Getting Lost on the Curriculum Map

Last fall I got involved in a curriculum mapping project that my district has taken on in an effort to boost up sagging math scores. I was mainly interested in the $150 stipend attached to it, because as a broke-ass part time teacher I can’t say no to any money that comes along.

There’s a reason that map and crap are in the same word family, because this process has been lousy from the word go.

Our chosen tool for the maps has been a program called Curriculum Mapper (CM), with a website that functions well enough. As I’d been entering my data into CM, though, I noticed a trend—I was simply copying the names of the sections right out of the teacher’s manual. What, I wondered, was the point of putting information into the computer that could be gotten to just as easily by opening the book?

So I put my map aside for a good long while until the assistant superintendent emailed and said, “Meeting Tuesday! I’ll print off your maps for us to talk about!”, which triggered a bit of a panic and had me up until midnight on Sunday doing 5 months work of mapping work. Good times.

Thus, I have a map on the website. Bully for me. As a parallel process, though, I made a scope and sequence document for our math curriculum. My main quibble with the maps on the computer was that I couldn’t give it to a new teacher and expect them to make any sense of it; were I in their shoes, I’d file it away never to look at it again. With the document I made, though, there’s a very logical and tested sequence listed along with notes about what works on certain sections and what doesn’t.

I got the curriculum map we needed, even if it wasn’t in the format They wanted. This is useful:

This is not:



Tomorrow I’ll tell you why my map already needs a major revision, and it’s OSPI’s fault.