Curriculum and communiction

My colleagues are awesome teachers. Out entire School’s student evaluations average 4.14 on a 5 point scale. If you take out a couple of problematic part-timers, the average raises to a very impressive 4.48. It may be a flawed, but fundamentally fair process; most students speak their minds. So, we must be doing something right. Some people question validity of these evaluations, mainly because student satisfaction with a class does not always reflect academic achievement. However, we must be doing something right here. The very possibility of identifying a problem speaks to usefulness of the process. Our students expect to be asked for feedback as a matter of course, and many of them provide thoughtful, engaged comments. We have our share of problems, but can feel good about what we do.

However, I have this nagging suspicion that although each course might be good or very good, and most of my colleagues are extremely competent and dedicated teachers, the sum of these courses is less than what it could have been. The very structure of academic courses taught by different instructors may be questioned. It is a very practical, time-tested structure. You have specialists in different subjects who teach their chunks of knowledge and skills. There is an opportunity for each instructor to perfect his or her chunk, and to create a welcoming, supportive environment. However, anyone who has ever tried to either put together, or revise, or evaluate a program, knows that the shortcoming of the subject/course system are as real as its advantages. First, it is extremely difficult to get people to talk to each other and align curriculum. We, university professors, derive both psychic and tangible rewards from success of our individual course, not from the overall success of the program. We tend to be solitary, non-conformist, and fiercely independent people. Certainly, this is one of the main reasons for people to be attracted to the Academe: we want to be in control of our own work. We constantly tinker with our courses, and those drift apart from each other. Inevitably, questions arise: Who is teaching A? Should someone also teach B? Are we all trying to cover C, and waste our students’ time?

Fundamentally, we have very good grasp of individual course, but we do not know what is the totality of curriculum. We know what needs to be taught in a course X, but we have more difficult time understanding what needs to be taught in the whole program. What does an Elementary teacher need to know and be able to do? The State of Colorado, of course, came up with the performance-based standards that try to spell this out; and we pretend to meet them in our various courses. But let’s take a look at them; this one for example:

The teacher has demonstrated the ability to:

5.1 Create a learning environment characterized by acceptable student behavior, efficient use of time, and disciplined acquisition of knowledge, skills, and understanding.

This is an extremely tall order. Our graduates are supposed to know how to make kids behave and to learn. But OK, it’s important. So, how do you even begin to teach them? What specifically, this ability to create a learning environment actually entails? Can anyone give a step-by-step instructions? Are there any exercises we can assign to train these abilities? And if not, if this is still a form of art, how can you demonstrate the ability?

The standards are actually a list of qualities of a superhero; no one living individual can claim to meet all of them. But teaching is a mass profession; we will always have some talented, and some average people in there. Maybe we should begin with a picture of a good-enough teacher, with a much smaller list of very specific, observable skills and specific knowledge? When we are trying to cover all the State standards, we inevitably stretch the truth, and pretend to teach something we do not really know how to teach. We have double-accounting: every one of us is a former classroom teacher, so we know in our guts what’s important, and what cannot be missed. However, explicitly, we proclaim adherence to the super-hero model, and try to cover a lot of ground. We go wide but shallow.

And then, of course, we discover gaps. What is called the classroom management is an 800-pound gorilla; this is where most new teachers’ anxieties are, and for a good reason; the inability to meet the standard 5.1 is probably one of the biggest career-killers in the world of teaching. And yet we treat it as one of many standards. Well, I disagree. I don’t think knowledge of school funding, or school law or even content knowledge are as important as 5.1. It is, of course, related to some other skills: the ability to plan instruction without killing yourself in the process, the ability to relate to children, and to read peer group, etc. One has to have a mental list of what kids of certain age can and cannot do, etc. But please, 7.4:” 7.4 Apply technology to data-driven assessments of learning…” Is it really that important?

All this super-hero stuff keeps us even more entrenched in our classes, because there we at least can prioritize, and ignore the rest. “At least they will have one good class” we think. That is where much of opportunity for learning is lost: we do not explicitly build on each other’s classes, we do not know what no one teaches, and we do not know what is being taught three or four times. We are not consistent in our own teaching practices that our students will inevitably model.

I am just wondering; I do not have an answer. I only know that simple appeals like “let’s talk to each other” are not going to work. I also know that NCATE and State reviews do not achieve their intended goals of forcing people to think in terms of programs, and specific evidence. So, how do we create programs that are less fractured, less territorial, and more focused, more consistent? Perhaps we should start questioning the idea of the subject-based class? Maybe I should have a group of students I will follow through throughout whatever knowledge and skills we want them to have?