Concluding Post: An Open Letter to My Students

Concluding Post: An Open Letter to My Students

*Author’s note: it turns out that this assignment is a little more fact than I intended, as I was actually laid off this week…go figure*

Greetings-

After a decade of service to the children, families and community of Battle Creek Public Schools, it appears that my time has come to an end.  While a layoff is never easily accepted, the financial plight of the district makes it relatively easy to understand.  It isn’t my own understanding that I am concerned with at this time.

What concerns me is your understanding.  For those of you whom high school as a part of your past, then it is your understanding of what transpired in your time at Central and why.  For those of you whom graduation is part of your future, then it is your understanding of what your time at Central has held and what it could hold for you.  That understanding isn’t linked to school, which is a politically defined institution.  It also isn’t linked to learning which can barely be defined by the most literate among us.  Your understanding is linked to curriculum, that “thing” bussing around you the entire time you are or were in school.  It’s the “thing” buzzing around the teachers’ room, the meeting rooms, the big building downtown.  The problems at Central, as well documented as they are, are also linked to curriculum.  It is your understanding of all of this that will define the course your life has yet to take, and that will define the future, if there is one, of Battle Creek Central High School.

First of all, consider your time at Central.  Former student or current, you have attended a school ravaged by School of Choice.  You have learned, whether you realized it or not, whether it was intended or not, the curriculum of society.  An unbalanced society.  A society that chooses to remain unbalanced, and continues to act upon this choice, time and again.  Remember my first rule in class: my opinion does not matter.  My politics and my faith do not matter.  Keep that in mind while I explain what I mean.  School of Choice was intended from its conception to be the escape vehicle of the wealthy to avoid social and economic elements that they do not wish to associate themselves with.  Escape from, not help.  Escape from, not assist, repair, rebuild or refresh.  School of Choice was meant to give the privileged, those with the means to flee poverty, crime, violence and addiction, the means to do so instead of to fight those things in the community around them.  So it was for Battle Creek Central.  The data shows the damage done.  The enrollment losses and the resulting financial catastrophe has been so well covered in the local media that it doesn’t bear repeating.  Yet as it happened, you were learning society’s curriculum.  Like a teaching objective or a learning target, you were exposed to a purpose larger than you, one more grand than you were aware of.  Like tracking, you were categorized, labeled and set aside based upon factors that you were not able to control.  You learned from a curriculum not based upon pedagogy or educational legislation, but upon economics and fear.  Angst and dollars.  Since you remained, or rather, your family remained, you learned that there was a distinct chance that you lacked something that others had.  You learned that some people can have things and that others cannot.  You learned that sometimes you get the short end of the stick and that’s just all there is.  You weren’t taught that by accident.  This curriculum was developed just for you by those would never have to learn from it.   Oddly enough, society’s curriculum was developed in response to another curriculum that you have learned from, directly or indirectly: the curriculum of the streets.

I cannot tell you how sick I am of hearing “Battle Creek just isn’t the city it was when I was growing up.”  You think?  Really?  Your sure, because I could, you know, check that one out for you.  So few places remain unchanged across our lifetimes, and most people find fault in the changes that they see.  The human mind and memory are funny that way.  Battle Creek, in reality, has changed and it has been for the worse.  Located approximately halfway between Chicago and Detroit, Battle Creek is an excellent location to process narcotics brought whole to Chicago via the north-south waterway of the Mississippi River and moved east in parceled form via the east-west roadways of I-94 and the 80-90.  The decline of Battle Creek coincides almost exactly with the boom in the narcotics trade of the nineteen seventies and eighties.  The location of the county correctional facility, though Battle Creek is not the county seat, adds to the challenges with recently released felons returning to society and often remaining in Battle Creek.  Increasing unemployment and loss of the economic stability that industry maintained fostered the environment that moved into nearly a decade ago.  This environment quietly developed a curriculum for you to learn from as well.  Whether you live or lived in the “hoods” of Washington Heights, Post Addition, Orchard Park, or in the quiet neighborhoods of Merritt Woods or Riverside, you learned from the streets each day at school.  The kids around you, and maybe it was or is you, that live in the toughest parts of our community brought parts of that life to school with them every day.  The kid that slept in three different cars over the last five nights taught you something.  The kid that sold dope out of the locker three down from my room taught you something.  The kids who got into a fight today before first hour, after second hour, after third hour, during lunch A, during lunch C, after sixth hour and at the bus loading after school all taught you something.  The kid who brought that gun to school that started the push for metal detectors and security taught you something.  I know that because they taught me something.  For so many kids in our community, that is where most of the learning in their life happened: on “these streets”, not from books, lectures, films or labs.  Their stress isn’t from grade points, ACTs or parental aggravations.  Their stress is from hollow points, EMTs and parental violence or absence.  When you look upon them with disgust, you are learning what you never want to be.  When you look upon them and laugh, you are learning and you don’t realize it.  You are learning how much alike you are.  You’d never laugh at a man eating another person’s arm, because there is no cannibal inside of you.  Yet when you see a young woman cursing out their teacher and laugh, it’s because part of you relates.  Part of you understands and finds it funny, as though you were that girl.  That is the true curriculum of the streets.  It teaches us far more about what we have in common than what makes social and economic classes different.  It’s the curriculum of the street that frightened the privileged so.

You have to wonder what my point is by now, and given your time with me, you should know that it’s coming in short order.  As I look back on my ten years at Central, I keep wondering what it is that I taught you?  Mind you, I appreciate the number of you that have, upon hearing my unfortunate news, stopped in to tell me that you “learned SO much from me.”  I would certainly hope so, but I just don’t know what that might be.  I know what I was asked to teach you.  The State, though inconsistent and indecisive about the content of its government and history curriculum, has always provided me with a pretty clear set of guidelines to follow.  Is that all that I taught you?  Is that all that you learned?  After two or three or four years, what was the curriculum of Young?

I hope that I taught you to have empathy.  I hope that, from me, you learned that you can see the world through the eyes of another, if only in an analogy.  I hope that, from me, you learned that you don’t have to agree with what someone does or is to understand them better.  Maybe you even learned that we aren’t that different from one another.

I hope that I taught you the reason humanity has governments in the first place IS HUMANITY.  Our failings are theirs.  Our weaknesses are theirs.  James Madison acutely recognized this and accurately expressed it in the political philosophies that have shaped our democracy.  Madison believed that human beings are inherently good, but act for selfish reasons often to their downfall.  I hope that, from me, you learned that the mirror is your friend, and that its value increases with power, prestige and wealth.  I hope that I taught you that our mistrust in our leaders is nothing more than a reflection of our inability to trust ourselves.

I hope that I taught you, without ever breaking my sacred “separation of church and state” vow to the great, grand government of Michigan, that faith is the most important component of a fulfilled life.  There is nothing that ensures peace more that the expression of humanity in the form of a belief in that which you may never see or know.  I have faith in myself.  I have faith in my wife.  I have faith in my daughter.  I have faith in my God.  These things sustain me, and reveal what is most humbly and tenuously human about me.  Considering my employment news, I suppose this is the most important lesson I could have taught you.  I hope that all of these things came together while we were together in the form of a curriculum greater than that of the school and of the state.

Kindest regards-

Coach Young

Cycle Five: What Constitutes a Successful Curriculum?

Cycle Five: What Constitutes a Successful Curriculum?

I’ll start this post by reflecting on a statement I dropped into a previous post:  know your purpose.  To evaluate a curriculum, and determining “success” requires evaluation, one has to know what the purpose of the curriculum, and really the purpose of education is.

Consider Central Park East.

            These folks know their purpose, because the school was started with a clear purpose in mind, and it hasn’t drifted too far from that.  They know that they have challenges, they know that they have failings, but they also know that are “working” their purpose and are posting successes. 

            What I appreciate most about this particular school and staff is how holistic their goals are.  Throughout this course we have looked at the varied and multiple meanings the “curriculum” can have.  These folks get it.  They understand that schools need to be about more than education…they need to be about learning.  The frustration over the inability to effectively address racism within their school reveals the depths of their convictions and their purpose.  Their open acknowledgement of failure reveals the purpose-driven nature of their evaluation of their curriculum.

Consider the schools within the Harlem Children’s Zone. 

Again, a clear purpose has lead to results that, though questionable based upon financial considerations, can be considered a success by those whose job it is to evaluate the schools, curriculum and programs. 

To a point.

“A few recent studies have broached the question of what was helping the zone’s students raise attendance and test scores: the interlocking social services, or what was going on in the classroom? But they were based on state test results in years when the exams were easier to pass, and they may now be less conclusive.”

            Outcomes can’t always be directly linked to a purpose.  In other words, it is fallacious to use outcomes as the sole evaluation criteria when determining the “success” of a curriculum.    In the Harlem Children’s zone, the plan was to introduce more than one variable into the educational environment, and it appears to be effective, regardless of cost.  The plan does, however, make it much more difficult to evaluate the curriculum being taught in the classroom.  In an age when teacher job-security is tied to student performance, not only at private and charter schools but public schools as well, effective and accurate curriculum evaluation is a must.  Yet what if the challenge isn’t with evaluating the curriculum, but with the purpose of it in the first place???

Consider Battle Creek Central High School. 

For the past five years we have had five different principals, two different superintendants, six different grade principals, and a staff reduction of about 35%.  This, by the way, goes against the Harlem model. 

In referencing the Harlem Children’s Zone, it was stated “You really have to put money into personnel,” said Marquitta Speller, who has been the high school principal since January. “I don’t think you can experience the same level of success without the same level of resources.”

No kidding.

With these leadership changes as a backdrop, we are also a school that allows instructional departments to write their own curriculum (I’m not going to rehash my car-drive-mechanic-factory analogy).  Our leadership has been so inconsistent that our purpose, in terms of instruction, hasn’t been clearly defined.  Consequently, each department has rewritten it’s curriculum to a new set of guidelines almost annually.  No wonder we are a PLA school.  How could we have effectively evaluated ourselves and used those evaluations as a tool to improve when our standards and purpose changes constantly, at a more outlandish rate than the change in state standards. 

Our latest administrative hire, the building principal at Central, has defined a simple, firm and clear purpose for us: get off the PLA list.  Everything that we do here is checked against that, and that starts with instruction. 

So what constitutes a successful curriculum at Central? 

One that raises student performance on the MME and gets the school off the PLA list.  It’s that simple.  There is no room for philosophical arguments about pedagogy.  Our purpose is survival, and evaluating our success is much easier. 

CYCLE FOUR: HOW SHOULD CURRICULUM BE GENERATED?

CYCLE FOUR: HOW SHOULD CURRICULUM BE GENERATED?

This course cracks me up. No, really, it does. Every time I sit down to write one of these entries into the blog-o-sphere, I find myself addressing a cycle question that has goaded me as long as I have been in education. So get ready, because here comes more of the same hard questions and non-answers you’ve come to love about my posts. What is it with teachers and curriculum writing? I’ve never, not even for a moment, thought that it was or is my place to author curriculum. I’ve argued against it as long as I have been at Central, and in doing so, I’ve always used the same analogy:

“Just because I drive a car doesn’t mean that I know how to fix a car, and it sure as heck doesn’t mean that I know how to build one.”

Simple and overstated? Yessir. Accurate and applicable? You bet. Then who should be tasked with generating curriculum? Our elected officials whose jobs do not have “experience”, “insight”, or “skill” as requirements? Maybe not. How about out administrators, you know, those fine men and women who must answer to their state elected officials…oh never mind. Let us consider the readings, and then consider my school for a moment. The first reading illustrates exactly the concern that I have always had with all elected officials, local, state or otherwise. As a government teacher, I start each term by telling my students not to ask me for my opinion, because it won’t be forthcoming. I tell them a simple fact: as their government teacher, it is far too easy to indoctrinate them politically through my teaching. My job is to teach them the approved government curriculum, not Young’s values and politics. Sound’s a lot like my last post, eh? Except for this point: I am at least qualified to do my job, which may or may not be true about those who approved the government curriculum that I choose not to waver from. One of the key Board members in Texas is a dentist for petesake.

A dentist.

A DENTIST.

I used to fix toilets at a nursing home…I guess I’m qualified to make curricular decisions that affect an entire state’s children.

Really? Now, let’s be fair here. Our Founders were far from qualified to govern a new nation or write a national set of laws, which they screwed up before they authored the Constitution. They were, however, men who saw themselves as servants of the public will, not elected dictators of majority. James Madison, the original American philosopher, referred to these as “factions” and considered them the gravest danger to human liberty. Jefferson thought those who trampled the just will of the majority should be shot. Hamilton just shot people. The afore mention dentist lost his leadership post due to concerns held by the Texas State Senate regarding his religious convictions. If he had been acting as a public servant, how would the Senate or his next-door neighbor know what his convictions were? His actions would have reflected those people he represents? His words would have echoed their values and desires. In other words, he would have represented them, not himself. Let me tell you, if that fella ever ends up in a time machine set for 1795, he better watch his back. Jefferson and Hamilton may have hated each other, but they hated sycophants even more. Musket balls to the back.

Tyler’s ideas, at least theoretically, are meant to save us from the State. Locally authored curriculum would, logically, better represent the locality it would be provided to, and would bear some trace of expertise as it would be developed by educators rather than dentists and toilet repairmen. I agree with some of his critics when they argue that Tyler is politically naïve, in part because I am not convinced that he sees educators as inherently political. That and he makes the assumption that so many of my colleagues have: I teach a curriculum, therefore I can author one. My classical logic professor would have jumped all over that one.

I’m going to conclude this criticism by considering my own school, specifically my own department. Up until this year, when a new principal laid down the “If you don’t see it in the state curriculum, don’t even think about it” law, our American history teachers were required to teach an entire unit about the former Yugoslavia. The whole story of its collapse and subsequent infighting, not just American involvement. The entire story of the genocides there, not just the lack of American involvement. Why, you might ask? Our department chair authored the unit, and the curriculum map that our teachers are required to follow. Our department chair is married to a Bosnian man she met in Bosnia on a mission trip. The subject is important to her. I can’t blame her, it would be important to me if it were my spouse. Yet the personal feelings of individuals don’t define what our kids should learn anymore than the political or religious values of a Texas dentist.

My point in all of this? People are people. Politicians are people. Administrators are people. Teachers are people. We are subject to the products of our own minds and the tugging of our own hearts. Should any of us be allowed to decide and then define what the curriculum our kids will receive should be? No. Not unless we place ourselves second to the public that we serve, whether we agree with them or not. Otherwise we are no better than the Texas dentist whose political and religious pontifications make him everything that our Founders didn’t want in our elected public servants. It is ironic that such a person spends his time arguing on behalf of what he is certain are the beliefs of our Founders, while such arguments continue to show just how little of their beliefs he understands.

CYCLE THREE: SHOULD THE CURRICULUM ADDRESS CONTROVERCIAL ISSUES?

This particular cycle topic has proven most difficult, and thus less conducive to witticisms and the like.  To me, this is not a question that I can answer as a graduate student, a professional educator or a coach.  It is one that I have to address as a parent as well. 

First of all, since questions like this are often political in nature when addressed in the public strata, I should qualify myself as a political thinker.  I teach government, politics and law for a living.  I grew up as the son of a Republican small business owner and a free-thinking Democrat housewife who went door-to-door for Jack Kennedy.  Yes, they have a loving and stable marriage, thank you.  I was raised in an amalgam of both ends of the political spectrum and the blending that occurred in a two-parent home.  Thus, I am what some would call a “populist” though that is hardly an accurate label…I’m not a fan of labels for the record.  To define terms, generally I am fiscally liberal and socially conservative.  Even then, I am not consistently one or the other within those two sets of ideas.  I believe in traditional “family” values, but also believe that what happens within your life isn’t my concern, and I have no business commenting or opinionating about it.  I have several homosexual friends, and have never given their sexual orientation/preference any thought, because I firmly believe that being judgmental is not a “family” value.  Likewise, I am a man of faith who refuses to bludgeon others with what I believe.

Like I say when asked, “Who the hell am I?”

Ok, so I’m a highly tolerant person who keeps his beliefs and values to himself unless asked, out of humility and respect for the unique nature of humanity.  Then why is this topic such a challenge for me as an educator? 

Because I am a parent, and I will not be sending my daughter off to school to be parented, raised or reared.  That’s not the purpose of public schools, and over the ten years that I have been a public educator, I have come to despise that behavior in my peers.  My job is to teach government and politics, not my agenda or politics or faith or creed.

Like I say when asked, “Who the hell am I?”

I have a colleague who does much of what bothers me so much.  During class discussions about politics or religion, she tells students who disagree with her that they are wrong, going so far as to require that they redirect their opinion, or remain silent…during a scored discussion.  Eisner states “Critics of schooling point out, however, that rather than cultivate initiative, schools foster compliant behavior. One of the first things a student learns-and the lesson is taught throughout his or her school career-is to provide the teacher with what the teacher wants or expects.” 

It is reasonable to expect compliant behavior in public schools in order to assure the safety and security of our charges.  Does that mean that it is reasonable to expect complaint thought?  One of the things that I constantly have to remind law students is that the law does not govern though for a reason.  Our founders installed a form of government and system of laws designed to ensure individual freedoms, with none more important than liberty: the right to think and believe as one chooses.  I remind my highly-diverse A.P. Government class every year that a bigot has the right to believe whatever he or she chooses, and you have the right to believe that he/she is a piece of trash.  Neither of you has the right to do anything with those beliefs that would infringe upon the right of the other.  Period.  The law intervenes when thought becomes action.

So this begs a question: do schools need to teach one side of a controversial social issue to protect their charges?  In other words, is it the school’s job to decide what is correct or incorrect for their students to believe?  Or, is it the job to ensure that, no matter what the personal beliefs of their students are, nobody is treated in an unacceptable manor by their peers?  I, for one, do not try to change what my kids believe in.  It’s a danger of teaching government: you a have a ready audience to indoctrinate if you wish to, and that isn’t my job.  I do, however, believe that it is my job to maintain a safe (physically and intellectually) environment where respect is not an option.  Like I tell my kids all of the time: “I don’t care in the least whether you agree with anyone in here, but you will respect them as they, and as I, respect you.”  I just can’t bring myself to move beyond that as part of a curriculum.  I work for the State, and I can’t find a Benchmark or GLCE for “morality” or “values”.

I provide my own counterpoint here, by the way.

I work in an urban school, with young men with absent fathers, and I actively teach them things like:

·         “Right and wrong”

·         “Manhood”

·         “Honor”

·         “Faith”

·         “Respect for women”

·         “EMPATHY”

Yes, I know what you will say…”Coach, you blankity-blank hypocrite, you are doing exactly what you can’t stand in others”.

Yup, and I admit it too.  I’m not going to stand by and allow the same cycle of ignorance, violence, and vile behavior continue in my community because little boys are procreating and making more little boys.  I’m not going to allow the gang to raise these little boys. I’m not going to allow any more little boys to grow up and accidentally shoot other little boys like we’ve seen of late in Detroit.  Sorry, not going to happen.  Am I re-parenting, or likely parenting in the first place, other people’s kids?  Yes.  Is that my job as a public school teacher?  No.  If my community has a problem with what I am doing, and believe me, I am quite public about it, there is always a recourse.

Fire me.

That still hasn’t happened yet, and for a reason that maybe applies here.  I don’t teach that as part of my course curriculum.  I make the extra effort, spend the extra time, burn the extra calories to teach these things on my own to as many young men as I can, but not during instructional time. 

So I suppose that all of this leads me to a simple answer to the cycle question:

 SHOULD THE CURRICULUM ADDRESS CONTROVERCIAL ISSUES?

I don’t know.  I’d like to say “no”, because parents should.  Except I live and work in a community that has a significant absence of parents.  So if not the schools, then whom?

Resources:

http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/starr/starr046.shtml

This article offers an interesting take on the notion of schools parenting kids.  I’m not suggesting that I agree or disagree, only that I found it to be interesting.

http://www.gangsorus.com/parents.html

This is just a reminder that the beginning of the battle for the streets of our cities begins at home.  But what if home is the problem?

Cycle 2: So...what should the CONTENT of curriculum be?

The esteemed John Dewey wrote that the "logically formulated material of a science or branch of learning, of a study, is no substitute for the having of individual experiences.”   In the Social Studies, this sounds almost exactly like the premise for Inquiry Learning...something that we have been trying to use, albeit with limit success, in BCPS for years.

Perhaps that is exactly what the content of curriculum should be...inquiry.  While working my way through the readings, I noticed that they tended to fit into one mold or another, either pedagogical theory or curriculum reform.  Both of these are valid topics, of course.  Yet for some reason, my mind always wanders towards a question that plagues me...if it was that simple, why hasn't it been done by everyone.  The reality is that the diverse nature of education, and within the field, the diverse nature of instructional content make theory difficult to apply.  Inquiry may be the exception, though not without failings. 

What if the content of all curriculum, State or local, learned or given, was experiential?  Obviously not all of it can be, at least not the way that it is most commonly done.  Yet I wonder what my Social Studies courses would be like if I could genuinely say that the content of my curriculum was not just a list of unit topics and lesson plans, but was inquiry and learning through problem-solving.  Most of us know the power of this sort of learning.  Instead of a teacher (me?) presenting to the students information regarding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the students are engaged in solving a historical problem: did President Roosevelt know that an attack was eminent?  Did he allow it to happen?  The work done to solve those quandaries results in meaningful, student-centered learning that transcends the classroom.  Dewey later writes that “nothing can be developed from nothing; nothing but the crude can be developed out of the crude- and this is what surely happens when we throw the child back upon his achieved self as a finality; and invite him to spin new truths of nature or of conduct out of that.”  Again, isn't this the purpose of inquiry-base curriculum?

Sounds nice.  Possibly awesome.  Maybe even...epic?  OK, "epic" is getting so over used...like "powerful".  If I hear one more person say "Oh, that was such a powerful quote" I'm going to powerfully gag...but I digress.

Our failings with Inquiry based learning in Battle Creek Public Schools has not been on the theoretical end, it has been in the application.  This may be the reason that the content of all curriculum isn't inquiry-based.  One would think that the sciences and mathematics would certainly be laden with it, given the problem-solving nature of those subjects, yet at Central it is not the case. Inquiry-based learning is seriously labor intensive, and the more challenging the environment, the more labor intensive it gets until it may not be sustainable.  Battle Creek Central is a stereotypical urban school, where one finds all of the stereotypical urban school problems.  Classroom management is easily the greatest of these.  When I was younger, more energetic, and apparently capable of doing all teacher-ish better than anyone else, I could manage a classroom with such ease as to feature a curriculum full of inquiry.  You know what...I have no idea whether I did that or not, or even how I did it if my evaluations are accurate.  Maybe I have changed, the culture of my building has changed, the kids have changed, the amount of flouride in the water has changed...I don't know.  What I do know is that I cannot seem to integrate as much inquiry into the curriculum of the courses that I teach.  I wish that I had an answer as to why.

In Cycle 1, I stated that curriculum is "a capsulated package of the knowledge that humanity has acheived, discovered, studies and published over time."  That is, as was noted, far to general of a statement, but one that is in line with my idealistic nature.  In Cycle 2, I have made the claim that the content of curriculum should be inquiry-based.  Perhaps what I should have said is that the content of curriculum should be authentic learning, reagardless of the discipline or subject.  Though not as idealistic, I do believe that statement is in line with the intentions of Dewey's theories, and the variety of curriculum reformers offered this cycle.


Sources
http://inquirylearning.ca/

For those new to inquiry-based learning, this is a nice introductory site that lays out the theory and application of this model.
http://www.saskschools.ca/~bestpractice/inquiry/index.html

This site, as is the case with the next one, are examples of inquiry-based learning in action in a couple of different venues, including our friends in Canada (eh?).  I find that I learn best when I learn from others who are doing, rather that just telling me how something should work in the land of theory.  I'd much rather take a look at the land of "SO THIS ACTUALLY WORKS IN YOUR ROOM".
http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/de/pd/instr/strats/inquiry/index.html

CYCLE 1: What is curriculum? What is its purpose?

I think that a direct answer to the question(s) is in order... Curriculum is not posting on your blob past the due date...(note to self). And now for a more serious answer.

CYCLE 1: What is curriculum? What is its purpose?

I started off as an admitted idealogue. Just because the State paid for my retirement did not mean that I worked for them. No sir, I was going to do what's right for kids, and teach them what they needed to know, because that is what good teachers do. Then reality put a beat down on me. Yes, I work for a State, er, public school. My non-Social Studies collegues don't always get the implication when I say that kind of thing. I just can't help but think of the Praesidium, the ComIntern, Stalin, Beria...you know..."The State". The idea that if you don't do what we say, think what we say, echo what we say, you'll be off to the gullag,or the unemployment line. I have an increasingly strict set of guidelines sent down to me by the State, labeled with nifty names like Benchmarks, GLiCS and CommonCore. This is supposed to define and control the curriculum that is presented to Michigan's students.

But what is curriculum in the first place?

First of all, I hate the "race" analogy. Why does it always have to be a race? Somehow it's always a marathon too, as mentioned in our readings. Why not the 400 hurdles or steeplechase? Why not a ping-pong match? For my post, it's table-tennis. On the surface, ping-pong is simplistic. It's what that one old uncle used to play in the basement. Except for the fact that good players are, well, highly skilled in their own right. They are skilled in their "craft" because they have recieved an amalgam of knowledge from other players, writers, and such sources. They have taken that, melded it, added to it, and then pass it on to each of their opponents each time that they execute a "forehand smasher". That is curriculum, academic or otherwise, in a nut-shell. Its a capsulated package of the knowledge that humanity has acheived, discovered, studies and published over time.

You know, curriculum can be more than that. My kids learn from me, because I am both the vehicle for the State's curriculum, but also because I am a curriculumn of my own. I am a living, breathing capsule of experiences that impregnate all that I speak or write. My kids learn me from me, and I learn them from them.

In Social Studies, our curriculumn should be ever-gowing, as more and more is added to the human record. Yet somehow, this is not the case, and that has everything to do with the purpose of curiculum.

Know your purpose.

As very wise coach once told me "Boy, you need to know your purpose." A more accurate statement may never have been issued by a man with a mullett. The trouble with curriculum, specifically curriculum in our schools is that those who make the decisions may not know their purpose, or the purpose of curriculum itself. Is the purpose of curriculum knowledge and information, or is it philosophy and assessment? That is the fundemental question being dabated all over our State, in meetings like the one I have every Wednesday in liu of my planning period. The topic: what knowledge can we cut out of the curriulum to replace with required activities that better match the philosophies of our new, reform-minded administration. How can this even be discussed if the purpose of curriculum is to give a capsulated package of the knowledge of humanity to our children? I understand the strains placed on administrators, don't get me wrong. I just don't understand decisions that take us further and further away from what a curriculum really is.

By any means necessary.
I just have to mention Donovan for a moment. His story wasn't necessary to answer this question, but touched a nerve with me none less. I'm a teacher (clearly) and a new parent. I just want to say that the purpose, not of curriculum, but of schools, it to ensure that kids learn by any means necessary. Donovan is a kid. He has specific needs that are challeging, but he is still a kid and deserves to learn as much as he possible can if he wants to. In all of the dialog at our reforming school about curriulum, somehow this kind of thing never comes up. I rarely hear it in IEP meetings. If curriculum is encapsulated knowledge, then our pupose should be to use it, in conjunction with whatever tools it takes, to make sure every kids we have can learn.

Additional Resources

http://www.k12curriculumdevelopment.com/1/post/2010/1/2010-defining-the-purpose-of-our-curriculum.html

This particular article isn't really an article, as much as a statement of purpose ofr districts looking to improve teaching through curriculumn development. I chose to make note of this is that so many of us have heard this before.

http://www.temple.edu/lss/htmlpublications/publications/pubs97-4.htm

This one was of particular interest to me. I never find enough information about the relationship between what we do, what we use, and our potential successes in urban schools. Good read.

Hi. I'm Jim. Not that many peopel call me that anymore. My mom and my wife call me "Jimmy", my one year-old calls me "Da" or "Doo-Doo", and 90% of the people that I work with just call me "Coach".

I work for an inner-city school district in Battle Creek, my home for the last ten years. Like most urban schools and districts, the struggles outnumber the successes, and our finacial situation would make most accountants squumish. Yet here I am, and here I am quite sure I am meant to be: serving people who are so often left to whither by our great egalitarian society.

I bring a philosophy to education that is based upon a simple belief: that all educators are advocates for children. When one considers the changes and challenges facing inner-city schools, this belief becomes more vital. Declining enrollment, diminishing finances, and increasing pressures from within and without have demanded that we evolve as professional educators. This evolution begins with redefining who we are as teachers, administrators, and coaches. While I am finishing my Masters Degree in Coaching and Sport Leadership, I have developed the leadership experience, the focus, the passion, or the skills necessary function within these shifting and sliding elements of our time.

These are challenging days for public educators. There is no evidence that the end of these difficulties is in sight. Battle Creek Public Schools is in a state of flux, and this is a critical time. We need to develop a “winning” attitude that reaches beyond the field, court, or track. We need to win in the classroom, and we need to win in the community. At least that's what I think.



So much of who I am is rooted in being a Metro-Detroiter. Living in West Michigan for the last decade has cemented in my mind the reality that Detroiters are different, and should be proud of it. At least ten times a year, I find myself saying to someone "Yes, I went to Wayne State...no I wasn't shot, mugged, or on drugs..." or "Yes, I take my wife down town, no we aren't scared, yes we walk around...NO I DON'T BRING A GUN!" I think it's that kind of thing that, early on, drove me towards urban education. The racial, social and economic divides that persist, under the cover of "political correctness" are maddening. I just not the type to sit and complain about something...so I chose to do what I could. I continue to do what I can everyday.