Concluding Post: A Letter to My Students

Dear Student,

Welcome to my class. I enjoy the study of Science and value it more when I see my students make connections to Science in their own lives. I want you to know exactly what you’re getting into! I’d like you to understand the following important things before we begin our Science classwork together:

• How this curriculum fits into our school
• What my personal curriculum is
• What I want for you to get out of this class

I’d like to even look into why we even have schools. Please read ahead if you’re interested in learning more about me and our curriculum. The basis for the curriculum I teach is the same around the state of North Carolina. When my students really remember something, it is not typically due to its importance in the official curriculum; it is because of some activity, story, or even mnemonic device that causes a student to remember. These informal parts of the curriculum have been considered more and more important in the process of learning. There’s a lot of research into the importance of “informal science”. Anyone that has watched MythBusters or Planet Earth, or who has been entranced by sounds of the forest during a hike in the woods will agree.

An educator who was interested in hands-on learning was John Dewey, who wrote on these topics about 100 years ago. Dewey wrote that we lose sight of how interesting and vital our world really is, when we focus too much on memorizing facts and symbols about reality, but miss out on what is right in front of us. Dewey says that the "way out" for us as educators to "psychologize" content, in order to bring it into life-terms for our students. In other words, making school interesting for students is the teacher’s responsibility - I will not let you down in this respect. One of the most important things that Dewey wrote about is how curriculum is a guide for us; it represents what some students and teachers may accomplish together. So, I’ll work hard for you with whatever Science background you have, from an insect expert to the student who doesn’t like to set foot outside.

In his 2011 State of the Union Address, Barack Obama said, “In South Korea, teachers are known as nation builders.” I have started to think of the work we do in school as that of building a real world for students. Our values and worlds as educators collectively become those of you, our students. So we have a really important job as educators. RW Tyler writes about how educators can create a world for students: “The teacher's method of controlling the learning experience is through the manipulation of the environment in such a way as to set up stimulating situations.” To broaden the role of the job, a teacher is someone who manipulates the environment in a way to set up stimulating situations. I think there are teachers everywhere, such as on my podcasts: Radiolab, This American Life, and Planet Money. There are also teachers on the television shows I watch: The Daily Show, Anderson Cooper, and the Big Bang Theory - you might get extra credit with a well-placed “Bazinga” from the PhD Physicist Sheldon Cooper on the Big Bang Theory.

Another educator, one who has written about the characteristics of successful schools writes that the history of the world was at least as complicated as the history of her family. I think Deborah Meier is so insightful, because all of us know how complicated our families are: the interpersonal dynamics, the history and the tradition. These things are difficult for anyone but someone in the family to understand. So, of course human history is infinitely more complicated than that of our own families, but we act, and teach, as if the opposite were true. How complicated are those topics you’ll encounter in this class? Very. How concise and simple do they sometimes appear? Very. I want to respect you by telling you that I don’t even begin to know most of the content in Science or Biology. If you have the chance to teach me about some aspect of Science you will become my teacher. Learning and teaching about Science is a very complicated matter and I appreciate your help.

Since living together means we have to make sacrifices so that we all benefit, I believe school should be the ground-floor of our society. School can be the tool that points us in the right direction as individuals and a group. So, schools are important to the extent that a society is interested in involving all of its citizens for their and society's benefit. School should seek to serve each individual with the aim of their satisfying engagement with society in their school years and adulthood. I want you to be a happy and successful adult, nothing less. I promise that I won’t give up on you until you’ve achieved your goals in my class and in school - period.

A role model of mine is the mysteriously-named Science Teacher Doyle who blogs at a website by the same name. He wrote about a trip his class took to the beach: "For at least one day, I do not fret over my biggest classroom fear--killing curiosity." Perhaps when school can seem so muddled, being outside in nature can cast away our fears about test scores and grades. My aim is to engage you to the extent that you grow into a successful adult. So much of that transformation is necessarily personal and silent. If you work very hard in my class, I don’t think you will need to worry about your grade. So cast away your fears and engage with Science, at least in my class, and at least for a day.

Rules are an attempt to contain and constrict the world; this is not a bad thing. If an impulsive person discovers the way of reality through intuition, then rule-bound one has already discovered reality in his or her own way: rules are a way to maintain and even tend for that discovery. So rules must come from the pure discovery of truth in order to be effective. In other words, rules must be born of the reality of my classroom and my students if they’re to be effective. What do my students need? That is the question to which rules are addressed. Thus a rule is neutral: it’s purpose is to maintain the world we live in, in which some truth is already established. Rules maintain the positive as well as the negative aspects of the world. Again, what do my students need? You will find on the front door, at the front of the classroom, by my desk, and on my website the five rules I’ve asked you to follow. Each of these rules comes from making sure your needs are respected as an individual in my class.

1. Respect your peers and your teacher
2. Come to class prepared and ready to learn
3. Have a positive attitude
4. Be safe and responsible in your actions
5. Take responsibility for your education

I asked one of my peers in the Science department some questions about her rules. She is a relatively young teacher, but she is a natural and a professional - she recently received her National Board Certification. So I asked her these questions about rules and was a little surprised by the results. She said that rules are more like guidelines, and that they haven’t really played an important role in her class. The reason I want to emphasize the five rules I mentioned is because I want you to be comfortable and trusting, and to know that I will consistently enforce the rules in my class so that everyone may learn. The teacher I interviewed mentioned that the thing she most wants to change about rules is that they’re consistently enforced, and I also think this is really important. We all want to feel like we are being treated fairly, whatever side of a rule we find ourselves on.

I have to create review guides for you that cover the material mandated by the North Carolina Department of Education. If I create a worksheet directly from the North Carolina Standard Course of Study it would be a disaster for our classes. If I teach exclusively to the life-terms of students, they will fail to develop into the adults we want them to become. But, if I recant a standardized list of important terms and ideas in Biology, I’ll fail to gain your attention. I must strike a balance between the ideal of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study - because the curriculum represents what we are capable of, not necessarily what we’ll do - and the down-to-Earth reality of our classes. So I make a worksheet that covers the content in the Standard Course of Study, but in a manner which is somehow acceptable and pleasing to students. Any other way will be uneasy and not acceptable to my students and me.

The website Study Bio! (www.studybio.com) has been one of my most meaningful creations as a young teacher. In its smaller terms, Study Bio! presents Biology content material in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. In its larger meaning Study Bio! presents the material from the North Carolina Standard Course of Study in Biology in a way that you’re are adept at accessing. Study Bio! attempts to grant you a view and a walk into the world a technologically-adept adult occupies. You will checkin through Google Docs and complete quizzes, choose between options make something interesting in an Evolution Webquest, and finally design a complicated and beautiful Newspaper on Organisms you researched, using articles you and your peers wrote and compiled online. It is group learning and the type of work you may be expected to complete in college. Much of the work you do toward their Organism Newspaper I designed with what I love in mind.

I hope you have learned about how this Science curriculum fits into our school, my personal curriculum, and what I want you to get our of this class. My primary goal is for you to feel empowered; Science is the process of learning about the world, but it is also a process about learning about ourselves. Being able to know how a flower grows or to explain to your parents what you understand about Genetics is incredible. These types of experiences in Science can help you to understand and explain your experience in every subject, while you’re here for school and after you leave. I wish you success during our time together. Please feel free to contact me at any time before, during, or after this course if I can assist you.

Sincerely,

Mr. Joshua M. Rosenberg

Cycle 5: What constitutes a successful curriculum?

To start with an aside - I created a Wordle for this blog. I noticed the words Curriculum an Student were prominent, which is appropriate for our course on the Social Context of Curriculum. I must be doing something right!

I loved the readings for this week, after initially being overwhelmed by the scope of the topics that they covered. The story about Geoffrey Canada's lauded "Harlem's Children Zone" made me feel a bit of smugness - ah hah, public schools are the answer! I realized after reading more that Mr. Canada is in fact doing a great job with his schools. Then, I discovered that Deborah Maier is a brilliant, independent thinking educator, and I connected with her thoughts and writing (perhaps because her birthday (April 6th) is near mine (April 2nd)). Nel Noddings struck me as a worthy contemporary of John Dewey, which alone is an amazing accomplishment. Finally, Elliott Eisner's writing initially bored me and seemed unoriginal, until I slowly felt my thoughts from this semester coalesce around the latter half of the chapter from his book "What does it mean to say a school is doing well?" To attempt to address that question and "What constitutes a successful curriculum?" are the aims of this post.

Dr. Eisner's thesis is that the "rationalization" of schools has lead to the loss of their authentic purpose and direction. The result of this is an educational system with "extrinsically defined educational targets that have a specified quantitative value." These targets are damaging to public education because of what they omit - interactions, community-building, different perspectives and different beliefs. These targets are also damaging because the "quantitative value" at the end of the tunnel is not guaranteed to be there, or to even hold value. Sometimes students who do everything right find themselves unhappy and living at home. So for Eisner, these targets began when we rationalized our curriculum, and focused our attention on standardization and testing. When we question the outcomes of our targets, we realize that what is called a good school may not truly be so, while a mediocre school may better serve our society by educating adaptable, well-rounded students.

Dr. Noddings' essential question to educators is simple: "We continually ask, if you are aiming at X, why are you doing Y? How does Y fit with X?" This questions is just a bit revolutionary. I wanted to yell at my computer screen as I read her spot-on questions to educators about our aims. Noddings writes that economic superiority is the aim of our current school system. So the next question becomes, what are those in favor of standards really aiming at? I felt my thoughts from this whole semester coming together as I read more from Nel Noddings: "The best school is that which provides for its students the opportunity and support to utilize the talents of students in a socially constructive, satisfying, manner."

Ms. Otterman's article in the NY Times, Lauded Harlem Schools Have Their Own Problems, was interesting to me, as I visited one of Mr. Geoffrey Canada's schools during a North Carolina Teaching Fellows trip to New York City while I was a student at UNC Asheville. I was impressed. Mr. Canada has a broad definition of what makes a school: his Harlem schools seek to serve the society they are in, not just a slice of that society. I disagree with what researchers into Mr. Canada's schools wrote about achieving Mr. Canada's goals at a lesser cost. The challenge is to reform society so that schools are recognized as the tool that ensures a successful society.

Dr. Deborah Meier

Dr. Maier is a brilliant author with whom I related to instantly. Maier writes that a good school for anyone is a little like Kindergartenm and a little like a good post-graduate program. I loved this line. Maier then touches on the hard-to-define aspect of why a charter school works where a public school doesn't - because students and parents come charters by choice. She presciently writes that because of this choice, "at least some modest basis for individual trust is built in" between parents, students, and the community of teachers and administrators at school. I wonder how we can adapt this element of choice to our Public School system, because of the empowering effect for parents and students and the "modest basis for individual trust"

Another line I liked a lot relates "the small world of the child to the world of large ideas of the adult," to paraphrase John Dewey a bit. Maier writes that the history of the world was at least as complicated as the history of her family. This is so insightful, because all of us know how complicated our families are: the interpersonal dynamics, the history and the tradition. These things are difficult for anyone but someone in the family to understand. So, of course human history is infinitely more complicated than that of our own families, but we act, and teach, as if the opposite were true. Maier writes, perhaps without some needed instruction, that teachers need to ask these questions about our curriculum.

www.studybio.com

I believe these are now accepted characteristics of successful schools. So, what is a successful curriculum? I can offer to the reader of this post an anecdote and a website I created - Study Bio! - in the Teaching Through Design class by Dr. Punya Mishra and Ms. Kristen Kereluik. The work I did for the 'Diversity' tab was informed by work we have done in this class. I felt like I was able to show my students snippets of the world I like to occupy online; using Google Documents, Twitter and website design. I was empowered by the writing of John Dewey to focus first on engaging student's interest, and only thereafter to teach content. That this technique worked - and that one of our finest Educational Psychologists provided a philosophy and psychology of why - was so empowering to me.

Since living together means we have to make sacrifices so that we all benefit, school should be the ground-floor of our Democratic society. School can be the tool that points us in the right direction as individuals and a group. So, schools are important to the extent that a society is interested in involving all of its citizens for their and society's benefit. Thus, school should seek to serve each individual with the aim of their satisfying engagement with society in their school years and adulthood. The successful curriculum should be broad enough to allow for professional teachers to attempt the challenge of bringing a student from youth to a worthy and meaningful adulthood in society.

I refer one final time to "Science Teacher Doyle" who writes this week about a class trip. "For at least one day, I do not fret over my biggest classroom fear--killing curiosity." Perhaps in a society where our curriculum is muddled and our aims are obfuscated, I can cast away my fears of bad evaluations and test scores: my aim is to engage students with their education, to the extent that they grow into successful adults. So much of that transformation is necessarily personal and silent. I think this is part of the reason why it is so difficult to say what constitutes a successful curriculum.