According to Heidi Hayes Jacob, curriculum mapping involves much more than a day to day plan instructional and standards based plan for a subject-it is much more the interdependence between long range planning, short-term preparation, and clear communication that is prefaced in a cumulative and interdisciplinary background knowledge of the students’ education. Curriculum mapping must necessarily be contextualized within the micro(classroom) and macro (district) levels of horizontal planning through the course of one academic year and vertical planning that extends throughout the k-12 experience respectively.
Although my alternative middle school’s small size theoretically lends itself to team and interdisciplinary planning-vertical curriculum mapping or for that matter, any type of long –range planning that takes into account academically where the students have been and where they need to arrive has not yet been attempted, (if not avoided.) Quite honestly, given the demographics of our student population, each child being 2-3 years behind grade level-such long-term planning and consideration that vertical curriculum planning requires is often overwhelming at times irrelevant. All too often, we rather employ the type of planning that Jacobs describes as “coming together to formulate lists of objectives, skills, and concepts that are optimum goals for teachers to implement” and “occasionally inspire and focus teachers’ actions” but remain nothing more than “lifeless inventories of isolated skills.” At this point, at best our interdisciplinary team structured planning has adequately accomplished the horizontal method of curriculum mapping.
In order to successfully curriculum plan this summer, it will be imperative for us to be focused on not only what is being taught, but of the skills we are addressing along with the assessment of these skills. By focusing on what we need to teach instead of what we teach and deciding what form, how, and over how much time it should be done- we may accomplish the kind of comprehensive curriculum mapping that Susan M. Duke[1] defines in as an “integrated curriculum” that is “multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary,” and truly accomplish the task of ‘mapping.’
There are an exhaustive amount of things that need to be revamped in my classroom for this next semester, but since I only checked my e-mail and received notification of this blog this morning-I'll list the top 10 and continue later.
1) Consistently enforcing the rules and consequences.
2) Consistently distributing positive rewards
3) Consistently maintaining parent contact (both positive and negative.)
4) Prompting the students to take ownership of their learning by providing them with goal-setting tools, a choice in the designation of certain assignments, and contracts that they will sign when they miss homework, classwork, or refuse to do any of the above.
5) Incorporate a homework chart that will be posted on the outside of my door with the daily percentage average of received homework for each period (the period with the highest percentage average will be rewarded on Friday.)
6) Finish and utilize learning centers!
7) Effectively facilitate cooperative learning (not merely group work) but a collaborative learning team in which each member is responsible for a designated role.
8) Develop a more age-appropriate and captivating selection of books to be circulated in the classroom library.
9) Use the library and the librarian as a resource to implement more interdisciplinary learning in the classroom.
10) Approach everything with 100% more energy, passion, and zeal.
Although professional football and teaching are seemingly incomparable, Malcolm Gladwell presented a very thorough and legitimate analogy.
To this end, I agree that it is virtually impossible to measure the potential success (or lack of) in a prospective teacher before having physically observed them in the process full-fledged and teaching. While a candidate may appear outstanding on paper and dazzling in even an in-person interview-this is hardly indicative of how the individual will respond, react, and re-cooperate from the several and inevitable moments of unpredictability, hopelessness, and failure. The questions that NFL recruits consider when assessing the potential success of a prospective quarterback, " Will he be able to step right in there, throw, and still take that hit? Durability. Can they hold up, their strength, toughness? Can they make big plays? .." can be easily translated to the teaching profession.
Perhaps,the most immediate and tangible example of this is a personal one: After having completed a formal interview and phone interview with recruiters from MTC I was accepted. Apparently on paper and theoretically I was perceived to be a potentially successful candidate. However, when it came to an actual observations of my teaching performance, my passive disposition combined with pereivably weak classroom management practices convinced several poeple otherwise....
