Treasure Chest of Thoughts

Due to our missing two snow days, the current debate amongst our teachers is whether to make up one of those days on a scheduled student-release, teacher-work-on-pacing-guides day or to add a day at the end of the year.

When I asked this question of several of our teachers…to be exact four coaches, I was surprised…pleasantly so…to hear one state that making up this day at the end of the year would be better so “we can work on pacing guides for the fourth nine weeks.”

This coach’s thoughts resonate this article “Moving Beyond Talk” in Educational Leadership (2009, March) as its author discusses learning in collaborative communities:

Teachers in these schools craved planning time (which was scarce) and opportunities for shared planning (which were nonexistent)….But the bottom line, according to CLC members, is that extended blocks of time during the school day are the most productive structure for learning communities worthy of the name.

Then when I unsuspectingly entered the teachers’ lounge as just a teacher in our building, I quickly had to put on my Personnel Policy Committee member hat as several rounds of complaint broke out…almost in perfect unison….”we want our pacing guide day,” also, thereby stipulating that these same teachers are for our last day of school being on a Monday…in June.  Interesting.  (Well, it was after I finally switched hats!)

Maybe we are seeing the beginning of a new trend at Batesville High?  One where 21st Community Learning Centers (CLC), such as those being pioneered within our district by peer Lisa Huff (she is starting two more teams next year!), and departmental meetings with teachers working collaboratively on pacing guides are the norm?

Pacing guide meetings held periodically and timely…or shall we say designed backwards?…ensures Grant Wiggins’ and Jay McTighe’s fears, as expressed in Schooling by Design, from happening…

As presently written, most curricula encourage and enable teachers to do the worst possible thing:  go off and work entirely on their own, with little regard for the long-term overarching goals that define a school’s purpose (p 38).

The votes are in…the majority of our teachers, though, do want to give up the pacing guide day. 

Me?  Before casting my vote, I changed from how I had initially planned to vote.  I just could not argue with these teachers’ logic (plus, the district had promised this day to these teachers since August as part of their required-by-state sixty hours of professional development…while I had 100+ hours before school ever started, again I could see their logical reasoning)…thus, I voted for the pacing guide day.  I voted for collaborative learning communities.  I voted for community learning centers.  No matter what the current jargon, I voted for teachers who want to work together to help our students.

Unfortunately, there are not enough of us on this “team” yet.

From Schooling by Design:  Mission, Action, and Achievement by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe:

The idea of a school has no meaning if each teacher, even a hardworking and highly qualified one, is free to teach and assess as he wishes.  The whole point of an institution with a mission is that, regardless of our differences, we are all obligated to work to cause some agreed-upon effects, in a coherent and coordinated manner.  By being a teacher in a school or college, we agree to agree about some fundamental ends and means.  And working collaboratively (and selflessly) to achieve those common goals characterizes true professionalism (p 27).

How true.

What do you think is required of such an institutions’ administrators to obtain this true professionalism?

Both Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in Understanding by Design and Sean Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens present the same suggestion using, of course, different terminology:  “backward design” and “begin with the end in mind.”  (Wiggins and McTighe begin the introduction to their book with Covey’s quote from habit two.)

Thus, as the second nine weeks begins, I think, yes, I shall start backwards…or at the end…with an essential question:  WHERETO?  This question (p. 197) comes from Understanding by Design and causes me some stress with the last letter to this acronym.  Please read on to see why…

• W – Where is the unit headed, and why
• H – Hook and hold the students’ attention
• E – Equip the students
• R – Rethink, Reflect, and Revise
• E – Evaluate
• T – Tailor to individual needs
• O – Organize…so as to optimize deep understanding

Here’s my problem:  my hard drive crashed last year, and I lost almost everything that I had created up to that point (HINT:  have you backed up your files lately?  I am still paying for that mistake!)  Then to compound this, I need to create two units.  Finally, I have too many ideas for each, so I find myself scrambling from thought to thought, from unit to unit, and not getting anywhere fast. 

To begin with the end in mind, I should have my assessments created.  I should know right now where I want my students to go, what I want them to learn, what I want them to experience.  This I do not have completed. 

Good news, though!  I do have my essential questions:

1. Who am I?  to be explored utilizing Julius Caesar and Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens.
2. What is a bullying mentality? to be studied in conjuction with The Crucible and either The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, or Three Cups of Tea (student choice of novel).

The ultimate source of my stress is the time factor, though.  How does one cover the literature in a multi-genre format, the vocabulary, the writing skills, the grammar skills…all in one class period…while preparing for state-mandated tests, working with pacing guides that do not allow for teacher individuality, handling the many interruptions that make up a school day (clubs, intercoms, sports), and staying organized throughout the process?

So WHERETO?  Back to planning with the end in mind with a not-so-quite backwards design.  I think I will simply have to begin in the middle.  Yes, in medias res…that is the answer for me.  At least, until I get more organized!

Tell me:  how do you organize this “thing” we call teaching?