Analyzing Instructional Units in light of HPL and UbD

I'm not sure if we were supposed to blog about this handout before or after the next class, but in case it was before... As a high school English teacher I generally design curriculum around books to be taught. The example I brought for use in class is part of a unit on Huck Finn. The goal for our department is to use the given book as a vehicle to touch on all five strands - reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing - of the CCCS. So for example I would plan a series of activities using Huck Finn to do that. As regards Question Two, I feel I am fairly learner-centered. I often tailor lessons and methods to specific classes or individuals. I also do a lot of writing ion class which provides abundant opportunities for differentiation. Regarding Question Three, I am not at all coverage-oriented. I don't even do the same material in the same class from year to year, and I often change assessments to reflect that particular class's response to a piece of literature. (Guess that means I'm not using backward design that well, eh?) I am not as certain about whether or not I am activity-oriented. I would assume no teacher designs an activity to intentionally be hands on/minds off, so obviously if I am doing this I don't know. Again, I need to know more/think more about this one. Regarding Question Four, I think I do generally start with the desired result in mind, but may be not as thorough on the other two steps as I might be. I doubt, if I really closely examined the evidence, that all the learning experiences I plan would have a clear and direct relationship to the desired results. Some might exist in isolation. I also think there can be multiple desired results (and this will likely be one of my problems adapting to backward design). Example: I teach AP juniors. One year I might have a class that's really into linguistic issues. They may care about language and dialect and how Huck Finn sounds. Other classes may focus on thematic issues. The classes looking at theme may still sort of subdivide. One group may latch on to gender issues and see Huck as a sexist book. Others may want to spend a lot of time looking at race questions it raises. I might adjust my teaching and my assessment to accommodate any of these, not latch on to a plan and say "we have to get here."

Practical UbD

This will be brief, but I just want to express a hope (Prof. Goldstein are you reading?) that we will do some work with really practical applications of UbD. As I reflect on how my coursework here at MSU will help me as an administrator, I can think of only one course (Clinical Supervision, in which we watched tape of teachers working, wrote observations complete with pre and post interviews and them discussed them) in which there was a practical application. It's wonderful to study curriculum or educational theory, but we all know what the job is once we're in the big chair. If someone asked me to rewrite curriculum at this exact moment, I feel as though I would be no better prepared to do that than I was before my coursework began. This shouldn't surprise me, I suppose. I recall one course as an undergradute - Methods of Teaching English - in which there was any useful practical application. Where my other professors would say "Rousseau would agree" "Freire believes..." "Dewey's idea was..." Prof. Becker would say "Try that in a high school classroom and kids will eat you alive." Now that's useful advice. Ed. Psych, Philosophical Orientation to Education, Teacher, School, and Society - all worthy classes, but nothing in them even remotely prepared me for that first day I faced kids. I have this vague fear that history is repeating itself as I prepare to move into administration.

2+2=4 but only for 45

I know this will be something that makes its way into the individual component of my CCCS's paper, but the more I listen to these presentations and read about UbD, the more I keep coming to the same conclusion - teaching different disciplines in isolation is bad design. Really good curriculum design would be about the "biggest big picture" which is that all disciplines are related. Assessment should be project-based and those projects should synthesize knowledge from different disciplines. A few years ago, my son participated in a middle school G&T program. I recall a project he did which at its core was a photography project. But completing it required historical knowledge, art aptitude, reading and writing skills, and others. I remember thinking, "Why isn't all teaching like this?" We certainly have to draw on knowledge from all disciplines to function as citizens. But the traditional school has one learn all these skills in isolation as though they are independent of one another. It irks me when I hear a student ask a teacher, "does spelling count?" The correct answer is yes, of course, but that teacher's answer may be no. Why? Because it isn't English class! What have we taught that student? We've taught him that proper use of language is only important for 45 minutes a day. Can 2+2=7 in my world after I leave math class?

Sometimes, just because...

Lots of thoughts and reactions were swimming through my head as I finished up the first two chapters of the UbD text. Part of me says this is a revelation, part of me says wait this is just common sense. Part of me says it will be really interesting to try this, part of me says wait you have been doing this for years. And all of the above are at least partially true.
I also had this thought: The assertion the book makes, that kids can't really learn - can't "transfer" if you will, unless they see the big picture, seems to be self-evident. But what if the big picture does not interest them? Good teachers do work from the big picture, at least within the parameters of their subject area, but trigonometry teachers have to teach trig - even if kids find it boring and useless - because someone put in in the math curriculum. English teachers keep teaching Shakespeare - despite the evidence that only an elite few even try to understand it - because someone insisted it stay in the curriculum. I can give kids the big picture about phases of the moon (one of the book's examples) but what about if they don't give a damn about the moon or astronomy?
My point is this: A given school curriculum has a very broad base because somewhere along the way we decided that a broad, liberal education was the way to go, that we wouldn't just train people for specific jobs or tasks. Conversely, the average person's interest will be at its peak when the subject is most relevant (think college student in his/her major courses as opposed to general ed. requirements). So the really big picture question for students is why do I need to know this at all? It's a very difficult question to answer. It seems to me a huge overarching goal at which our culture has failed (and judging from the respect for education from some of my foreign students other cultures have been very successful) is in making people respect the education process and the value it has for their lives.
How much value does my class have for kids, whatever I decide the big picture is? A kid could tell me he never read a book in my English lit. class 15 years ago, plagiarized all his papers and now he make $300,000 dollars a year. I could tell that math teacher who tried to get me to see the big math picture in his calculus class that I have reached this point in my life having forgotten or never used any math skills beyond computation and some rudimentary algebra skills. UbD can provide a big picture, but learners still have to buy into the bigger picture, that education is sometimes for education's sake.
We educators spend so much of our time trying to devise ways to invite disaffected kids into the process. UbD seems like another way to say Hey, we know this is really boring and irrelelvant, so we'll try to find a way to convince you that it's not.

Show Them The Money (and they'll leave)

The Curriculum Superhighway Article--the English teacher in me can't help but point out the versatility of the metaphor as the author employs it throughout the article--seems very much in line with what I was trying to say in class last week. This author is clearly concerned with the appropriateness of curriculum in addressing the needs of a developing child. He is not interested in preparing that child for the corporate world, but rather in preparing that child to be a lifelong learner, to be creative, to be reflective and introspective, to appreciate learning for learning's sake, to understand his place in the world and his obligations to society--I could go on and on. Education is so much more to me than preparation for a career. Many students, asked if they would drop out of school tomorrow if someone would give them some huge amount of money (name your amount but it has to be enough to make them think they will be "rich" for a really long time) would take the offer immediately. This is very sad to me. It's a measure of how much schools have failed in their mission to do all of what is described in this article. Students aren't making the connection that a love and passion for learning can enhance the quality of their lives. They are making the connection that achievement in school appears to be the most direct route to making money. Corporate Americans indeed. Is there is no deeper value for education?

A New Breed of Bully

I just finished the bullying article and must say that it seems the biggest problem is the covert nature of much of the bullying that goes on. I think most (all I would hope) teachers would step in and stop any situation in which a student is clearly being teased, mocked, physically pushed or provoked, etc. I also try to be very conscious of the "fitting in" of new students. This may take the form of making groups for group work so that they have a place rather than get neglected by student-formed groups that may exclude them. It may just be asking them privately and discreetly how their day or year or adjustment to the new situation is going-- to let them know someone cares and is aware that there is more going on in their lives than just whether they have mastered the content of a subject. But I know that a lot of the bullying that goes on these days is cyberbullying and unless students make a conscious decision to talk about this, there is no way for a teacher to know about it. I had a situation brought to my attention a few years ago by a guidance counselor regarding two students who were bullying a third. I was asked to look for signs of it in my class. I feel as though I have a pretty good handle on the group dynamics in my classes most of the time and was surprised at this. I began to look for signs, and saw none. It turns out, most of what they were doing was spreading gossip (using the internet), and excluding her socially. There was really nothing for me to "see" or act on in my classroom. Nonetheless, she was very uncomfortable in their presence, and so obviously I needed to be made aware of that. These are tough situations to handle..

"I can not teach anybody anything. I can only make them think." Socrates

I found the references to Carl Rogers in Mullan fascinating. I was not familiar with him prior to reading this, but he gives voice to something very close to my own teaching philosophy. The quote at the top of my "teacher website" is from Socrates and says "I can not teach anybody anything. I can only make them think." And here is Rogers saying that "anything that can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential" (37). He believes the only learning is self-discovered learning, and says he would do away with grades and credits. Anyone who has ever been a student knows instinctively that on some level this is true. We learn what we are taught in the elementary and secondary grades not because we find it important to us but because there is pressure on us (teachers, parents, grades, rank, getting into college, etc.) to do so. Our undergraduate work may be different, and certainly our graduate work is, as we move closer to the type of learning Rogers talks about. Funny, when one steps back to look at it, how locked in we are - algebra for 9th graders, chemistry for 11th, Huck Finn in 10th, and so on. But why? Because that's how it's done everywhere else? Ideally, I suppose, one would allow a child to pursue academic learning based on interest, but of course public schools as they are presently constitituted are much about so much order and socialization, that it's almost as though the academic curriculum is something to keep them busy while they do all that other stuff. Maybe home schoolers are on to something.

"They" write it but we teach it

I kind of liked the fact that we did not pin down the definition of curriculum. To me (and perhaps many of us?), it sort of has always been the "list of things to cover in English I." It was eye-opening to think about how many things are part of curriculum. Indeed, we are "teaching" all the time we are in the building. Of course we all know about the hidden curriculum or the evaded curriculum but for many of us it never had a name or an identifier. One other blogger lamented the lack of of curriculum training as part of teacher ed. (sorry I don't remember who it was; I read a bunch of them). I suppose the assumption is that teachers will not be writing curriculum. While it's true that many of us never do write curriculum, and that when we do it just means lining up courses with state standards, this new expanded definition suggests how important it is for teachers to be involved. An understanding of this, it seems to me, helps focus the mission of the school more broadly.

A Curriculum Haiku

The cart leads the horse
Bureaucracy and test scores
Why can't we just teach?

There's a Lot to this Curriculum Thing

Chapter 2 of Mullen, as have the introductory weeks of the two curriculum courses I am taking this semester, got me thinking about the very definition of curriculum, something I had taken for granted, not thought about much at all. I think we all, to some extent, think that Algebra I is in 9th grade, Shakespeare must be read a few times in high school, chemistry is necessary but not until about junior year, and the five-paragraph expository essay must be a high school staple. And this is curriculum. But is there more to it than that? And who made these decisions, and what forces perpetuate them? When and why did so many non-academic componenents enter the picture and how much of that has to do with changes in our broader culture? And how will we negotiate changes going forward?

Being asked by Mullen to "envision curriculum as a text to be analyzed" appealed to the English teacher in me, but also challenged what I thought I knew. Her notion of a "hidden curriculum" was also interesting. Who knew curriculum was so mysterious, but of course it is. As an example, the notion of rewards going to conformists (14) is something I have always been vaguely concerned with but never really thought of as part of curriculum. I have debated with colleagues who give "participation" grades (really thinly-veiled behavior grades) how and why they do this, but maybe the answer is obvious. They want to reward the student who helps them manage the classroom and punish the one who doesn't.

I also found this quote, not Mullen's but quoted from Thornton extremely provocative: "... it is still tacitly assumed that everyone is heterosexual until proven otherwise" (15). What amazing and provocative questions this raises about a curriculum that is inviting and inclusive vs. one that, to some or many students, clearly isn't about me - whatever non-mainstream category, sexual, religious, ethnic or otherwise, I may belong to. I mean it seems to me that for years much of our curriculum goes far beyond Thornton's assumption and makes this one: "... it is still tacitly assumed that what is white, male, and European or American is more important than what is not." Certainly parameters have to be established --students can't study everything-- but these decisions have consequences.

Public Ed. Primer

I actually expected more surprises than I found in A Public Education Primer, especially after the introduction implied that it contained facts of which many would be "unaware." I did find it interesting to note that the U.S. stood out from most G-8 nations in not having a national curriculum or exam. I wonder how inability to master the national curriculum is handled in the many countries that do have one. Are students retained, do they drop out? etc. Colleagues of mine like to joke (only half kiddingly) that with most of our tests you HAVE to pass... unless you don't. The joke emphasizes their frustration about the fact that we give lip service to standards but don't hold anyone to them. The SRA option for those who cannot pass the "must-pass" HSPA is an example. Another fact that caught my attention, although I had heard it before, is the staggering number of people who leave the teaching profession - nearly 50% - before the completion of their first five years. I would have to see this number in comparison to other professions for it to have meaning, but I can't imagine it could be that high in most. I also think it would be intteresting to know if this number is comparable in nations that value education more than we do.