UbD, I B ZZZ

We had a seminar on Understanding by Design a couple of weeks ago. The happy administrative face put on it is that it could revolutionize how we think of lesson planning. The cynical teacher face said that we were going to be put through one more thing that we would all gleefully ignore once we left the room.

So far, the cynics have won.

I can see some value in thinking about the outcome and designing instruction to that end, but the trick is that we are a VERY curriculum based district. You will use the reading curriculum, everyone should be within a few pages of each other on the math curriculum, this is what you must do on the science curriculum, etc.

I don’t think that’s an entirely bad thing. For assessment purposes it isn’t fair if, for example, one class of 1st graders is learning one set of sight words while the other 1st graders do something different.

The other side of the coin I saw on Tuesday when a group of teachers from a neighboring district came through to observe my room as part of the STAR protocol training (I’ve written about it before, here). Their eyes lit up when they saw that that we use the Houghton-Mifflin reading program. Apparently their district just recently adopted it, and now the administration was coming down hard on those who didn’t want to use it.

I’m of two minds, there. If you’ve been a successful teacher for 20 years doing what you do, I can see not wanting to change. On the other hand, if I’m a school district and I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars adopting this curriculum after a vigorous and thorough research process, I’d darn well want my teachers using it too.

There are two sides to the curriculum wars. One says, “Why are they doing this to us?” while the other asks, “Why won’t they do this?” I’m guessing it happens everywhere; I’m wondering if it ever ends well.