Cycle 5 – What Constitutes a Successful Curriculum?

             In our first cycle of this course, it was taught that the word curriculum was derived by many meanings that essentially described that of “a journey.” Throughout this course, I have analyzed the cycle’s focus with this idea in mind. As an educator, I am taking my students on a journey everyday, teaching them concepts and ideas that may or may not benefit these students long term. I would like to think that I have never questioned what I am teaching my students and even more so why, but since working as a certified educator, that is what I have find myself often doing. In our current curriculum, while the foundation of No Child Left Behind was pure, the end result of this act has prevented true authentic teaching and made teaching and learning much more challenging. Especially working in a Title 1 School, there is a higher level of stress to meet AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) and we lose sight of why we are teachers; in all the hustle and preparation of our state standardized testing, we forget about the students, the most important factor to the equation.

            Our current curriculum focuses on too many standards and indicators and this prevents mastery of material to take place. Would I say that the United States has a successful curriculum if asked this question? I would be quite honest and yell back absolutely not! We have forgotten about the journey of learning, of growing, of becoming and instead, we worry about data, data, and more data. While the readings were quite engaging, I found myself wondering if our nation will ever get curriculum to where it should be and to where I feel like I am making a true impact on my students. My county’s motto is Children First. This motto seems pretty ironic as our curriculum does quite the opposite.

            Diving into the readings, in the Otterman article, we see Geoffrey Canada have a vision for how to take Harlem schools from the dumps to the riches; it could almost be seen as a Cinderella Tale. While we see the immense amount of time and money that was put into these schools, we see the immense amount of growth and success that these students have made since starting The Cradle to College Program. Working in an area comparable to Harlem, I wonder if having a program like this would benefit my students. A lot of my students’ families are classified as low-economic status and therefore, many of them focus less on school and more on having street smarts. It pains to see my students who have such potential waste it because there is no one motivating or encouraging them to succeed at home.  While the program has done a tremendous job, do that many factors need to be put in place to make a school considered successful? Along those same lines, does that much money need to be provided in order to make a school or school district successful? All I will say is that it certainly helps.

            In Meier’s reading, we look at the idea of how students should be seen as individual students, where they can have the opportunity to choice what and how they learn. Her argument of kindergarten being the only grade that truly emphasizes self-reliance was quite an A-ha moment for me. It’s unfortunate that kindergarten has merged from an environment of discovery to the beginning stages of the rest of their primary and secondary career. Coming back to the idea of what makes a curriculum successful, it is prevalent to think about your class as individual learners, to learn about them: their interests, hobbies, favorite foods to make their learning environment more inviting, more engaging and safe. While I do my fair share of getting to know my students, with having too many students in my class and not having enough time to teach everything required to know for the state standardized test, I unfortunately don’t feel like I do know my students in a way that is going to benefit them as learners or me as an educator and that it is not something I like to admit.

            Along with looking at the individual student, Meier also stresses the importance behind a collaborative school; teachers and administrators who collaborate and learn from each other for the benefit of their students. I feel that this is CRUCIAL when thinking about being successful. If teachers aren’t able to work together, growth of the school will stay stagnant. Discussing content, students, etc are all ways to make the dynamic of the school stronger and beneficial for its students. Also connecting home life to school life is another huge component that could help build a strong positive community of learning. We emphasize the importance of parent involvement at my school, because there has to be a chain to connect parents to school. Without parents, we lose a huge piece to the puzzle to make our students successful.

            I found myself continuously nodding while reading Eisner’s piece because everything he said was true and are things that I readily see happening at my school. To put it simply, the state standardized test trumps everything. By everything I mean, behavior, authentic teaching etc. I have been told quite often to teach to the test without actually being told that. I have been told to stop teaching non-tested content and to do whatever I can to ensure that my students are proficient and/ or advanced. With this, we see that this one test prevents students from being reprimanded because they need to be in class, students are learning things that may have no value to them, and students are losing focus because they don’t see what the point of this standardized test is? What’s in it for them? I do feel that assessments are beneficial in reflecting in our teaching and to determine what concepts need to be retaught and what concepts have been mastered. With the MSA (Maryland State Assessment), there are no benefits for me as a teacher or for my students taking this. I can’t look at what areas of the test my students did well or areas that they still need assistance, it’s all one score. How is this going to help me or my students? It’s not and that in a large sense is what Eisner was trying to get at. Focusing on how to make our students successful adults, not test takers. That’s the mentality we as educators need to take in order to be progressive and not regressive.

            Lastly, Nodding focuses on the importance of aims-talk or as I refer to it as instructional outcomes. Why are my students learning this? It seems like a silly question but I know for a fact that many educators would have difficulty coming up with an answer that extends beyond the classroom. Especially with our curriculum society, we teach the standard because we are told to. Yes, there are some prerequisite standards that must be taught first, but that conversation isn’t always heard because it’s not asked of us. As stated about US’s 21^st century educational philosophy, “The under­lying aims seem to be (1) to keep the United States strong economically and (2) to give every child an opportunity to do well financially.” As we see here, neither one of these aims focus or emphasis the idea of discovery, learning, or benefits of this knowledge to the students. It all goes back to this component of standard-driven teaching and learning; a curriculum that we have established in not successful and is not benefitting the youth of America.

            In closing, what makes a successful curriculum is a vision, a journey that can be paved out based on students’ interests, hobbies, ideas that will inspire them to learn. Rigor must take place in the classroom that challenge and motivate them to learn and discover. Understanding why we must teach these concepts in a meaningful way is essential and should not be looked at lightly. Collaboration amongst colleagues and direct communication with parents is also vital in making a community of learning strong and positive. We are educators to teach children, we are educators to help children grow to be adults so it is our job to make what we teach authentic so our students can become successful men and women.

A feel good video to make us educators know that we do make a difference, even if we may not think it.

Related Articles:

US Educational System may cause national threat - An interesting article on how our current curriculum is preventing essential concepts being taught and may create negative impacts nationally or internationally

Principles of Effective Change - This article looks at ways to revise current curriculums to make a positive impact for our students.