I am wondering now if I should connect my face to my blog...
My school is "regular" in that we start at 7:30 and get out at 2:30 (I know the day seems long to some of you). We have vacations over Christmas, February, and April, and an extended break over the summer months. I teach 5th grade which has me in an interesting almost middle school-like schedule. Each period is 50 minutes long. I teach ELA (English Language Arts) and have double periods to teach 2 classes. In that 100 minutes I am expected to squeeze in 120+ minutes of instruction.
I started teaching at this school 3 years ago. In the past three years we have had several changes in our administration including a new principal, assistant principal, and superintendent. Our town voted not to consolidate last year and we are now dealing with the repercussions of that. All of these factors compounded has left the teaching staff feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. In addition to these things, we are dealing with new curriculum development and our superintendent is looking at standards based education instead of dividing kids by age. I guess so much is "up in the air" or "in progress" that I am not sure whether I am facing forwards or backwards.
Seeing other teachers in my EDC 533 class talk about their schools and how well everyone works together toward a common goal makes me a little jealous. I wish our school could get to that point. I think we can, but there are several large roadblocks that we need to overcome first.
In terms of our curriculum, we have a curriculum coordinator and a new curriculum binder as of last year. It was developed before Union 90 was disintegrated by consolidation and we were left on our own (by the choice of townspeople). Being a new teacher, I was excited to have something concrete to refer to but have been disappointed with what the binder has supplied me with. It is vague and hard to follow. It seems like the learning result are put in the binder and it is still up to me to decide how to get the students proficient in what they need to know. Although I enjoy the freedom and the ability to be creative, I worry that my students are not getting a full education because of the holes in our curriculum.
I guess I would have to say that on the surface, my school is "regular", but once you dig down a layer or two, we are seriously lacking some things that could make us better.
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A couple of critical points here...
ReplyDelete1. The notion of the binder as representative of the curriculum. If it isn't useful to you as a tool to use, it is not a worthwhile document.
2. For whom was the document made and how is it to be used?
3. What about the idea of holes in the curriculum? What would you say the gaps are...and how do you know?
Response to Ed:
ReplyDelete1. The binder is essentially a document that was created to make administration feel better about hiring a new teacher and expecting them to know what they need to teach. It isn't useful and I agree that it is not worthwhile if no one is using it!
2. The document was made for teachers and it is supposed to "guide" teaching by telling what should be taught in the span of a year. Things are very vague and can be interpreted by the teacher. Again, it is so that administration can give a new teacher this binder and feel like they are supporting them.
3. I say there are holes because there seems to be no continuation from one year to the next. Saying that I am teaching nouns this year and teaching nouns the following year are not concrete enough for me I guess.