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.
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.
I love your analogy of curriculum to a buffet! In my district, we use the student-centered pedagogy, so we often compare our model to a buffet line as well. We describe letting the students choose how they are going to learn something, like you would let someone choose how they were going to quench their hunger. Just today, a colleague of mine called it “a la carte.” We also give our students learning target trackers, which we call “menus,” letting the students know what they have to master for a certain unit and some choices of how they can do so.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with what you’ve said about how some classes are much more laid back and relaxing while others are pushing too much content into too little time. I think that is definitely why more and more districts and schools are moving to a student-centered approach and/or competency-based instruction. There is no point in shoving hundreds of standards into a class if most of the students are not going to leave the class with a working knowledge of them. I think we have to prioritize what is really important for our students to know and then make sure they are leaving our classrooms with a true and deep understanding of those topics. We need to make sure they can apply them in everyday situations and that they see the bigger picture of why they are learning a certain skill. With our students having technology at their fingertips 24/7 and having the ability to look any fact up, we need to focus on critical thinking skills and making sure they differentiate reliable information from the not-so-reliable information.
Amber,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts here, and I too enjoyed your buffet analogy!
As a fellow English teacher, I found it incredibly interesting when you discussed how rushed the tradition English courses feel, especially when we compare them to a far more fluid course like creative writing. I'm curious as to what you think impedes the fluidity in these other courses in which we teach Gatsby or 1984. Is it sticking with canonical texts and organizing our curriculum around texts (often in chronological order)? Should we be moving toward a more inquiry-based approach in which students get to select their own texts, which is, of course, difficult to manage over the course of the year?
I ask these questions because I struggle with them as well. In a subject that is supposedly based in the humanities, the human element of change and adaptation seems really difficult. I hope we can move our way toward greater connections between units (other than chronological order based on time periods/setting)!
Thanks for your thoughts!
Amber,
ReplyDeleteThe buffet analogy is great! I think that, beyond what you suggest here, many teachers would attest to feeling like they not only had to eat their food in 2 minutes, but also that they were expected to eat at least 1 of everything on the buffet! I wonder if this is the feeling that is behind some of your frustrations with English IV. Not only is it a question of pacing but of coverage. Do you feel as if there are expectations that you cover everything in the curriculum/textbook/etc.? Do you feel the freedom to adapt the curriculum +/or the pacing chart to meet the needs of your students and to create the classroom culture you desire--more like your Creative Writing class? What would it take for you to feel that freedom?
I also found myself wondering about the ideas of richness and recursion as they pertain to, for instance, a student's trajectory throughout high school. Do you think that kids see the recursion, the depth, across the English curriculum from grades 9-12? Are any connections made that way? When it comes to richness and recursion within English IV, I wonder if you could, as you hint at, take the curriculum and reorganize it in a way that works better for you? That is part of the curriculum-making process as indicated by Tyler, so, even if the materials are provided, do you have the space to order them in a fashion that meets your needs for richness & recursion?
Best,
amanda