Notes from the Field
Submitted by Angela Chan, June 14, 2011
Angela Chan has been a teacher with the School District of Philadelphia for the last 8 years. She started her career as a first grade teacher. For the last four years she has been teaching 3rd grade.
Today’s post contains an excerpt from a presentation she made as speaker at TAG’S second annual Curriculum Fair and Citywide Summit. In this address she described the challenges which Empowerment School teachers face as they grapple with the expectation that they implement a mandated curricula and focus extensively on test prep activities. She also discusses the impact this new instructional reality has on her students and fellow teachers.
As an Empowerment School, we implement the mandated scripted Corrective Reading and Math programs, and just this year, the largely Direct Instruction program, Imagine It!, replaced our balanced literacy program. So over the last two years, we are contending with curriculum that is becoming more scripted, instruction that is largely teacher-directed, and an increasingly relentless focus on standardized test preparation. The mandated scripted and direct instruction programs are supposed to address our students’ deficit in basic skills and they are supposed to help schools improve test scores, but what they really cause is a narrowing of the curriculum that takes time away from in depth study of themes, and a stripping away of teacher agency, as well as the devaluing of teacher expertise that is crucial to truly meeting the needs of students.
It is in this type of environment that teachers and students are striving to take back the teaching and learning process and to minimize the harm caused by mandated curriculum.
Conscientious primary school teachers put a lot of thought into the teaching of reading and writing. Learning how to read and write is an individualized process, and the skilled teacher finds a variety of ways to address each child’s developmental process.
The scriptedness of the current curriculum in Empowerment Schools, however, makes learning into a lockstep process. Using scripted curriculum, as the target intervention on whole school populations or even using it indiscriminately for all struggling readers is pedagogically unsound.
Furthermore, there is relentless pressure to focus on test prep. We spend an inordinate amount of time quizzing students on isolated reading skills and training their minds to find one right answer on a multiple choice test. They are being spoon-fed information and taught to think in mechanical ways. We expand reading and math blocks and eliminate science and social studies in order to focus more on the tested subjects, resulting in a narrowing of the curriculum that robs our students of a quality and well-rounded education.
Skilled and conscientious teachers also use the content of the curriculum to build community in our classrooms. Thoughtful curriculum includes opportunities for students to connect, think, talk, and share with each other. This type of learning community motivates students to take responsibility and invest in their own and each other’s learning. It fosters trusting relationships among teachers and children. On the contrary, a scripted and test prep direct instruction curriculum followed with fidelity does not help us build a trusting and dynamic learning community, but rather leads to an increasing sense of boredom and disconnect. When this happens every day, students naturally are disengaged. I find it tragic that we start disengaging students at any age, but I believe that the impact will have more far-reaching effects when we start at such a young age.
I don’t believe that teachers are just sitting back and letting this happen. We do resist, and many of us try hard to get students to be original in their thinking, to make connections, expand their ideas, and to be passionate about what we’re learning. But it is an uphill battle. Without an intentional district-wide, and whole school focus on powerful and meaningful curriculum, individual teachers’ efforts become fragmented, and students still end up struggling when pushed to go deeper with their learning.
I often ask myself, are we really preparing our students for life when standardized testing is defining the quality of learning in our classrooms?
What is also devastating to me and, I believe, to teachers in general, is the impact this all has on my professional growth and on the teaching profession. During staff and grade group meetings, our collegial conversations no longer revolve around what good teaching and learning look like. Instead, we talk about our predictive test results and benchmark results, and share resources on where to find test prep material for extra practice, which I believe, is important to do. What’s missing, however, is discussion about authentic student work and learning, and deeper reflection on our instruction. To me, being able to teach to the test falls way short of my standard of exemplary teaching.
The lack of professional growth is further exacerbated by hasty and haphazard decision making from the top. Programs are initiated hastily without properly consulting school staff. Changes are made without notice, schedules are repeatedly changed to accommodate mandates, and test prep directives are placed in our mailboxes the morning to be delivered to students. Not only are teachers struggling with the poor content of the curriculum, but we also cannot even expect the day-to-day stability that helps us be prepared to teach.
I see teaching as intellectual work that demands us to think critically and deeply about our pedagogy and the purposes of education. It should be a profession in which we are motivated to keep learning about the craft of teaching It is so important that teachers truly develop our expertise, because what we know, and what we do, directly influence what and how our students learn. Instead, I find myself in a situation where decisions and solutions are always handed to us from the top. It is a culture that makes teacher expertise irrelevant. Under these conditions, it is nearly impossible to improve my teaching. In fact, if not for outside networks such as TAG and the Philadelphia Writing Project, I do not believe I could have sustained my vision of teaching and professional growth.
At the end of the school day, my mind often spins with questions such as:
How cans anyone who truly understands teaching and learning make these decisions for our schools?
Are we being set up to fail?
If we keep failing to make AYP, will they threaten to privatize my school?
What is going to happen to the teaching profession and our accumulated expertise as teachers?
What impact will all of this have on the dropout crisis as more students become disengaged?
Are we closing the achievement gap or widening it?
I appreciate the collective energy we have found when we come together as partners in TAG. However, how do we avoid becoming merely an individual, or merely a part of a minority, when we go back to our school communities? How do we take our collective energy with us in order to transform our school communities despite the barriers and the aloneness that seem to mark this work? I hope that the alliances we are building through TAG will better empower our efforts in the future to create great schools, and a great system of schools in our city.