After our discussion in class last week I started thinking about how I want to teach. What if I want to just go with the flow and not try to be a trailblazer in education? What if I am OK following the mandated curriculum? After the discussion I felt a little guilty about not wanting to challenge the education system. I am not saying that I agree with EVERYTHING out there, but I think that if something works, why try to fix it?
I think Bellevue is an example of an extreme situation. In a place where teachers are expected to be on a certain page, on a certain day, at a certain time, there can’t possibly be any sufficient learning going on. The curriculum is there as I guide and I believe that teachers should be able to use it in a way that best benefits their students. I have been in a similar situation where I currently work (although it is definitely not as extreme as Bellevue). We received a new math curriculum this year and from my understanding, each teacher is expected to follow it exactly, in order. The teacher I work with was skipping around a little bit based on the needs and abilities of our students. Earlier in January I guess she got reprimanded a little bit for not going in order in a curriculum that she wasn’t familiar with yet. I would not want to work as a teacher in a school even this strict with curriculum requirements. I like to be able to feel free to adapt things to fit my students’ needs.
This being said, I am excited to face the challenges ahead of me! I am anxiously looking forward to student teaching and being able to fully take over the class. I also can’t wait to have a classroom of my own. I want the opportunity to try everything I have learned or seen other teachers do that I have liked. I want to put more than 100% effort into my lesson planning and into making sure my students succeed. I want to use theatre and other creative teaching to make this happen. I may be a bit of an idealist in that sense, but I also understand that there are certain things that need to be taught and even certain ways I will be expected to teach them. I will do my very best with the situation I am given and “go with the flow” until I am at a time and place where I can have more freedom in my own classroom.
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Hi, Danielle,
ReplyDeleteIt can be overwhelming to think about changing the whole "system!" And it's good that you are thinking about where the lines will be for you, when you'll step up to get active, when to accept things as they are...
Bellevue has been one of the more top-down districts around here, and there are lessons there for how that came to be and how it did affect the people working there. It's also a case of teachers having to decide if they would continue working in those ways or work to change things.
And the complicated part of this is that there is some validity to the concern that a lot of teachers have been sort of "free lancing". There is a difference between adapting curriculum because kids need accommodation on a given day and tweaking curriculum because you're more comfortable teaching in some other way, or because you strongly believe in one way of teaching but haven't really considered other ways of doing things.
Teachers are in a unique position -- they've had so much autonomy, and they haven't been having a lot of collaborative conversation about what kids need and how best to meet those needs. So there is something of a culture of individual teachers making very private decisions about what goes on in public schools...
So, there are exciting times coming in which we'll find that middle ground between being *told* what to do day by day and believing that it's completely up to individual teachers to decide how and what to teach other people's kids.
So I imagine not just taking on "the system" but being part of constructively reshaping the system....!
More next week!
Jane