The other day someone asked me why we haven't done the competencies first this year. While a tempting suggestion, I'd like to try to explain why that easy path isn't also the best path.
The plan that we have laid out this year is:
- District Goals
- High School Goals (Graduation Expectations)
- K-12 Curriculum Goals
- Department Goals
- Course Goals (Competencies)
And we have proceeded through this list from top to bottom. Always going back to the biggest of the goals before proceeding to the ones below.
It is tempting to want to start at the competency level and work the other direction, or to work from many directions at once. The reason that this is tempting is because the material and the ideas at the competency level is the material that is closest to the hearts of individual teachers. We are always going to be more comfortable talking about what we know--so it makes sense to begin with competencies-the big goals for our individual courses.
From my perspective as a chemistry teacher I know that it would be a lot easier for me to talk with intelligence about the goals of my class than to discuss the goals of the whole school, or even my department. I studied science for 6 years in college and graduate school so I am pretty sure that I know what needs to be taught in the class. So I could quite easily sit down and determine a plan of events that would cover the most important aspects of the field of chemistry.
While any teacher taking this approach would be likely to come up with a fine course of studies, it would also be likely that it would be different in some ways from another teachers. Those differences might be small, like a different lab to teach the same thing, or they might be big, one course preparing a student to take college courses in the subject, one course teaching students to gain jobs immediately in that subject. Beginning at the competency level causes this to happen.
If we spread to other courses, again with the bottom up example, we might find that the science department courses mainly teach students to go to college. They teach other things but are designed for college readiness. The math department might, at the same time, be teaching students for life skills in math--problem solving, everyday math, etc. They still prepare students for college but their main focus is on the everyday use of math. Well, this dichotomy leads to questions about the goal of the entire school and how those goals are set out. Without talking about the bigger goals of the school departments never can be quite sure of what their existing courses should be like and moreover, what new kinds of classes they should offer in the future.
In a small district with one high school it may be hard to imagine how this could be a problem. But imagine a district with 13 high schools like many in big cities. How does each high school know what departments they should have and what types of classes they should offer? How do they know if they should focus on science and technology or if they should be more traditional schools? Without some kind of overarching goal structure these many high schools would not know what kind of high school experience they should give.
Consider too the elementary schools in Concord. With 7 schools in many parts of the city they need to coordinate so students are receiving similar kinds of educations. Especially since they will all be joined together at the middle and high schools later in their careers. How could they know what to do without articulated district and school goals?
So the path that we have chosen for CHS this year is one where we look a the big goals of the district and of the school and then decide our other goals from that point. Once we know what the goals of the school are then we can decide how we will give our departments support to meet those goals. Once departments know their goals, stemming from the goals of the school, they can determine what types of courses they will have to meet those goals. They might also decide that they need to change existing courses or add new ones to meet the stated goals. Once course teachers know all of the goals they can use that information to determine what exactly goes into their course.
Choosing lesson plans first and then determining where they fit is something that young teachers often do. They are scrambling hard to just keep the kids in seats and they are literaly just trying to have something to do that day. As they progresss in their careers they begin to see where the lessons actually fit within bigger goals and they begin to implement them more purposefully. They begin to really use lessons to get to the point of the unit they are trying to teach. This is a hardscrable way to go through the first few years of teaching. And in Concord we have stopped making teachers do this. Rather than turn them loose in a room with a text book we tell them the units, and the goals and we tell them where the lessons should be used and why.
The point here is that building from competencies up is the blind and hardscrable way to do it. The purposeful way to go about building a high school is to consider the big goals first and then use the lessons that still fit. It is not a process of creating more lessons but a process of using existing lessons in a more purposeful way.
