Task 2

What is the purpose of curriculum and what role do we have as teachers in this purpose?
Wow, this is such a loaded question that I don't know exactly where to start. What are our roles, or what should they be? I believe the purpose of curriculum is to keep us on track for what our students need to know. But as Dr. Clarke responded in my previous blog, it all boils down to teaching to the test. That is where I feel that curriculum is actually leaving us. With our pacing guides and our curriculum guides, our program of the year, new paper work, teach this, teach that, lets see what this test says about how our kids will score on the test... It just goes on and on and I think as teachers we become kind of like a robot in our own classroom.

When I first started teaching, my father told me the best advice I think that I have ever heard in education. He said, "Learning is not memorizing, it is understanding how to find information when you need it." I have tried to live by this in my classroom, but with all the guidelines, it really makes it tough. I feel like I am just skimming the top of everything, and then ...time to move on to the next subject. I honestly feel that curriculum has it's place, but it gets lost in the process. It should be just that, a guide, but it becomes more like a bible. In 2nd grade, I feel my job is to teach students to read, comprehend, and, not just learn to read, but learn to enjoy reading. I also feel that I need to give them a really good understanding of numbers, and number sense. It all gets so garbled. Because of our maps and guides, you can walk down the hallways in our school, and see that kindergarden, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades are all teaching the same content. Now...If we really covered content the way it should be covered, we would not be reteaching everything from year to year. Things would be completely covered and understood before you move on to another subject. Then when you walk down the hall, you would see education becoming spiral. Using what we have previously learned, to move on to something else. That would give us time to teach children to use their brains. We have become this machine like industry instead of an institution of learning. I know that we have district walk through visits in our building and all the others in the county, and they come in and look for objectives, student work, etc. We train the students to be able to recite objectives because that is what the district wants. While I do my best to try and really reach each student, there are times that I feel like the guidelines are so strict, I could easily be replaced by a robot.

We had a PD this summer about going deeper into subjects, making students responsible for their learning, slowing down and really understanding and mastering the content that we are teaching them. I asked if that meant we could slow down and not worry so much about the pacing guide, and teach the students what they needed to learn and really make sure they had mastered the content. The response was that we still had to cover the pacing guide. HOW CAN YOU SLOW DOWN AND SPEED UP AT THE SAME TIME? I love teaching, don't get me wrong, but thinking about this can make you feel as if you are beating your head against a brick wall on a daily basis. I feel like everyone's intentions are good, but those who make the rules and come up with the "flavor of the month program" have sometimes been out of the classroom so long that nothing adds up or makes sense.