I loved that this week’s readings approached curriculum creation and design from both practical and theoretical angles. On one hand, we got a lot of practical, implementable tools and instructional design templates in Wiggins’ & McTighe’s Understanding by Design, while on the other, the readings also delved deeper into the “why” behind creating quality curriculum in Gloria Ladson-Billings' The case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Smith & Willhelm’s Teaching so it matters (which did have a few helpful practical examples too!).
Together, I got the sense that all of these authors, though they touch on curriculum design in different ways, have a high value for creating lessons and content that connect deeply with students and invite them into a learning journey over which they actually have ownership. As I was reading, I found their ideas sparking a sense of excitement and anticipation inside of me. This is what I was hungry for when I decided to leave my job in the nonprofit world and finish my teaching license! I have always found the learning process fascinating, but found it difficult to figure out why I’ve had such a passion for learning when it comes to personal endeavors, but don’t remember that same passion inside of me as a learner in school. ( For instance, I am an absolute Podcast geek, and I love learning anything I can about current events, time management, personal finance/investing, music, playing the piano, etc…. I literally have my own “learning notebook” where I create projects for myself based on my interests and track my progress on what I’m learning!) I had lots of amazing teachers in my time in school, but honestly? There are very few times I can recall in my educational career where teachers -- even the “good ones,” the ones I liked and felt connected to -- sparked a genuine sense of curiosity that caused me to take that same kind of ownership as a learner that I do in my “outside of school” life. For instance, I remember Mr. Hoelz, the popular chemistry teacher. He was the “fun” teacher, and always made us laugh. He even occasionally found ways to explain how science connected to our life as teens. But even in Mr. Hoelz’ class, the curriculum was made up of mostly “coverage-based” and “activity-based” content (Wiggins & McTighe, p. 20). Our year in science class was simply covering required concepts, and our science labs were “cookbook labs” where students got into groups and followed exact instructions out of the workbook to get the same result. To an outside observer, our labs probably looked like engaged, cooperative learning, but all I remember is being absolutely checked-out as a student. I can recall specific moments of inner thought that went something like, “Why are we even doing this? If I wait 20 minutes until we’re all done, I’ll know the answer we were all ‘supposed’ to get anyway. What’s the point?” I usually participated as little as possible in these labs because I found them so boring. I was amazed when Wiggins & McTighe almost perfectly described this type of activity: it was “hands-on without being minds-on, because students do not need to (and are not really challenged to) extract sophisticated ideas or connections. They don’t have to work at understanding; they need only to engage in activity” (20). This is probably why I found the ideas in each of the articles so fascinating -- they all address that “checked-out” student in different ways. Gloria Ladson-Billings offers an idea when she talks about how culturally relevant teachers “encourage students to act as teachers, and they, themselves, often functioned as learners in the classroom” (163). I also LOVED the idea of working backwards from a “provocative” (When does that word come up in education??) essential question that students can actually argue about and must use inquiry skills to answer, as presented in Teaching so it matters. I felt like this strategy went hand-in-hand with the Understanding by Design process of working backwards from an educational goal before creating activities and content for students to work towards that goal. All three of the theorists offered strategies and deeper reasoning behind creating instructional content that actually engages students and invites them into a learning journey. When I think back on the sometimes (often?) bored student I was in high school, their ideas resonate even more -- I bet I would have liked science a lot more if it had had a clear goal and connected with the world around me! It definitely makes me excited to learn how to apply these skills in my own classroom someday. Resource Link: Teaching with Inquiry Learning Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-with-inquiry/id1309256060 There are over 100 episodes on this Podcast by a Canadian educator! She teaches upper elementary through 6th grade, so perhaps the ideas would be most useful for middle school teachers, but she has LOTS of ideas and podcasts available the address teaching topics and inquiry learning.
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"hands-on without being minds-on" seems to be the most common pitfall in the wave of "hands on learning" or "inquiry based learning." If the students end up playing the "guess the Answer the teacher is thinking of" game they will not feel they are actually discovering anything themselves. Creating a sense of discovery or excitement about the process I feel is the key behind the hands-on leaning strategies but following rote instructions is not anything similar to making your own recipe.
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AboutM.Ed English Ed. candidate at the University of Minnesota. ArchivesCategories |