Curriculum: The Missing Component

Though all our discussions of policy this semester, we haven't discussed one important part of schools that I think would make a huge difference in my classroom. I'm thinking of the importance of a uniform, high quality, curriculum. Last year, when teaching government, I wrote many of my lessons with Sarah Orao, because our pacing was different from the schedule that Baltimore City released its curriculum. We ended up pulling our lesson plans together and using a variety of different resources. While I am proud of the work that we did together, I am not a curriculum writer, and the time that I spent planning for my class could have been better spent on my struggles in management and differentiation.

This year, teaching World History, I have been in a situation with even less curricular support. Baltimore City has no real parameters for what should be included in the World History course. Students in World History at Carver learn from four different teachers who have wildly different interpretations of historical events (which is understandable, to a point) and who emphasize different events and themes in history.

On the other side of the issue, there are teachers whose curriculum is so scripted that they have no freedom whatsoever to linger with their classes on topics that the class might find fascinating.

Every class should have a basic curriculum that neither hampers the teacher's creativity nor leaves them stranded with no idea of how to make sense of the content. When I think of a dream curriculum, I think about documents that offer multiple ways to teach the same or similar content, content that is easily adaptable to various situations, varied instructional strategies, and curriculum that is challenging. I'd also be great if the curriculum had modifications for IEPs and enrichment built in, but at that point I might as well demand a robot to come into my class and teach it for me too.

We have plenty of intelligent people working for this system, and almost all teachers need summer work. A solution is simple. I'd rather be part of a curriculum writing team than work at a summer camp again. On a basic level, a school system needs to know what's being taught in its classrooms. I've been appalled by what some teachers are teaching in their classrooms and I think we have the resources to tackle this problem. It's a small step that I think will have a huge payoff in the quality of education that we're giving our children.