Cycle Three: Should the curriculum address controversial issues?

I think a more important question than should the curriculum address controversial issues is how curriculum should address controversial issues. While it might make some teachers or parents more comfortable to avoid certain issues, it leaves important gaps in student’s education, and can affirm negative views on the topic by labeling them as taboo. As adults, Joel Burns reminds us that “it is never acceptable for us to be the cause of any child to feel unloved or worthless.” I think most teachers would take this statement as a given, but sometimes the way we overlook issues in our curriculum or even within the classroom contributes (even if it’s unintentionally) to a child feeling less loved or worthy. Creating opportunities for dialogue about touchy issues and having clear expectations about what is and isn’t appropriate language to express can go a long way towards showing struggling kids that they do matter and deserve to be treated with respect.

Curriculum has gone a long way to correct oversights of this type with issues like women’s and civil rights, but is still lacking in other areas, and in some cases seems to even be taking a turn in the opposite direction. The “Don’t Say Gay” bill, now called the “Classroom Protection Act” is back in Tennessee. The bill would forbid discussing “anything inconsistent with natural reproduction” in grades K-8. Honestly I don’t know how this can be completely avoided. Students with same-sex parents wouldn’t be able to talk about their families in the classroom in the way other children do. Instead of teachers finding ways to make students feel comfortable discussing diversity, it takes this away completely.

Tammi Shulz, a parent opposed to lessons in tolerance as a part of school curriculum, claims, “I just don’t think it’s great to talk about homosexuality with five year olds,” and many parents echo her concern that children shouldn’t be exposed to such issues at such young ages. Something that Mary Cowhey reminds readers in her essay on “Creating a gay-and lesbian-friendly classroom” is that “We are not talking about ‘sexuality’ when we discuss gay and lesbian issues any more than we are discussing sexuality when we read Cinderella or any other story with all heterosexual characters.” While some parents still may not feel comfortable with their children discussing these issues at an early age, they can’t keep them in a bubble, and chances are good that at some point their child will meet a student who has a non-traditional family. Parents generally treat their children to share, to play nicely with their classmates, to treat others as they’d like to be treated, and they should want their children to learn to extend those values to all of their classmates, regardless of their background. This means having “controversial” discussions with young kids.

One of the big ways (unrelated to curriculum) that teachers fail students is by failing to react to homophobic name-calling. Leonore Gordon claims that “if adults criticize other forms of name-calling but ignore antigay remarks, children are quick to conclude that homophobia is acceptable,” much in the same way that when we fail to recognize something in our curriculum children are likely to conclude that it is unimportant or unacceptable. This is an area that I am struggling with this year. I have a class of mostly ninth grade boys who see it as their mission in life to taunt each other more than the others. I have tried to be clear with them that it’s unacceptable, but it’s so constant with them, their first reaction after anyone says anything is to ridicule him, that if I stopped to address every single comment I would never get anything else taught. I guess it comes down to how important it is that I teach these boys to respect each other, but this area has me frustrated this year. They are all friends, and don’t see why it’s not okay for them to talk to each other like that, it’s like it’s all a big joke to them (and to their parents.)

My school, like others, made a push to promote anti-bullying and spread awareness about doing the right thing and standing up for people who are being bullied. All of the 9^th graders participated in a Rachel’sChallenge event, and we showed videos and had discussions in homeroom, but none of that seems to have made a difference with these kids. I guess it’s an example of disjointed curriculum attempt that’s not integrated into student’s lives so they don’t take hold of it.

Another area I had never considered is talking about HIV/ AIDS at school. I’m almost to the end of my master’s with a focus on multicultural education and had never read anything on this topic. It fits well with homosexuality, because again the issue many parents are afraid of is talking about sex, and the (unfounded) fear that talking about it will somehow make kids more likely do it. The Silin article brings up problems with The New York State AIDS Instructional Guide, which breaks down talking about HIV/AIDS in the classroom, starting with how it isn’t transmitted in 4-6 grades, and not talking about how it is transmitted until 7-8 grades. This could be confusing, for kids, but talking about how it’s transmitted means talking about sex, and I can understand why parents aren’t comfortable with their 9-12 year-olds talking about that outside the home.

I remember when my little sister’s 4^th grade class read The Giver, and my mom was uncomfortable with some of the references in the book. I can only imagine how she would have reacted to my 4^th grade sister learning about the transmission of AIDS at school. Some parents (my mom being one of them) want their kids to hear about things from them; parents like Tammi Shulz are worried that the views expressed at school might not line up with the values the family wants to impart on the child. I think both parents and teachers have to recognize, that with the reality of our current time things have changed, and what we consider to be an age of innocence might need to change to protect kids in the long run. If teachers handle topics with discretion and parents stay involved and continue the dialogue at home we can benefit from controversy in the curriculum, remembering, as Silin put it, that “not all knowledge is about control.”

Cycle Two: What should schools teach? How should they be held accountable?

 It’s hard to determine the answers to these questions, because the second depends on the first, and the first always leads us to the question of who has the right to decide that answer. Hirsch, for example, in his chapter “Cultural Literacy and the Schools” claims that, “many more students could become highly literate if they were presented with the right sort of curriculum” (p.116). However, despite my Bachelor’s degree, work towards my Master’s, and experience living abroad, according to Hirsch’s standard I would be culturally illiterate, based on the fact that John brown evokes nothing for me, (certainly not “a whole network of lively traits”), and that I couldn’t even tell you that Falstaff is fat and likes to eat and drink (p.127). I think Hirsch would take this to mean I had earned a subpar education, and probably would be horrified to know that I minored in English. It would be both impractical and impossible to cover every work of Shakespeare, though, and in my English classes we read Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet, not Henry IV. I don’t think this makes me in any way illiterate, nor has it hindered my life in any way. In this day and age I don’t think it is necessary to memorize long lists of facts, because we have Google. 

Jonathan Wai disagrees, quoting David Lohman that “how well we reason depends on how much we know.” This makes sense of course, but if you’re reading a book or find yourself in a situation where you missed something because of a cultural reference, you can use technology to find the answer within seconds and be able to make the connection. Wai also quotes Benjamin Stein, saying today’s youth “are not mentally prepared to continue the society because they basically do not understand the society well enough to value it.” This ignores the fact that society is changing at a more rapid pace than it ever has, thanks to technology. Today’s youth may not be as well versed in the things that past generations would mark as vital for cultural literacy, but if you go back even farther I think you’d find that their predecessors found them equally lacking. Add globalization to this, the way cultures are blending and interacting more and more, and the feasibility of compiling a list of things someone should know becomes even more improbable.

While I don’t think a strict body of knowledge that must be learned is necessary, I do think there are some things which technology cannot replace. Al Doyle, teacher at Quest to Learn, for example, calls spelling “outdated.” Yes, students have spell check available to them, but students still need to have a basic understanding of spelling in order for spell check to recognize which word they’re trying to use. And what about homophones? Uniform spelling is necessary for mass communication, and to get to the stage of someone (or some machine) editing your spelling, you must have some handle on the skill.

Basically I think students should be taught to use resources available to them to solve problems. These resources will likely include Google and spell check, but the still need basic knowledge to use those tools. Even though they have Google, they have to be able to determine whether the information they’ve found is trustworthy or not, and what to do with it next. The what of what we teach, in my opinion, becomes a lot less important than the how and the why.

In this way I really appreciated the article about video games and learning- they present problems that students must work (often collaboratively and creatively) to solve. And while I’m torn about the idea of making school “fun” simply to avoid kids dropping out because they’re “bored” (honestly, many jobs are boring, and most bosses unfortunately won’t work to try to make their work more fun), Paul Gee points out that gaming is not always fun, there’s a lot of failure involved. Will Wright calls it “failure-based learning” which is absolutely right, kids are willing to fail over and over again trying to find a way to beat a game, and still love the game, unlike the feelings that evolve if they fail continuously at school.

Data shows that the Quest to Learn school students didn’t perform any better on standardized tests than their peers from traditional schools despite how much funding this innovative design requires, but I think it’s unfair to judge the success and value of this experience based on traditional testing. Students might not perform any better on a paper-pencil type of test, but given the opportunity to apply the knowledge in a more performance-based assessment, I bet they’d outperform their peers. This would be an interesting study.

I know kids love games (Yesterday my students were working on a project using imovie, and after finishing one student asked me if he could play a math video game until class was over. I was surprised he was so excited about practicing math, but said yes, please do.), but I lack the competence with gaming and programming as well as the time it would take to implement the methods used at Quest to Learn, so I searched the internet to see how other Spanish teachers are using video games. At first I found very little, just that the market for Spanish video games (not the educational sort) is expanding. Then I found this thesis  on using video games like The Sims 2 in foreign language classes. I have considered using this game in class before, but haven’t gone anywhere with it because of logistics (buying/ installing the game, how to monitor student progress.) I also decided to check out Alice, a program mentioned in the reading about Quest to Learn school. It claims it’s for beginners, so it might be something I try out this summer, but at this point I don’t have time for it. Something else I stumbled upon while doing this research is Inanimate Alice, a digital story-telling website. I’d love to learn how to make stories like that, but my students aren’t advanced enough to really benefit from the ones offered on the website.

The idea of video games as assessments in themselves intrigues me, and I wonder about the uncovered possibilities there. I don’t think standardized tests as we’ve known them make sense in our technology-rich future, and while some tests (like AP, that are delving deeper instead of trying to memorize so many facts) are making positive changes, others seem to be digressing. (Like Kentucky assessing music with a paper-pencil standardized exam when music teachers have been using performance-based assessment all along.)

In my last post I struggled with this same idea- that we need some sort of accountability measure, but that it shouldn’t be restrictive. I know my stance is still vague, but I still think that’s where I’m at. We need to find a way to test what students are able to do, to prove that they can think critically, as they’ll need to in their real futures- and this probably won’t involve a lot of rambling off memorized facts, so why should tests?

Cycle One: What is curriculum? What is its purpose?

My initial thoughts in consideration of these questions jump to text books and mandated curriculum guides. I think that for most teachers what we teach is so specifically mandated that curriculum is reduced to that. Upon further reflection and considerable reading about the idea, however, I have been able to think about curriculum in a broader sense. William Schubert (1996) names curriculum as “what is worth knowing,” and expands upon the root of the word coming from the word “currere,” associating it with “the act of running the race” (p.169). This broadens the context of curriculum quite a bit. In these terms it truly can’t be contained in a single document, as the course that individuals will run in their lives is varied by so many factors.

I like Wilson’s view of curriculum as “anything and everything that teaches a lesson.” It’s important to remember that not all learning is done in the classroom, nor even in the school building. Students learn through every interaction they have at home, in the community, and through the various forms of media they encounter as well as at school. However, thinking of curriculum in this broad of terms makes it difficult to draft any sort of national or even local curriculum guide that would be useful in maintaining a sort of uniform education across the country.

Obviously some question whether such uniformity is at all necessary, if it wouldn’t be better to simply follow the interests of the individual children in a class and allow their curiosity to naturally guide them to discoveries in different disciplines simultaneously, in an uninterrupted way that mimics the way discovery happens in the real world. These same people assert “if a skill or body of knowledge is indispensable for a given project, it will emerge as a learning need in the course of working on that project” (Schubert, 1996, p.174). I wonder, though, how likely this is to happen if, say, only one student is lacking that skill or body of knowledge. Ideally education would be individualized enough that the student would get a chance to catch up with that skill, but I don’t find this likely to happen.  More likely, in my opinion, the one who didn’t have that skill would be the one left behind, struggling to gain as much as his peers from the lesson at hand, given his missing understanding of something it's assumed the students already know (and in fact the majority do.)

Schubert mentions the fact that even with a strict curriculum guide, the learning that takes place will be different in different classes because of personal preferences and personality of the teacher (p. 174). I agree with this, but I think if the understood curriculum task is that students will be able to use the past tense in Spanish, for example, however they get to that point, two classes with different teachers will produce students who can use the past tense in Spanish. However, if we followed student interest only, and the students in one class really had no interest in talking about the past, but wanted to focus on the future, or hypothetical situations, when they mixed the following year with a class that had spent weeks practicing the past tense, their differing skills and abilities would make it difficult to find a common ground on which to continue to the mutual benefit of both sets of students.

This isn’t to say that I think curriculum needs to be rigid and ignore student interest, but I think it will be more effective if it has some kind of agreed upon starting ground that is in common across schools. The way teachers go about meeting these curricular goals can be tailored to the individual students in his/ her class, and that’s where student interest and difference can be taken into consideration in order to make that learning meaningful for a particular group of students.

Additionally, I believe curriculum is constantly changing, and written curriculum needs to be continuously adapted. Especially in the technology age where the world itself is changing faster than it ever has before, what is important for students to learn needs to be re-evaluated, to consider whether things are still relevant for students to learn and develop the skills they’ll need to be successful in their uncertain futures. As in Donovan’s case, what he needed to learn had to depend upon his probable future. Unfortunately in his case, as he grew older his developmental level didn’t change much, so neither did his probable future, but for other students the reality of their future will change frequently during the span of time in which they are a part of the public education system.

This leads me to the second question, the purpose of curriculum. I don’t see the purpose of curriculum as constricting, as a certain body of people’s beliefs about what is important to the exclusion of other areas of studies. Schubert’s traditionalist speaker, for example, admits to his weakness in classics outside of Western Europe, but doesn’t try to claim that nothing outside of his area of expertise is valid. Rather, he claims that he would like to learn more about other areas as well; he is open to diversity (170).

Instead of this constricting vision, I see curriculum as a loose-fitting guide that can be adapted to meet various needs and realities, but that is vitally important in its role of ensuring consistency and quality in education across different types of schools. I think this is important so that students coming from disadvantaged areas are not stuck in those disadvantages. Certain parts of our nation, unfortunately, have lower standards for education than others, and it’s not fair to the children of those areas to be held to lower standards and therefore probably be provided with fewer options later in life. Written curriculum holds schools and individual teachers accountable to standards that, while they may fall short of the intended goal in the end, at least attempt to promote equal opportunities for children. Susan M. Drake and Rebecca C. Burns (Meeting the Standards Through Integrated Curriculum), explain that, “Although accountability mandates require that we cover the standards, teachers have the freedom to expand on or connect to other standards to make them more meaningful.” We don’t have to be held back by standards and mandated curriculum, we can use them as a tool to enhance student learning while maintaining accountability.

TE818- Introducing Lisa

After graduating from MSU with a Bachelor's in Spanish (and a minor in English) and completing my year-long student teaching internship at Everett High School in Lansing, MI, I followed my heart to Madrid Spain. I spent three wonderful years teaching English both to children in a private academy and to adults through in-company classes. I also took advantage of living in Europe to travel as much as possible, and was able to check quite a few things off of my "must do" list.  As much as I loved living in Spain, my husband wasn't willing to commit to being a full-time madrileño, so we compromised by moving somewhere warmer than Michigan, but closer to home than Europe: North Carolina. I am currently in my second year teaching Spanish at a high school in the Charlotte area. While I still find my job challenging and time-consuming, I'm having a very different experience in my second year. I hope that some of the reason for that difference is that I'm applying what I'm learning in my Master's courses. In addition to teaching, I coach cheerleading, and try to find time for my personal interests like running, cooking, and reading.

Concluding Post: A Line of Classroom and School Improvement

To: Jennifer Walker, principal SHS

From: Lisa Rose, Spanish teacher, SHS

Dear Mrs. Walker,

One of the weaknesses I perceived in my first year of teaching at SHS was my inconsistency in creating a positive classroom environment. I noticed as the year progressed that I had two classes with a very positive atmosphere and that those two classes also had the highest grades and the least number of discipline problems. Therefore, this summer I engaged in an inquiry project studying the factors important to class environment. One theme that emerged from interviews with teachers, students, and review of relevant research was the importance of group work in building community, which enhances achievement. I decided to further my study of how groups can be utilized to improve classroom environment and achievement, and so read the book Learning Together and Alone by David Johnson and Roger Johnson (1999). This book focuses on three different types of cooperative groups: formal, informal, and base groups. It cites a plethora of studies and coincides with several other works showing the positive impacts of such grouping techniques in education.

At my year-end summative conference regarding my evaluations over the course of the year, one goal that was set for me in the coming year was to improve individualized instruction strategies, an area that I believe many teachers struggle with. Tomlinson & McTighe (2006), in their book Integrating Differentiated Instruction andUnderstanding by Design: Connecting Content and Kids, like Johnson & Johnson, emphasize the importance of group work in reaching the needs of diverse learners. When students work in several small groups instead of one large one, they are able to learn the material on their own terms and more at their own pace. They are more likely to stay focused on the task and engage in higher thinking, which is connected to learning, than if they work alone or as one whole group.

Another weakness of mine on my evaluation was standard IV-f, teacher “organizes student learning teams for the purpose of developing cooperation, collaboration, and student leadership.” Prior to my research this summer I really didn’t understand what that meant. I encouraged students to work in groups in various situations with various instructional goals, and I didn’t see how that was different from “learning teams.” When I asked what the difference was, the answers I was given were really too vague to be beneficial to me in improving on that standard. After my research on this topic, I have a much better understanding of how cooperative groups or “learning teams” are different from traditional groups, and how to organize them to be successful.

During the course of last year, at several faculty meetings, the idea of collaborative instructional methods was encouraged. The administrative team completed walk-throughs of classes to see which forms of instruction were being utilized, and similar to the findings in Johnson & Johnson, the majority of class time was being spent in whole group instruction, or individuals completing work on their own, with cooperative learning the least used method (5). The administrative staff made their goal clear (increase cooperative learning), but the findings in the walk-throughs didn’t change throughout the year. I believe that this is because teachers at our school aren’t properly trained in the importance of collaborative grouping techniques, and how to implement them, and that our staff as individuals and as a whole would be stronger and promote higher rates of student learning if we were provided the training we lack regarding cooperative learning.

I believe the administrative team at SHS has always promoted the value of teacher-student relationships, and training such as the professional development led by Larry Bell last year inspired teachers to form strong relationships with their students as a way to improve class environment and achievement, and I think focusing as a staff on collaborative learning techniques would help foster stronger student-student relationships, adding to the family feeling that we strive to maintain at SHS.

Incorporating a study of cooperative grouping strategies into our PLC sessions would be an ideal way to implement such training, and would coincide nicely with our work in PLC’s last year, as we studied ways we as a staff could improve student learning. The benefits of cooperative grouping are many: it allows for differentiated instruction (54), more frequent and more personalized checks for accuracy and understanding (55), counteracts common teenage feelings of isolation and worthlessness (63), improves student accountability and motivation, as they will do things for a friend that they’d never do for a teacher (65), decreases drop out rates, as students feel connected, and not alienated from school (66) for example.

Implementing staff training in this area is important because teachers need to know the difference between a traditional group and a cooperative group, as not all groups are effective, and some can even be counter effective (74). Teachers need to learn how to implement different types of groups, and to teach students the necessary social skills to participate in these groups (82-83.) Not only will this increase the amount of higher thinking going on in a class (as compared to individual or whole group instruction), which will improve quality and quantity of learning, but it will leave students with valuable life skills such as problem solving and critical thinking that employers are looking for.

Johnson & Johnson point out that "Society is cooperative by definition" (x). As educators, we are charged with the task of preparing the future citizens of our society, which means we need to provide opportunities to practice and perfect cooperative behaviors in school. Just as the administrative staff encouraged teachers to incorporate more small group work last year, Johnson & Johnson suggest aiming for 60-70% of class time to cooperative learning, 20% individual learning, and 10-20% competitive learning (11). The results of the walk-throughs show that our staff isn’t teaching in this way, meaning we’re losing valuable opportunities to improve student learning, which is why I’m asking you to please consider collaborative grouping as a topic of PLC study and a school-wide goal in the coming year.

Thank you for your time, and please contact me if you have any questions concerning this matter.

Sincerely,

Lisa Rose

References:

Johnson, D. & Johnson, R. (1986). Learning together and learning alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Tomlinson, C.A. & McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating differentiated instruction and understanding by design: Connecting content and kids. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Cycle Three: Schools as Embryonic Communities

I think it’s interesting to compare what schools can be with my experience with schools. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time at four schools- the one where I attended high school, the one where I did my senioryear field work, the one where I interned, and the one where I currently teach. The size and makeup of the student bodies at the schools and the communities they’re located in vary quite a bit, but the buildings themselves and the courses offered and required for graduation are strikingly similar. I found this week’s coursework about a green school, the Finnish school system, teacher and student communities in schools (and extending beyond schools), and Dewey’s ideas of what schools can be interesting but unfamiliar. Why is it that so many diverse options about what schools can look like and how they can be organized and run exist but so little diversity exists in our schools? I know that there are certainly exceptions to my experience with schools, but I think that the vast majority of schools are similar to the one’s I’ve worked at.

William Ayers offers a different view of the classroom, perhaps similar to Dewey’s, or John Hardy’s, challenging the concept of classrooms full of rows of desks. I enjoyed the quote in chapter two of Dewey’s (1915/2001) The School and Society in response to his difficulty in finding what he considered to be suitable desks for his school: “I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something at which the children may work; these are all for listening” (21). Most classrooms within my sphere of experience are arranged exactly for that purpose- students in rows facing the board, encouraging the type of learning most commonly engaged in in our schools- the attempted transfer of information from the teacher to the student, with little room for collaboration or student input on the learning. My classroom is set up a little differently I have rows of desks in three sections making a u-shape with a large open space in the center. The front/ board is still the center of the room, but it allows for a little more interaction across the classroom, as students are facing each other, and the center of the room being open facilitates activities that require students to move around the room as well as allowing a “stage” of sorts for student performances. For the most part, teachers are forced to do what they can with the space and furniture they’re supplied with by the school. If any more students had been added to my classes last year, I would have been forced to fill in the open center to accommodate them. One thing Ayers did to open space in his classroom is to eliminate the teacher’s desk. That would create a considerable amount of space, but would leave me with nowhere to do the planning/ grading work that I spend so much time doing at my desk! Even brand new schools that I’ve toured have all had generally the same use of physical space- desks, tables, etc. Wouldn’t it be different (and incredible) if schools were designed with student learning in mind! John Hardy mentions in his description of the green school he build in Bali that his former school was designed by the same person and built out of the same materials as the prison and the insane asylum- is that the best we can do?!

I’m also intrigued by the different ways schools can be structured to better foster real learning. I’m particularly interested in the benefits of teacher and student groups staying together for extended periods of time, as they do in the Finnish school system and the HiPlaces model. My concern with this is that I’ve had some classes that I don’t think would have benefited anyone to stay together. I know it would require more work, but I think careful consideration of which students have classes together would make the time spent in class more productive. For example, I had 40% of my discipline problems in one class last year. (That’s exact, I’m analyzing the data for my inquiry project.) Part of this was because of the makeup of the class, there were several students involved in opposing gangs. I was new to the school and the area and had no idea what was going on, but when I asked a colleague to observe the class and offer feedback she picked up on that immediately. When I discussed the problems I was having with my principal, she asked to see my class list, and her initial response, after hardly a glance was, “these kids never should have been in a class together.” (That’s an issue of itself- if our school were set up with teams and communities as in the HiPlaces model, would it eliminate some of that tension? Or would that not work because of the issues in the community where I teach?) If she could identify that so easily, how much extra work would it take to review class lists and try to prevent situations like that from happening in the future, at least for the newest and least experienced teachers? I’m not the only one with a situation like this, another new teacher at my school struggled so much with one particular group of students that his mentor described it as if someone had intentionally grouped all of the students with known behavior issues in one class. I suppose in a model like HiPlaces the selection of students for the different teams is more carefully thought out than the scheduling at my school seems to be.

I don’t mean to sound too negative here, I’m glad to learn about the ingenuity being employed in schools worldwide, and excited about the possibilities that they offer the many schools that are still structured like the one I attended or the one where I work now.

Cycle Two: Challenges and Opportunities in Building Classroom Communities

I’m currently working on an inquiry project about building classroom communities, because I noticed a correlation between positive classroom communities and student achievement in my classes last year. With that in mind, I found this week’s content particularly interesting and enlightening. In my interviews with students for my inquiry project, several of them told me that in a class with a really good atmosphere, there was a lot of time spent in groups, doing both content-based work, and just spending some time getting to know each other (and often a combination of the two.) Several of the students described their “good” example of a class as one in which the students had fun learning together.

My school has been doing walk-throughs to analyze how student time is spent, and repeatedly finding that the majority of class time is spent on whole-group instruction or individual, quiet work on worksheets, etc. Because of the talk about those findings in our staff meetings and PLC’s, I had already been trying to focus on how to incorporate more group work in my instruction (generally easy since my main goal in instruction is communication), but after hearing what my students had to say about how they perceived classes with lots of group work, I determined to make this even more of a priority in my planning for next year.

The Tomlinson & McTighe (2006) chapter on differentiating instruction was possibly the single most useful piece I’ve read in a teacher education course. I’ve always grappled with the idea of differentiated instruction, knowing it would benefit my students, but always got stuck somewhere around varying my instructional techniques but not actually individualizing anything- because I didn’t really know how and didn’t have the time to figure it out. This chapter lays out the basics and gives enough concrete examples that any teacher could start implementing them with a little extra careful planning.

At first when I read the analogy about universal design- the idea that it’s easier to plan something like a ramp for a sidewalk rather than try to add the ramp later, and also the idea that, while designed for people in wheelchairs, the ramp is useful for mothers with strollers, etc (95).-I only thought about the time this extra step in lesson design would require. I do differentiate instruction on some level regularly, but last year there was only one time that I was really proud of my efforts. I was teaching the difference between the preterit and imperfect tenses in Spanish (two past tenses), a major grammar point for Spanish learners. A certain portion of my class had just barely scraped by Spanish 1, could hardly conjugate a present tense verb, and so were lost at sea when it came to contrasting two different past tenses, while others in the class could conjugate in their sleep and had memorized the rules for when to use which tense on the first day I introduced it. To accommodate for those differences, I made a preliminary assessment to determine groups, along with three different sets of activities for the day- ranging from basic conjugation to more abstract uses of the verb tenses, according to what the students needed practice with. The lesson went great, and I was able to spend some time with the struggling students who really needed a little one-on-one, but it took me three times as long to plan, since I had to come up with essentially three lessons, as well as figure out how to make them all work simultaneously.

A later analogy in the chapter really resonated with me- comparing starting to incorporate differentiated instruction with starting an exercise habit or a healthier eating plan (106). I’m a runner, I enjoy cooking, and I’m somewhat self-conscious, so the struggles of starting and sticking with a regime is something I can really relate to. I can also relate to the success side of it- since it’s become a habit for me, I no longer buy it when friends say they’re too busy for exercise. I think- if I have time for it you could definitely find the time! As Tomlinson & McTighe put it, “the changes are awkward at first,” but “many illustrate the benefits to their lives” (106). As Cheryl Caggiano, a teacher who works hard to differentiate instruction puts it, “It’s crazy, insane, and I don’t get paid enough,” but she does it anyway- because she can see how beneficial it is for her students (Schumer, 2003). I can find the time to make little changes to all of my units, even if I have to start small- it’s worth it.

The other chapter I gained a lot from this week was the Johnson & Johnson (1986) chapter on grouping. I was particularly glad to find this chapter so useful because, before reading it, I had chosen this book for my final project, thinking it might tie in well with my inquiry project. Groups make differentiating instruction easy because they can be working on different tasks, with varying levels of difficulty, and at varying paces, and, as I found in my student interviews, they help “build relationships among the students” (171).  This also meets my school’s goal of having less full group instruction or students working alone. Using the tips given in this chapter, even full group instruction via lecture can become a cooperative effort by breaking up sections of lecture with discussion tasks to be performed in small groups.

I’m excited to try new things with grouping in the coming school year- not just ability-based grouping, which often pushes some students to the top, while leaving others to languish in the dust, but base groups that stay together throughout the year, informal groups for small tasks, groups based on interests, etc., and I’m hoping that the implementation of those grouping strategies with both contribute to a more positive classroom environment (which I believe will positively affect achievement), and offer opportunities for differentiated instruction (also shown to positively affect achievement.)


References:

Johnson, D. & Johnson, R. (1986). Learning together and learning alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Schumer, F. (2003, November 9). One classroom, many minds: A paddle for the mainstream. The New York Times. 

Tomlinson, C.A. & McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating differentiated instruction and understanding by design: Connecting content and kids. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.