Perhaps one of my greatest embarrassments as a professional came when I first realized that the curriculum that students were receiving in my classroom varied greatly from the curriculum being delivered across my hallway. Students were learning significantly different content depending on which teacher they were assigned to--and that blew me away.
"What reaction would parents have," I wondered, "If they knew that what was considered 'essential' for students in one sixth grade classroom didn't match what was considered 'essential' in another.
From that point forward, I've been fascinated by Marzano's idea of intended versus implemented curriculum and DuFour's idea of essential learnings and organized abandonment. Those thoughts were on my mind tonight so I figured I'd record my thinking here.
Do you struggle with the intended versus implemented curriculum in your school? Do you think 'abandonment' happens in classrooms, whether it is organized or not? What damage do significant curricular variations between classes do to schools? How can PLTs help to bring consistency back to the implemented curriculum in our buildings?
Looking forward to hearing from you--
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1 comments:
Bill,
What an important topic. Nothing could be more critical in the teaching and learning process than decisions around what to teach.
In many ways, I think that the current K-12 climate is at the opposite end of the pendulum from where it was several decades ago. Before the standards movement, teachers were primarily left on their own to decide what to teach, and so their own interests and areas of expertise (along with the ubiquitous textbooks) became the curriculum.
As states began to implement state standards, and create standardized tests aligned to those standards, things began to swing. If anything, the concern became trying to cover too much curriculum as opposed to spending too much time on individual topics. And, as districts have increasingly focused on ensuring that teachers address a broad range of curriculum standards, the push for "coverage" seems to have only increased.
PLTs seem to be a great way to mediate these two contrary forces. On the one hand, PLTs ensure that teachers are discussing curriculum together, so that curricular variation is limited across classrooms. On the other hand, PLTs provide a forum for teachers to make collaborative decisions about which standards are worthy of the greatest instructional focus and which are worth minimizing (organized abandonment).
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