As a superintendent, I would change the way curriculum is written in my district and how it is monitored. Curriculum guides are thick weight books no teachers has the time and energy to go through before they teach a lesson and they are written by a select committee they were not involved in. A teacher does not commit as much of themselves if they were not involved in the process.
"I want to be as emphatic as possible: the impact of the actual, taught curriculum on school quality, on student learning, is indescribably important, Robert Marzano did a meta - analysis of in - school factors that affect student achievement. Coming in at the top - first place - is what gets taught, what he calls a 'guaranteed and viable curriculum.' That is, if teachers can lay out a sound - a viable - set of standards and can then guarantee (more or less) that these standards actually get taught, we can raise levels of achievement immensely." p.36
If we want this curriculum to be taught, we must involve the teachers in the writing of it and make it less cumbersome to use. Monitoring whether the teacher uses it becomes easier because the teachers have a stake in its success.
Teachers do have the ability to write an effective curriculum.
"When teachers recognize that knowledge for improvement is something they can generate rather than something that must be handed to them by so called experts they are on a new professional trojectory. They are on the way to building a true profession of teaching, a profession in which members take responsibility for steady and lasting improvement. They are building a new culture of teaching." - Hiebert and Stigler, p.118.
Once the curriculum has been formulated, the next step I would take would be to make sure the principals monitor the implimentation of the curriculum, I would do this by making sure the principals work cooperatively with tachers to truly, meaningfully oversee and improve instructional quality. To do this, principal must become actively involved in instruction. Principals should be in at least one different classroom every day helping in instruction. They should be helping and not just evaluating. That is the road to successful monitoring because not only can the principal see if the curriculum is being implimented they can also see areas that may need refinement. The emphasis here though is working "cooperatively" with teachers and giving them genuine feedback about their teaching. Without this, "We have created a system in which generations of talented, hard - working teachers, have engaged in inferior practices without receiving feedback that would alert them to this fact."
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6 comments:
You need to be cautious about the having administrators monitor curriculum; you don't want it to simply be a paper exercise. Youy want it to be meaningful.
How can every one feel they have a stake in the curriculum but also have administrators monitoring the curriculum at the same time? I ponder that thought.
Teacher feedback is key. Whether it is difficult to tell a veteran teacher that she is doing something that is less than effective or not, the conversation must occur.
My overall question for much of the time I spent reading Results Now (and again while reading your post) is how are teachers actually supposed to make time for reading, assessing, and conferencing with students about their writing? Schmoker said that we don't need to spend more time to improve instruction. But his research shows that very little time is spent assessing and giving feedback. So to improve that, don't we need to put in more time?
I agree with you Francesca that teacher feedback is key but it is not just the veteran teacher that can be hard to talk to also new teachers right out of college can be hard some times to speck with because they just came out of school and think they know it all.
Erica I agree with you about the time thing. I feel like I am always working.
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