Blog #15 Packaged curricula, and the role of the teacher

As a kid growing up I always believed that teachers had it easy because everything they needed to know was in the answer key. Teachers didn’t have to do homework, they had access to the most magical know it all book, and like us they had summers off and still got paid for it. Today, as I am working to become a teacher my self I hear those same sentiments repeated by those around me; “Oh that great teaching is easy” followed by “looks like you won’t have to give up your season tickets since you’ll have summers off.” However as those of us in the teaching profession know teaching is much more than assigning homework and grading papers.
On my first day of observations I made the mistake of wearing a baseball cap to school, the Spanish teacher that I was observing kindly laughed and said “don’t worry teachers must wear many hats”. Teachers have to make sure that their students are not only performing to according to standards, while making sure that also well adjusted. As a Spanish teacher I will have to teach the language; which includes a wide range of vocabulary, pronunciation, and intonation, grammar, and culture, which involves much more than knowing where Mexico and Spain are or who Shakira and Julio Iglesias are.
I have quickly learned that teaching is far from easy especially when there is so much pressure in this “No Child Left Behind” world to achieve high test grades. Therefore ultimately the quality of what I teach my students is worthless if they do not pass the regents exam. So do I provide my class with meaningful and valuable lessons about Hispanic culture, or do make sure that they know enough grammar to pass the regents and enough vocabulary for a 10 exchange dialogue for the oral test? While observing a level C Spanish class a few months back I witnessed something in a class full of students that had supposedly done very well in their regents and were in this class because of their outstanding work in their prior Spanish classes that shamed my cooperative teacher. She had been discussing Peru and of handily said “you all know where Peru is don’t you?”, to which a student blurts, “yea, it’s in Mexico.” Clearly geography isn’t tested in the Spanish regents, does that mean that it is not important to know where the countries we are learning about are located? Of course it is important, but strict district curricula and not enough time to teach everything make determining what is important a hard struggle and some things must get cut.
Under NCLB schools and districts are faced with high pressures to perform or lose their funding. This has lead to what many refer to as prepackaged curricula and one size fits all lesson plans. Not only does this hurt students but it also hurts teachers that are forced to stifle their creative abilities. We are taught the substantial benefits of technology in the classrooms, and of all these different tools available through the internet. However try to actually use any of it in the classroom and you will find that access to such information is blocked; a crushing blow to what would be a valuable lesson. Basically we as teachers are made to feel that if it doesn’t fit into grade producing machine, it is not worth teaching.
In reality, teaching requires constant revision. If one technique is not effective teachers must revise and improve their methods. Some districts impose further standardized testing to quantify the improvements that are made. I however don’t think that the value of teaching can be measured through performance. As a student I was always terrible and I mean terrible at test taking, meanwhile in class I was constantly raising my hand and answering questions, I always understood what was being taught, I just wasn’t good at taking test. Now I bet that when my grades got sent back to Albany, it must have looked like I was a terrible student. Meanwhile I was passing all my classes with A’s. Luckily for me my teachers were able to focus on me as a student and not just a standardized test grade, they were then able to help me passed all my regents by teaching me how to take the test. The problem today is that there is such a focus on grades and not on the student that many students are being taught to pass the test before they are taught to fully understand the concepts and material. I think in doing this every child is being left behind, and it’s the role of the teacher to help change the pre-package curricula.