more in the direction of good resources we could use to teach some of this controversial curriculum and I just taught this very intense, but very awe-inspiring slam poem called "To This Day," to my English IV students.  The poem deals with some tough issues with bullying:

I also added the name of an author that could help us break away from that "bubble literature" and move towards more multicultural learning.  His name is Sherman Alexie and I love his writing as short mentor text lessons.  I have only shared his work with my creative writing students, but I think every student should read him at least once before leaving high school.

Sherman Alexie Biography