Controlling Syllabus

Siobhan Curious, a Twitterer, pointed me to an article, entitled, “Death to the Syllabus!”  As you can guess from the title, the essay is a critique of excessive, oppressive planning by teachers.  The author, Mano Singham, writes:

There is a vast research literature on the topic of motivation to learn, and one finding screams out loud and clear: controlling environments have been shown consistently to reduce people’s interest in whatever they are doing, even when they are doing things that would be highly motivating in other contexts.

I am always sceptical when someone states that there is “vast research literature” supporting their assertion.  From personal experience, though, I can attest to this particular idea.  Nothing extinguishes my motivation to do something faster than when I am made to feel like I must do it, or else!  There is an anti-authoritarian component to my personality that I suspect many folks in this society, especially teenagers, share.

That being said, there is also a universal human need for authority, structure and safety.  As always, wisdom prescribes balance.

Singham writes:

To test this, I abandoned the controlling syllabus. I now go to the first class with only a tentative timeline of readings and writing assignments.

It is interesting that Singham refers to this strategy as a test.  For my part, my contemplations on planning, and my intensive efforts at planning over the last two months, have led me to the conclusion that I have very little choice but to approach my assignment at a new school with a “tentative timeline”.  Logic dictates that I must first meet the students, and ascertain their academic levels and personal interests before I can fully develop appropriate lessons.  I could prepare reading comprehension assignments now, but at what level are their reading abilities?  And how diverse are their abilities?  I anticipate that there will be students with differing abilities who will require differentiated instruction.  What about math?  Should I prepare lessons based on the provincial curriculum prescribed for their grade level?  I wonder, what’s the point?  If they already know how to do long division, then why should I waste our time teaching it?  I need to assess the students first before I specify the instructional material.

It would be much more reassuring, and probably easier, if I had a book telling me what to teach for each day of the year.   But I don’t.  And I shouldn’t.  That is not the nature of teaching.  Teaching needs to be student-centered; teaching needs to evolve during the course of the year in order to adjust to the developing needs, interests and abilities of the students.

Siobhan also directed me to this interesting blog post, which is a reaction to the “Death to the Syllabus!” article.

Photo by ganesh_rrv.

Finishing

I reckon many teachers are now planning for next September.

Me, I have been working on planning for many weeks because I will be starting at a new school and teaching new courses.  In essence, it is my first year.

Since I will be teaching in a small town, with a small English population, I will be teaching many high school subjects.  For the most part, I think the subjects will be pretty straight-forward.  For example, Math and History follow a relatively rigidly predefined paths.

English, though, has got me hopping.  The quest to prepare a year plan for English has been a learning experience for me.  Along my journey, I have picked up ideas, tried some of them for a while, then abandoned them.  I have tried organizing the curriculum on websites and mindmaps.  I never finished.  It used to bother me when I started a project, then did not complete it.  It does not bother me much anymore.  At my age, I cannot concern myself with completing unfruitful tasks.  Time is too precious.  I wrote previously that the classroom is a laboratory where you have to allow yourself and your students to experiment and to make mistakes.  Well, life is the same.  We try things; if they don’t work, then we move on.  Everything has a beginning; not everything has an ending.  Maybe we never finish anything.

Photo by Jasmic

Gantter

Here is a snippit of a website that helps you plan a project. The website is called Gantter. It is essentially an online version of Microsoft Project.

As you can see, I set up a plan for teaching the skills related to fractions that are prescribed by the Cycle 3 Quebec curriculum.

Each skill has an estimated duration, and each skill is not initiated until the prerequisite skill is completed. Thus, an estimated graphical timeline for the project is created.

Gantter.com - web-based project management alternative via kwout

I investigated the possibility of creating a similar project proposal for English, or for a subset of English, but I cannot visualize how such a thing would look.

English and Math are too different.

I am sometimes reminded just how complex and demanding the job of a teacher is, and how many people underestimate teachers as glorified babysitters.

But, here is an example of the complexity of teaching. An elementary teacher must teach Math, English, Socials, and Science. Each of these subjects is fundamentally different. They require different methods of preparation and different methods of assessment. Essentially, the elementary teacher is required to do 4 jobs simulataneously. (This is excluding other subjects, such as Art and Computers.)

Math has specific skills and abilities that can be neatly measured. Science and Socials are similar to Math, but more complicated. These subjects have facts that can be memorized and assessed, but they also have higher level concepts than might be understood.

English is the most obscure of all. The rules of grammar can be taught and measured, without much trouble; although, there is not the definite order of learning that characterizes Math. Is it more advisable to teach Capitalization or Pluralization first? It doesn't matter -- one is not a prerequisite of the other.

When it comes to reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, the role of the teacher becomes even more uncertain. There is no definite process for teaching these abilities, and there is no definite method for measuring them.

Organizing Curriculum

Two ideas have been on my mind.

Organizing and curriculum.

Philosophically, I believe that subject matter should be student centered.

However, upon closer inspection, it is to be seen that there needs to be a balance between the content that sprouts from the students and the content that is prescribed by the Ministry of Education.

It is very nice and well to say that you will have a student-centered classroom, but such a philosophy makes planning difficult, if not impossible.

I am realizing more and more that one of the most important tasks of teaching is planning.

Bob's Educational Site contains the Quebec curriculum prescriptions for each of the subjects for each of the grade levels.

The Word files can be used as a roadmap for the school year; additionally, the files can be used as templates to create a checklist for each student, to assess each student in each category as the school year progresses.

These checklist roadmaps can be supplemented by curriculum guides from other districts. For example, these from Kent State University.

I wrote a previously about the benefits of accepting failure in the classroom. It is evident that, if a group of students is going to progress through the entire curriculum for a year (or, at least, most of it), then there will be occasions when it will be necessary to forge ahead even though some of the students have not yet mastered a particular concept or skill. This acceptance is part of the necessity of accepting failure. You cannot get hung up on one topic if the students are not learning it. You need to move on.

For some subjects, the course content is more rigidly prescribed than for others. For example, Math is more rigid than English. For Math, the teacher need only follow the provincial curriculum outline.

For English, the prescribed outcomes are less exact. The English curriculum can be augmented by a Grammar Curriculum. The website Guide To Grammar And Writing has a pretty thorough catalogue of grammar and writing topics, and could be used as a checklist for an English curriculum.

As I stated, teaching does not need to be complicated. Google Calendar can be used to create a daily routine. There are certain tasks that the class should accomplish each and every day. For example, the Quebec Curriculum states that the students should be engaged in writing every day. So, a personal blog or a journal can be implemented, and it can be done at the same time every day. A work day can be mostly filled by recurring tasks. It is not necessary for a teacher to re-invent the wheel every day. Routines are good. For teachers and students alike, routines reduce the stress of not knowing what is going to happen next. Routines can reduce incidences of misbehaviour.