Let’s continue our conversation about how the curriculum development process works. In your blog post this week, write a short description of exactly what you would do to make curriculum change in your own classroom. Where would you start and what would you do?
This question really gets at where I’ve been in my Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 course curriculum development for the past three years. When I was initially hired by the Stearns and Schenck High Schools to teach Spanish, I had been away from the Maine educational initiatives for several years. I had previously developed a written curriculum for the schools I had taught in for over a decade that was aligned with the Maine Learning Standards. To my surprise, when I returned to Maine teaching many parts of the Maine Learning Standards had been revised or scrapped. Foreign language had new standards but wasn’t included in the push towards total alignment. Students were being assessed in math, science, and English. That’s where the schools were investing their time and money.
Not having a sense of urgency over my head to get something written was kind of nice. It gave me a chance to look at what students could and should know, along with developing lessons and assessments that would teach them. As an educator for over 15 years, I have developed some guiding principals about teaching that I wanted to include:
- Students have learning styles. Ever since the summer I taught English summer school for a school district and discovered that 90% of my students identified themselves as kinesthetic learners, I’ve been conscious of student learning styles. I questioned the reasons behind having so many kinesthetic learners failing English during the regular school year. I estimated that there had been 50 freshmen students, and here I had 12 who had failed simply because they needed to move to learn. After that summer, I began experimenting with physical learning activities that I could do in my own language classes–whether I was teaching English or Spanish. It was challenging to find activities that I could do, and sometimes they backfired in my face. The following year I taught 7th grade English in a private Tampa, FL middle school. Part of their curriculum was vocabulary building. To help kids DO things with words, I constantly invented activities. One week, the students had to do write and perform either a cheering or rap routine using vocabulary words. These kids were very competitive in nature, and one group created the ultimate cheering routine. They built human pyramids, did back flips, and the last thing was splits. Imagine the surprise of the office secretary when I had to bring down one of my students who had pulled her muscle because she hadn’t stretched before splitting! “How does anyone get injured in English class?” she asked. I worried a little that I would have problems with her mother who was a lawyer, but the students really seemed to be connecting to their vocabulary, so they gave me some leeway to experiment. Over the years, I have developed many kinesthetic activities to try to teach kids. The auditory and visual teaching strategies seem to be a natural part of most teachers’ repetoires.
- Students have multiple intelligences. This guiding principal is just a more thorough version of learning style theory. Now instead of having 3 learning styles, I can think in terms of 9: kinesthetic, existential, interpersonal, intrapersonal, logical, rhythmic, naturalist, linguistic, and visual. I have become interested in differentiated instruction using these areas of intelligence as a focus. I haven’t yet built the capacity to present every learning objective through every intelligence dimension. Unlike elementary teachers who can set up learning zones in their classrooms with differentiated activities, as a high school teacher, I haven’t quite figured that one out yet. Instead, when I doing lesson planning, I keep these dimensions in mind. If I can adapt a lesson, then I will try to present it in this other format.
- When students play, they are learning. If you have ever watched wilderness programs such as Nature on PBS, you will recall that there’s almost a mandatory shot in any show in which the species offspring are shown pouncing on each others’ heads, wrestling, running, etc. Animal babies, like human children, love to play. But even though it’s fun and cute, those babies are developing critical skills that will aid in their survival. Humans aren’t so far removed from the animal kingdom that our offspring are that much different. When children are playing, they are learning vital survival skills. Unfortunately, most schools and classrooms, especially in the adolescent years, seek to drive fun and play far, far away. I learned that early on my teaching career. I had created a large Jeopardy board with world history questions that went along with the unit my supervising teacher wanted me to teach as a student teacher. We spent the last 15 minutes of class playing Jeopardy. The 7th graders seemed to be having fun. But after the first week, the teacher told me that I didn’t need to play games with them: “just teach them history,” she advised. It’s important that adolescents learn how to pay attention in class, manage their own behaviors, and not act out. But I also know that adolescents are as much children in adult bodies as they are adults in children’s bodies. Integrating games or fun activities into lessons helps students feel positive about the school environment and what they are learning. Whenever possible, I like to add play to my curriculum.
- Students need to internalize their own learning strategies, study skills, and student habits. This one is perhaps the hardest guiding principal for me to manage as a teacher. High school students need to learn how to choose appropriate learning and social behaviors. For many students, unfortunately, the negative student behaviors such as not doing homework or acting out in class are responses to feeling made to behave by parents and teachers. Developmentally, adolescents want to be more independent, and they resent forces that make them feel obliged. I try to create a classroom environment where students have the privilege of making many of their own choices and then I attempt to connect the consequence of the behavior to the choice they made. Eg., students can choose whom they sit beside. During progress report and quarter grading times, students are asked to reflect on their grades and what they chose to do to get those grades. Then they are asked to plan strategies that would help them obtain or maintain those grades. Many students realize that they can’t sit beside their best friend because they are too tempted to not pay attention, and that’s not helping them reach their goals in their class. Students have a lot of ups and downs throughout the year. Like any new learning, there’s a bit of a learning curve dip that most students experience, and I have to choose whether to wait it out or whether to step back in and do some managing of their behavior (at least temporarily until students see positive results again). In a block schedule where I only see students a 2 or 3 times per week, I’m not going to be able to help them completely internalize responsible student behavior, but I hope for many of my students to put the little self-management voice inside their heads as they grow up and develop.
With these, and of course other, guiding principals to help me begin planning, my next step is to assess readiness to learn Spanish. Of course, I’m talking mostly about student readiness, but there are other stakeholders in the mix that affect students’ attitudes, values, and beliefs. Parents, community, guidance, other students, etc. all play a big factor in how much my students are ready to tackle foreign language and other cultures. A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed out-of-state for a Spanish teaching job. As part of my interview, I had to teach a Spanish 2 class in Spanish. It was surprising to me to have so many students trying so hard to communicate in Spanish. In my schools, it take a process to get my students comfortable enough to tackle strange words that seem incomprehensible to their ears. In the out of state school, there is a community with many Spanish-speaking people. In my community, one never hears Spanish spoken in public. In the other school, there is a strong mission to create globally connected students. In my school, the rest of the world seems very far away. The community attitude comes from a century of franco-speaking immigrants to the region who were assimulated into the culture only after they lost their French words. Today there is still a prevalent attitude that foreigners need to learn to speak English if they want to be American. In the out of state school there is a huge push at the guidance level to incorporate foreign language into a student’s curriculum. They boast an award-winning Latin program that gives students college standing in many universities. They boast AP placement statistics in foreign language. The morning I arrive to the DC area school, the halls are alive with French-speaking students and adults. Later I learn that there are 20 French exchange students visiting the school this week. Later their French classes will travel to Paris. In my school, it’s impossible to have more than 2 years of Spanish. The Spanish teacher is physically split between 2 schools and has no other time to add a course. The 2 years is a magic number for most students who have been told by guidance that they need 2 credits in foreign language to get accepted to a 4-year college. The community supports other content areas. Maine assesses junior proficiency in English, math, and science. There’s no need to fund additional classes beyond that when there are such severe, regional economic woes. In the other school, students begin foreign language in elementary school. In my school, students don’t start until high school. Everything is apples and oranges when I try to compare what I need to teach here against what schools are teaching elsewhere. I have to use a totally different skill set here to work through a gradual change of attitudes, values, and beliefs. In many ways, what I do here is much more challenging than what I might be asked to do elsewhere. I like that. I like the freedom of choosing how I will teach to standards. I hope to one day be able to help other teachers who work in rural schools realize that “how” they teach is more important than “what” they teach.
Heidi Hayes Jacobs (Ch. 1 “The Need for New Versions of School”) states that there are “4 key program structures” which “affect curriculum”. the schedule, grouping, personnel configurations, and the use of space. As I’ve worked over the past 3 years, to develop my curriculum, these essential structures have been both an asset and a deficit to me.
- Schedule: My schedule is determined by the constraints of working in 2 buildings. It’s not really optimum for student learning. Both schools are in a block schedule format that is synchronized to the regional vocational school where 5 area high schools send their juniors and seniors. I’m always assured that the sequence of white and colored days will fall on the same schedule. Students complain that they can’t see me for help on the day that I’m not in their building–especially when their study hall falls on the other day. To adapt and because I have so many struggling students, I use 50% of my class time for students to work on assignments individually or in small groups. This year both schools discusses going back to a normal, 7 period per day schedule. Schenck chose not to undertake this because there are other large structural changes occurring and they wanted to minimize stress and frustration. Stearns is still deliberating the topic. If one school opts out of the Region 3 schedule, then I will not be able to coordinate my schedule with both schools.
- Grouping: Grouping is challenging in schools where the population is constantly decreasing. Spanish is open to anyone who wants to take a foreign language or needs an elective. They typical student who enters Spanish 1 is a freshman who plans to attend college. However, I also get many at-risk or special needs students enrolled in Spanish. The heterogenous grouping is challenging and rewarding. I love to see students who have not been successful in other classes find their way towards success in my class. I also have students from upper grades enrolling with my 9th graders. Again, this is both challenging and rewarding. Upper level students can provide many learning strategies to new high school students. They often add an air of maturity to the environment. But upper level students don’t struggle as much with the cognitive pieces of learning about language, so they’re often bore after the umpteenth time I’ve explained, modeled, or demonstrated a grammar concept or idea.
- Personnel configurations: Fortunately for me in both schools, my counterpart, the French teacher is in the classroom next to me. While we are considered separately as the Spanish department and French department (rather than Foreign Language department), being close together gives us time to ask questions about what’s working or not working. Because the schools are small, there are no foreign language department heads. These configurations give the teacher a lot of autonomy with curriculum and students. I personally love that aspect, but I would like to have access to other Spanish teachers once in awhile. Distance is a negative factor.
- Use of space: I have a typical classroom space for both classes. In normal, high school configurations I teach in isolation from other teachers and departments. If I need to use a TV/DVD player I know to go to the library where the AV materials are housed. Laptops computers are also housed there and can be signed out by teachers who are integrating technology into their curriculum.
List of References
Jacobs, Heidi Hayes. Curriculum 21: The essential education for a changing world. (Kindle for iPad2 version). Retrieved from Amazon.com.
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