Time for Teachership Blog

11/21/2022

How to Facilitate District-Wide, Teacher-Led Curriculum Development with Dr. Steven Weber

Read Now

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

Curriculum is part of every classroom, every grade level, and every subject matter. It’s key importance to the field of teaching and education demands we’re always checking in and asking: how is our curriculum serving and supporting students?
In his role as the Associate Superintendent of Teaching and Learning with Fayetteville Public Schools, Dr. Steven Weber is continually asking just this. Through an extensive curriculum development project, he’s asking: is our curriculum relevant for students today?
We chatted about this and other topics on episode 95 of the Time for Teachership podcast. Here’s some of the key takeaways from our conversation.

Knowledge Transfer, not Compliance
Dr. Weber’s big dream for education is that we could return to the joy of learning, and that it would be marked by knowledge transfer and not mere compliance.
Knowledge transfer is when students learn curriculum that’s relevant and can apply it to other areas of life, both presently and in the future. This differs from compliance-style education—finish an assignment, check a box, and move to the next grade.
There are two key values that support this concept:

Each student, class, school, and district are unique—there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
Student choice and student voice should be centered in the conversation—it’s how we can ensure that curriculum is relevant, and knowledge is transferable.

Teacher-Led Curriculum Development
Dr. Weber believes, and has seen in practice, a high level of engagement by creating curriculum task forces. His district is currently completing a multi-year project to produce relevant, teacher-led curriculum for all grade levels.
Their project is designed on a few principles:

Start with the “big rocks,” or the priority standards that every student needs to achieve
Curriculum should be flexible. Instead of producing a final, published hard copy curriculum that lasts for years in the same format, create curricula as a living document that can be changed and improved.
Diverse perspectives are necessary; task forces should have multiple teachers of the same grade, varying in experience levels.
Teachers are valued and recognized for their contributions. This means investing financially in the process, by paying for overtime or paying for subs to cover teachers.
The process matters. It takes time to create high-quality curriculum, so Dr. Weber’s project is spread out over an entire school year. This allows teachers to bond with each other at group lunches and have time to slow down, reflect, think, and edit their work.

Teacher-led curriculum helps schools and districts figure out what works and what’s necessary in their context. But it’s a process, and there needs to be an investment of time and resources to make it happen.

How to Teach Current Events
Current events are more relevant in the classroom than ever before because students are more connected to the broader world than ever before. And while they’re important and necessary to talk about, it can be tough to do.
With that in mind, Dr. Weber had a few ideas on how to make current events part of your curriculum:

Ground it in local events relevant to your community. Reflect on what matters to your class, students, and their families so you can be sensitive to it.
Consider what’s age appropriate—consult with other professionals if you’re unsure.
Remain neutral and create psychological safety. Don’t let your personal biases make the space unsafe for a student with different viewpoints.
Don’t be reactive. Just because something’s happening now, doesn’t mean you have to teach it now. Take time to reflect and consult with others so you can approach the topic well.

There’s so much more to cover about topics like current events in the class and developing teacher-led curriculum. Make sure you check out our full conversation with Dr. Weber on episode 95 of the Time for Teachership podcast! You can also connect with him on Twitter at @curriculumblog or read his work on Teach Better.

Quotes:

3:43 “For a lot of our students, today’s education is not relevant. It’s the way we learned it, but it’s no longer relevant. So, can we use social media, can we use TikTok videos, can we use YouTube—can we use the skills that they use on their own time on their phones or in their own time on a Friday night when they’re hanging out with their friends—what could we use? Then they can show transfer in their own way, rather than on a worksheet.”
22:30 “Early in my career, I focused on the product—I just drove people to get to the product. I did a lot of those 3-day summer crash courses … Let’s identify the big rocks, big skills in two hours. Well, there’s not really a curriculum. You may have a product, but it’s not a curriculum and it’s not very high-quality. You have to give people time, time to reflect, and then you have to give people time to revise and edit.”
24:45 “I think every school district needs to approach current events through what’s best for their local policy and their community. But I also think some school districts have been running the other way and dodging current events. And I don’t think that’s a good way to educate our youth, because they’re going to end up making critical decisions and choices—they’ll become voters—and they need to know how to make decisions based on current events.”

0 Comments

11/14/2022

7 Resources for Justice-Based Curriculum Design

0 Comments

Read Now

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

No matter how long you’ve been teaching, curriculum design requires ongoing growth and development. Creating relevant and impactful curriculum that hits learning targets is no easy task! But if we want to truly set up our students for success in this world, it’s a necessary one.
To help make this process a bit simpler, I’ve pulled together seven resources to support justice-based curriculum design. Some are pre-determined projects while others are resource banks to pull from. Either way, they’re designed to help you build curriculum that gets students to think, engage, and learn through a justice-focused lens.
I elaborate on all of these resources on episode 94 of the Time for Teachership podcast, so if you want the full run-down, have a listen!

7 Resources for Justice-Based Curriculum Design
There are two categories within this list of resources. The first three are specific project-based curriculum ideas that are designed to bring learning outside of the classroom. The last four are text libraries for you to access justice-centered and justice-focused resources for your classroom.
1. KQED Call for Change Youth Media Challenge
What is it? This project is designed to amplify student voices around relevant current events. Students are invited to create a 1-3-minute video or audio project about a prompt of their choosing.
There are clear standards, rubrics, and resources for teachers to use as well. All student submissions are published online, and some submissions are shared on KQED or NPR—a huge potential audience to amplify student voices!
More details: www.learn.kqed.org/challenges
2. CSPAN StudentCam
What is it? This is a similar project-based curriculum idea to the first one. Students from grades 6-12 are invited to submit a 5–6-minute video documentary on a topic that relates to this theme: If you were a newly elected member of Congress, which issue would be your first priority and why?
This competition offers cash prizes to the top 150 documentaries, totaling $100,000. It’s a great way to get engaged in current events with real-life impact and some cash incentive.
More details: www.studentcam.org
3. Learning for Justice: Do Something
What is it? Learning for Justice has compiled 34 different performance tasks that are designed to have students demonstrate their anti-bias awareness and civic competency in a real-world context. Tasks range from artistic showcases to a community newsletter to a film festival.
Students can pick the medium to demonstrate their knowledge and learning about relevant current events and issues.
More details: www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/student-tasks/do-something
4. Learning for Justice
What is it? This resource database has over 628 different texts and resources, including social justice standards for all educators to use in their classrooms. The database can be filtered by social justice domain (i.e., race and ethnicity, ability, or religion), grade level, subject, medium, and topic.
More details: www.learningforjustice.org
5. Facing History and Ourselves
What is it? With nearly 5,000 resources in its collection, the Facing History and Ourselves website is an excellent resource for justice-centered curriculum design.
Their content is divided into topics such as democracy and civic engagement, justice and human rights, global immigration, bullying and ostracism, etc. There is also a wide variety of resource types and mediums, including blogs or webinars as well as more common types like books, podcasts, or videos.
More information: www.facinghistory.org/resource-library
6. Zinn Education Project
What is it? This is an excellent resource to access teaching materials. They’re divided into three options—time period (i.e., colonization, civil war era, cold war, present day), theme (climate justice, African American art and music, food, labor, Latinx, LGBTQ, math, sports), or resource type (books, film clips, photos).
More information: www.zinnedproject.org
7. Newsela
What is it? This learning platform is a great place to access material on current events and news stories at various reading levels. While not all of it is specifically justice-focused, it provides key texts and materials on relevant, timely issues that you want to discuss in the classroom.
More information: www.newsela.org
---
Creating justice-focused curriculum can take time and energy, especially for new educators or those who are new to this space. Luckily, there are so many resources out there to help us out!
Take a look through each of these in the list and spend some time exploring what they have to offer. Then, consider: what will this look like in my class?
For more discussion about these resources, check out episode 94 of the Time for Teachership podcast.

Quotes:

12:05 “When I say ‘texts,’ that could be written text. It could be an article or song lyrics—it could also be a video, a picture, oral history recording from the library of congress. It could be some other piece—a poem or something. It doesn’t always have to be the written word. But I just want to name that it could be any sort of video, audio, textual thing.”
12:50 “When we’re designing around justice, it feels very helpful to have a go-to text library ... which is like a resource bank for justice-centered or justice-related resources.”
17:08 “I like the arts component, because I think it also gets after joy. In many ways when we talk about oppression, we talk about justice, we forget the joy elements.”

Click here for the Media Critique Project Template

If you enjoyed this episode, check out this video for more on curriculum design:

0 Comments

11/7/2022

Transforming Curriculum in 3 Years Through a Culture of Coaching and Joy with Chris Chappotin and Alisen Adcock

0 Comments

Read Now

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

When you think about education, instruction, or curriculum, what comes to mind? Is fun and joy part of your perception or goals? Is levity, connection, and celebration part of your curriculum and teaching goals?
If it’s not, you need to listen to Episode 93 of the Time for Teachership podcast. On it, we hear from Chris Chappotin, Assistant Superintendent for Boyd ISD in Texas, and Alisen Adcock, a middle school principal in the same district.

Together we discuss what curriculum design looks like on a three-year plan and how important fun and joy is to the process! We also chatted about developing a culture of coaching for continuous growth and improvement.

Three Years of Change
In his role as an Assistant Superintendent, Chris has to keep an eye out on the big picture, the big goals. And in his district, that revolves around curriculum instruction and coaching. They’re currently in the third year of a plan that centered on creating engaging learning. Specific focus areas included:

Year 1: Clear and consistent learning standards
Year 2: Effective assessment that aligned with standards
Year 3: Meaningful curriculum through instructional best practices

Culture of Coaching
Addressing curriculum is a massive undertaking for any district or school because it requires growth and change. For that reason, a culture of coaching is essential to success.
Instead of a traditional coaching model where some people are the mentors, some the mentees, a culture of coaching involves everyone. Coaching happens across all levels from teachers up to superintendents—it’s not for a select few.
Alisen and Chris spoke to two essential aspects of a culture of coaching:

Using data-driven, evidence-based coaching in order to achieve results. Specific goals in the “from X to Y by when” format is effective in creating actionable goals.
Normalizing regular check-ins and observations from leadership. Teachers can initially feel that the principal stepping into their class is a punitive measure. But the more it’s normalized in a culture of coaching—the observation is to support and learn—then it will no longer be seen that way.

Bringing Back Joy and Connection
Underlying anything related to curriculum, coaching, or other aspects of teaching and education is this simple reminder from Chris: this work is about people.
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities, but education is a relational field. Relationships between educators, students, and leaders should be at the forefront of everything we do.
Two ways to prioritize people and relationships:

Fun: Though it’s not always a priority for many people, fun is an essential piece of education! It’s a way to connect and engage with each other… and keeps students coming to class. Chris is a big fan of singing, rapping, and dancing down the hallways to bring levity into the school.
Celebration: Change can feel overwhelming at times—there’s so much we want to do! That’s why Alisen advocates for celebrating the small wins along the way. Take time to acknowledge good things as they happen as a way to encourage further growth and change.

Positive change doesn’t just happen—we all need to work at it. As a next step for any educator seeking to grow or move in a specific direction, schedule time for the change you want to make. If it’s bringing more fun and joy into the class, then determine what you’re going to do and add it to the calendar. If it’s connecting with your coach or mentor, make it a priority.
By prioritizing small steps and changes, we can collectively move towards relationship-centered education, built on a culture of coaching, and infused with joy.
Check out the full conversation with Chris Chappotin and Alisen Adcock on episode 93 of the Time for Teachership podcast. You can also connect with Chris on Twitter and Instagram at @chris_chappotin and Alisen on Twitter at @TexanMath1.

Quotes:

9:30 (Chris) “It was not, ‘Oh, my know-it-all teaching friend is coaching me, how great.’ It was, ‘We’re all in this together. This is a culture of coaching. As your teacher-leader coach, I am being coached as well.’”
16:40 (Chris) “Whether it’s singing songs, rapping in the hallway, high-fiving kids—just being loud and jovial on purpose to infuse fun and excitement in the school experience. I hope that that also helps folks understand that when we are about the business part, that you can know my heart is in the right place. And my heart is that we’re unified and we’re about continuous improvement and we’re about the kids.”
20:00 (Chris) “When I feel stressed or squeezed or low in confidence or low in competence as a leader, I tend to retreat into tasks. Because at least, as it pertains to what I’m responsible for, I can mostly control that. Whereas when I’m in a better place … I find it easier to remember that the work is with and through people.”
23:05 (Alisen) “For me, it really goes back to data-driven pieces of leadership. For me, whenever we look at actions to take, what can we celebrate along the way?”

0 Comments

How to Facilitate District-Wide, Teacher-Led Curriculum Development with Dr. Steven Weber

7 Resources for Justice-Based Curriculum Design

If you enjoyed this episode, check out this video for more on curriculum design:

Transforming Curriculum in 3 Years Through a Culture of Coaching and Joy with Chris Chappotin and Alisen Adcock

Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...

Author

Archives

Categories

Support