Enduring Understandings that Teachers Grapple With

While I am reading about UbD, I am constantly questioning my own lessons and curriculum and wondering how I would go about changing my approach to teaching my third graders so that they leave the grade with the "enduring understandings" that they need to be successful. This is not an easy task! Making sure that students get these "enduring understandings" is not as simple as merely knowing as a teacher what you want them to know. If teachers and administrations are really hoping to prepare their students with eduring understandings, there are essential questions that must be created, including both overarching and topical issues that must be considered. It is blatently obvious from reading Wiggins and McTighe, that teachers have to actually KNOW WHERE THEY ARE GOING! Let's be honest. We are all really good at teaching the lessons, the hands on activities, and the day to day snipits of what kids need to know to pass the state tests, but do we all really have a good grasp on the big picture?

So we know now that there are six facets of understanding, that there are two types of essential questions that must meet six criteria before actually being essential questions, and that there is a huge difference between factual knowledge and understanding. So now what????? This is what teachers must grapple with. Now I know that questions that are essential should not necessarily be answered in one sentence, but at the same time, you cannot tell if a question is essential unless you look at it in the whole scheme of your plan. I also know that these essential questions must revolve around things that reccur throughout life, relate to core ideas within a discipline, encourage students to inquire, and engage a diverse group of learners. On top of this I need to make sure that the questions that I'm asking my students are not leading them to the answer because I know that they must uncover the answers themselves and I also know that these questions should have some relevance to their own lives and the real world to help ensure tranferablilty. Oh yeah, and did I mention that there is often a huge misconception on the part of the teachers that what think of as facts are actually understandings and that we often fall into that "Expert Blind Spot"?

Wow! This is a lot for teachers to grapple with. Wiggins and McTighe make it perfectly clear that UbD is the way to go in terms of developing curriculum and the success of the results seems to be undeniable. The hard part appears to be getting started. What makes matters more difficult is that when you gather a group of people together on a curriculum development committee, the chance that all the participants are going to agree on those essential questions and eduring understandings that the students should take with them are pretty slim. Let the grappling begin!

Are certain fads that districts are pushing working towards or against the UbD concept?

As I was doing the readings for this week, I started to think about what activities we do in our classrooms that may or may not make sense in terms of UbD. One fad that has really been pushed in my district over the past two years is that of cooperative learning, team building, and classbuilding activities. With this push, teachers feel that students must be involved in some kind of activity at all times. While there are certainly excellent things that can come out of these group activities, Wiggins and McTighe state that the kinds of questions that we should be posing to our students, "demand more than just a smorgasbord of activities and bits of knowledge in isolated units"(106). This is exactly what we are doing! Ahhh! It seems to me that while I'm sure cooperative group activities can be more geared towards discussing essential questions, that this kind of model would require some more discussions and leadership from the teachers (especially for the little kids)...almost moving in the other direction from what we are currently being asked to do.

Characteristics of a Successful Novice Teacher

I think that somebody who is coming into teaching needs to be aware of a few things. First, NOTHING can prepare you for that first time you walk into a classroom and it's your classroom. Every novice teacher experiences that "now what?" feeling and needs to know that we've all been there (and from time to time still are). So what can a novice teacher do in order to alleviate some of that first year stress? Well, hopefully, a new teacher's mentor can really play a huge role in helping someone over that first year hurdle. Unfortunately, mentors often do not wish to be mentors or have been teaching the exact same way for 30 plus years. Having said that, the first thing that a new teacher needs to do is ask questions. Ask fellow teachers, secretaries, principals....anyone. For the most part, teachers and staff members will help answer questions about policies, routines, etc. The mentor should really be providing the new teacher with information regarding the curriculum and specific programs that the district uses and hopfully that new teacher will have already attended some professional development to set them on the right track. A novice teacher needs to realize that the first year in a classroom is oftentimes just trying to get through the day.

However, a truly successful novice teacher, after teaching a lesson that may have been unsuccessful or mediocre, will sit down and question the purpose of that lesson and rethink it for the following year (or for the following day or week if the kids really did not get it). Something else that I think is important is that the new teacher share changes to the program that he or she may come up with because in most cases it will give veteran teachers some good ideas to work from and it will alleviate staff members talking behind closed doors saying things like, "That new teacher doesn't share any of her ideas with anyone." Novice teachers should try to stay on the good side of the administration and the staff because, lets face it, there is no job security within those first couple years. The boat should not be rocked....yet.

Random Thoughts

So last week I attended two meetings in which my assistant superintendent discussed the very thing that we are learning in class! She explained that the district is working towards incorporating UBD and that while it takes a long time to rewrite all the curriculum, this is the direction in which we are moving. Then, after starting class the other week I understood the concept even more. Now, at the very same time that our district assistant superintendent is telling us about UBD, the principal of my school has asked us to revamp the way in which we write our lesson plans. We now must include a percentage of children who will accomplish a given task for each lesson. Here is my question: If UBD emphasizes the big picture and what these kids will take with them five years from now, isn't having a percentage thrown on something that essentially comes down to "busy work" (i.e. what the curriculum seems to be filled with) something that is sort of working in the opposite direction of where we are trying to go? Is the fact that the principal can see that 95% of students will successfully complete XYZ really showing what he or she has learned?

Just a thought...maybe I'm missing the boat!

What is Curriculum? Who should Design it? Who should Control it?

Curriculum is essentially a guideline which helps (or should help) school districts understand what students are expected to know and by what means they are supposed to obtain that knowledge. According to Wiggins and McTighe, curriculum "refers to the specific blueprint for learning that is derived from desired results"(5-6). Generally speaking, the curriculum that I have seen (and I have not seen all of it that I probably should have !) is primarily a list which tells teachers what they have to teach. This list provides the structure for our whole school year as we try to march our way through all the given tasks. I rarely see any mapping of how to acheive a specific desired performance like Wiggins and McTighe discuss. If curriculum were really based more on the model that Wiggins and McTighe outline, it would undoubtedly guide learning more effectively. I suppose that what I'm saying is that what curriculum is and what curriculum should be are non necessarily synonymous.

Teachers need to be the primary force involved in writing curriculum. Somebody who is not in the classroom cannot possibly sit down and know what will work to motivate and educate students to move toward a desired end. Likewise, a social studies teacher cannot effectively write curriculum for the mathematics department. The teachers involved in writing school curriculum need to be knowledgeable in their content area and able to bring effective teaching strategies to the table. Within my district, there is a big push for UBD and if that is the way that a particular district is moving, those participants on the curriculum committees need to be trained on how to use this method. Finding the correct combination of qualified teachers, supervisors, and administrators is essential in creating effective curriculum.

The question of who should control curriculum is really the hardest one for me to answer. After reading the chapters from SCI, it is obvious that politics has a lot to do with education and that is probably never going to change. While my personal beliefs are that school districts should control their own curriculum, I do understand why governement has to be involved (although I don't necessarily agree that they need to be involved in the ways that they are). For instance, students coming from all parts of the country need to have a somewhat similar basis for education for a couple of reasons. First, as a country, we want to make sure that our youth is receiving the best education possible and without some governmental guidelines and regulations, there would be no assurance that that would happen and no conformity. Also, with so many students attending colleges and universities in different parts of the country, it makes sense to try to at least have some basic guidelines that hold true from state to state and district to district. Having said that, I do believe that is up to specific school districts to find and use the type of curriculum that works best for them and that helps them work towards their mission statement while addressing state standards. Let's face it, what works for an upper middle class school district in the suburbs is not going to work for an Abbott district in the city. This is why plans need to be individualized to a certain extent.