Living Curriculum
You know someone is a friend for life when after not seeing them for two years you pick up your friendship as if no time has passed. You are even luckier when this can happen with three people simultaneously. Over winter break I met up with my three best friends from college in Denver and was lucky enough to have this experience. I realized that knowing someone so well and having them know you, is in and of itself, a humanizing experience. This wonderful work-free weekend of catching up and looking forward allowed me to reflect on what I want from my work and my life right now.
As an analytic person who always preferred debate to poetry the label “reflective poetic inquiry” lens initially unsettled me, but as I began to explore and answer the self-focused questions that this lens posed I recognized its connection to my trip and to my teaching. From climbing an icy mountain to cooking dinner and searching and applying for jobs – this weekend allowed me to focus on something other than my students and my work – myself. This lens pushes its reflector to look inward to help them better understand their teaching practice. This lens encourages educators to deal with educational dilemmas by “depending our own sense of identity and integrity.” (Henderson and Gornik 72) A critical self-reflection is a helpful step in recognizing strengths and gaps in your personal and professional life.
· Do I provide/engage in meaningful learning opportunities?
When I think about the word meaningful I am struck by how subjective it is. A book, math problem or learning experience might be meaningful for one person and completely devoid of meaning for another. Unfortunately, when I think about the day-to-day mathematical learning opportunities my students are given from their perspective the meaning is not particularly compelling. Despite my focus on why learning a particular skill is important or connects to their life and the integration of their names and interests in our word problems my instruction is very skill and outcome based – it does not typically integrate society and self. Intermittent projects and search for math concepts in my students lives works to do this but are not the norm. My students perform well and enjoy math but I worry that I am creating little math robots who can perform a skill when it is taught but do not retain it because it left little impression on them. Working to frame all lessons through a real world (society or self) lens – even if it just the hook – could help them to make the connections needed to make the skill more meaningful to their 11 year old worlds.
I personally feel that my life has been somewhat devoid of personal learning opportunities apart from teaching – which has been the most humbling and monumental learning experience of my life. I learn yearly, monthly, weekly, daily and in each period what is working with my students and what isn’t – every day is a meaningful professional learning opportunity. Personal learning opportunities have been limited due to the demands of teaching. These demands left me without any frame of reference of learning outside of my classroom for the first 6 months of my first year of teaching, but around January listening to NPR saved me from my teaching obsessed bubble. The hour of NPR I listen to every morning and the 30 minutes on my way home is my window to the world, where my brain is stimulated and I engage in meaningful learning. My trip to Denver was an amazing personal learning opportunity. I learned about the geography and history of Denver, about my friends lives, and was given time to reflect on and discuss what I want in my own. Since returning from Denver, I have worked to give myself time each weekend, apart from teaching, grading, planning, to stop and do something for myself. Whether it’s visiting a new place, reading a book, seeing a movie or just spending time with friends, these are all simple ways to learn. I worry that when I focus too intensely on teaching, I miss opportunities to learn.
· Have I awakened a passion for teaching/learning?
I am completely passionate feel passionate about teaching and reaching my students. I believe that if my students leave fifth grade with a positive math attitude and grade level concept and thinking skills they need they will be more successful in schools and in their lives. I want my students to see and use math in their everyday lives and I want them to be kind people who respect each other and love to learn. Unfortunately, by the end of the day I struggle to remain passionate about fifth grade math. When we departmentalized I took math because I enjoy math and was only one of us comfortable teaching it all day. I like that math instruction is easy to break down and task analyze but I find it hard to connect to self and society in the same way as reading, social studies or science. On my third teaching of the same content I sometimes get sick of it and wish that I taught something that I was more personally passionate about – like social studies. The kids make me still enjoy it but I miss content that is more connected to the lives of my students. Read aloud is one of my favorite times of day because it promotes such discussion and real life connections.
I am passionate about learning and wish I had more learning opportunities, apart from teaching, in my personal life. This lack of learning and stimulation in my personal life pushed me to reconsider living in Phoenix. A lack of strong professional development in my district made me consider working in a more innovative charter system that invests in and focuses on teacher training and development. While in Denver I began considering different cities I would like to live in and looking for jobs at schools that had a vision and a teacher-training program that would provide me with more opportunities to learn.
Not all of my students are passionate about all of the content everything we learn but the majority of my students are passionate about learning itself. They want to learn and be at school and they understand why learning is important to their futures. I think that if I worked to make my content more meaningful and integrated with self and society students would be more passionate about learning the content for the sake of content.
· Am I willing to discuss my values and beliefs? How do I act on these values and beliefs? Do my actions align with my values and beliefs? How is my teaching reflecting my beliefs?
I am willing to discuss my values and beliefs with my students and those I meet but teaching has definitely made me a more patient and less overtly political person. I believe in exhibiting kindness and honesty and working towards social equality. As a teacher I work to embody these beliefs in the way I interact with my students. I model what these things look like and work to build a classroom culture that enforces and strengthens these beliefs. The math content I teach does not include discussion of these things specifically. I would love to plan math units that allow students to better understand the world around them including the inequality that I see and my students live daily.
Before teaching I had very strong political beliefs, worked on campaigns and was always ready to argue or discuss contentious political issues. Interestingly enough teaching has tempered my desire to argue about or work on political matters not related to teaching or immigration. While I have become a much more patient person with students and individuals my patience with intense partisanship and conservatism has run out. Living in a state whose politics are so different from my own has made this situation worse and I have decided to simply agree to disagree more often than not.
· What does it mean to be a teacher?
Being a teacher is the most daunting but empowering responsibility that I have ever had and imagine I will have apart from motherhood. Teachers are an interesting mix of parent, model, and expert. A teacher is a model for behavior in relation to others and personal conduct. We model how you treat people with kindness and respect and should show students what it means to be a professional person who enjoys and grows in their job. Teachers engage students and spark their interest in learning in general and in particular content areas so they can connect it to their lives and futures.
· In what ways do I engage in professional dialogue with colleagues?
I engage in professional dialogue with my colleagues daily and weekly. I team teach with two different teachers, one who is a young teacher like myself, another who has worked at our school for 15 years. I carpool with my young colleague and on our way to and from school each day we talk about what we are teaching or what we taught, things that went well or didn’t in our lessons or with particular students. I have a learning team meeting with my colleagues each week to create goals and collaborate around our literacy intervention instruction. Each week one of our administrators observes a lesson I teach and then we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson. I really love this dialogue. As the sole fifth grade math teacher at my school, when I want to discuss or engage in content dialogue I talk with my math AA or other fifth grade math teachers in my district.
· Am I willing to discuss my professional values and beliefs? If not, why not?
I am willing to discuss my professional values and beliefs to a point but don’t feel comfortable being open about all of my professional beliefs with all of my colleagues. Many of my colleagues complain about the expectations of our administration such as turning in a lesson plan, having weekly observations, analyzing data, and being graded on a rubric. These are the things I love about my administration – they have high expectations and are very engaged in what we do. I have found that sometimes it is best to simply allow people to complain. As a young teacher and a Teach for America corps member I feel written off as naïve and not understanding the situation fully. From jokes about how much work or thought that I put into preparing lessons or jabs at TFA I have found it best to keep my professional beliefs to myself. This lack of shared vision is part of the reason I am looking to move to a school where the school’s vision and all of its teachers are aligned to my professional values and beliefs.
As an analytic person who always preferred debate to poetry the label “reflective poetic inquiry” lens initially unsettled me, but as I began to explore and answer the self-focused questions that this lens posed I recognized its connection to my trip and to my teaching. From climbing an icy mountain to cooking dinner and searching and applying for jobs – this weekend allowed me to focus on something other than my students and my work – myself. This lens pushes its reflector to look inward to help them better understand their teaching practice. This lens encourages educators to deal with educational dilemmas by “depending our own sense of identity and integrity.” (Henderson and Gornik 72) A critical self-reflection is a helpful step in recognizing strengths and gaps in your personal and professional life.
· Do I provide/engage in meaningful learning opportunities?
When I think about the word meaningful I am struck by how subjective it is. A book, math problem or learning experience might be meaningful for one person and completely devoid of meaning for another. Unfortunately, when I think about the day-to-day mathematical learning opportunities my students are given from their perspective the meaning is not particularly compelling. Despite my focus on why learning a particular skill is important or connects to their life and the integration of their names and interests in our word problems my instruction is very skill and outcome based – it does not typically integrate society and self. Intermittent projects and search for math concepts in my students lives works to do this but are not the norm. My students perform well and enjoy math but I worry that I am creating little math robots who can perform a skill when it is taught but do not retain it because it left little impression on them. Working to frame all lessons through a real world (society or self) lens – even if it just the hook – could help them to make the connections needed to make the skill more meaningful to their 11 year old worlds.
I personally feel that my life has been somewhat devoid of personal learning opportunities apart from teaching – which has been the most humbling and monumental learning experience of my life. I learn yearly, monthly, weekly, daily and in each period what is working with my students and what isn’t – every day is a meaningful professional learning opportunity. Personal learning opportunities have been limited due to the demands of teaching. These demands left me without any frame of reference of learning outside of my classroom for the first 6 months of my first year of teaching, but around January listening to NPR saved me from my teaching obsessed bubble. The hour of NPR I listen to every morning and the 30 minutes on my way home is my window to the world, where my brain is stimulated and I engage in meaningful learning. My trip to Denver was an amazing personal learning opportunity. I learned about the geography and history of Denver, about my friends lives, and was given time to reflect on and discuss what I want in my own. Since returning from Denver, I have worked to give myself time each weekend, apart from teaching, grading, planning, to stop and do something for myself. Whether it’s visiting a new place, reading a book, seeing a movie or just spending time with friends, these are all simple ways to learn. I worry that when I focus too intensely on teaching, I miss opportunities to learn.
· Have I awakened a passion for teaching/learning?
I am completely passionate feel passionate about teaching and reaching my students. I believe that if my students leave fifth grade with a positive math attitude and grade level concept and thinking skills they need they will be more successful in schools and in their lives. I want my students to see and use math in their everyday lives and I want them to be kind people who respect each other and love to learn. Unfortunately, by the end of the day I struggle to remain passionate about fifth grade math. When we departmentalized I took math because I enjoy math and was only one of us comfortable teaching it all day. I like that math instruction is easy to break down and task analyze but I find it hard to connect to self and society in the same way as reading, social studies or science. On my third teaching of the same content I sometimes get sick of it and wish that I taught something that I was more personally passionate about – like social studies. The kids make me still enjoy it but I miss content that is more connected to the lives of my students. Read aloud is one of my favorite times of day because it promotes such discussion and real life connections.
I am passionate about learning and wish I had more learning opportunities, apart from teaching, in my personal life. This lack of learning and stimulation in my personal life pushed me to reconsider living in Phoenix. A lack of strong professional development in my district made me consider working in a more innovative charter system that invests in and focuses on teacher training and development. While in Denver I began considering different cities I would like to live in and looking for jobs at schools that had a vision and a teacher-training program that would provide me with more opportunities to learn.
Not all of my students are passionate about all of the content everything we learn but the majority of my students are passionate about learning itself. They want to learn and be at school and they understand why learning is important to their futures. I think that if I worked to make my content more meaningful and integrated with self and society students would be more passionate about learning the content for the sake of content.
· Am I willing to discuss my values and beliefs? How do I act on these values and beliefs? Do my actions align with my values and beliefs? How is my teaching reflecting my beliefs?
I am willing to discuss my values and beliefs with my students and those I meet but teaching has definitely made me a more patient and less overtly political person. I believe in exhibiting kindness and honesty and working towards social equality. As a teacher I work to embody these beliefs in the way I interact with my students. I model what these things look like and work to build a classroom culture that enforces and strengthens these beliefs. The math content I teach does not include discussion of these things specifically. I would love to plan math units that allow students to better understand the world around them including the inequality that I see and my students live daily.
Before teaching I had very strong political beliefs, worked on campaigns and was always ready to argue or discuss contentious political issues. Interestingly enough teaching has tempered my desire to argue about or work on political matters not related to teaching or immigration. While I have become a much more patient person with students and individuals my patience with intense partisanship and conservatism has run out. Living in a state whose politics are so different from my own has made this situation worse and I have decided to simply agree to disagree more often than not.
· What does it mean to be a teacher?
Being a teacher is the most daunting but empowering responsibility that I have ever had and imagine I will have apart from motherhood. Teachers are an interesting mix of parent, model, and expert. A teacher is a model for behavior in relation to others and personal conduct. We model how you treat people with kindness and respect and should show students what it means to be a professional person who enjoys and grows in their job. Teachers engage students and spark their interest in learning in general and in particular content areas so they can connect it to their lives and futures.
· In what ways do I engage in professional dialogue with colleagues?
I engage in professional dialogue with my colleagues daily and weekly. I team teach with two different teachers, one who is a young teacher like myself, another who has worked at our school for 15 years. I carpool with my young colleague and on our way to and from school each day we talk about what we are teaching or what we taught, things that went well or didn’t in our lessons or with particular students. I have a learning team meeting with my colleagues each week to create goals and collaborate around our literacy intervention instruction. Each week one of our administrators observes a lesson I teach and then we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson. I really love this dialogue. As the sole fifth grade math teacher at my school, when I want to discuss or engage in content dialogue I talk with my math AA or other fifth grade math teachers in my district.
· Am I willing to discuss my professional values and beliefs? If not, why not?
I am willing to discuss my professional values and beliefs to a point but don’t feel comfortable being open about all of my professional beliefs with all of my colleagues. Many of my colleagues complain about the expectations of our administration such as turning in a lesson plan, having weekly observations, analyzing data, and being graded on a rubric. These are the things I love about my administration – they have high expectations and are very engaged in what we do. I have found that sometimes it is best to simply allow people to complain. As a young teacher and a Teach for America corps member I feel written off as naïve and not understanding the situation fully. From jokes about how much work or thought that I put into preparing lessons or jabs at TFA I have found it best to keep my professional beliefs to myself. This lack of shared vision is part of the reason I am looking to move to a school where the school’s vision and all of its teachers are aligned to my professional values and beliefs.