Heat and Light

The terms "heat source" and "light source" have become popular in my office recently. As curriculum coordinators and instructional specialists, we work directly with classroom teachers as advisers and advocates and are specifically instructed to provide "light" (inspiration) rather than "heat" (punishment). It's made me think a lot about the type of leadership we provide for teachers and how or why teachers need light and heat sources.

In our structure, principals are primarily heat sources while curriculum and instruction staff act as light sources. When I was a building level specialist, I never needed to provide heat. Light was sufficient. For example, my strategy with teachers was as follows:

1. Inspire teachers to do the "right thing" (light)- This worked about 80% of the time, through modeling and student response.

2. Ask teachers to do the "right thing"- This worked about 18% of the time, by explaining why, setting the stage for teacher to try, then encouraging their successes and offering suggestions for improvement.

3. Tell teachers to do it, because it is the "right thing" (heat)- For the 2% of the time this was needed, I didn't do it. My principal did.

As I contemplate getting my administrative endorsement, it occurs to me that the administrators role must be a real drag! They are called in to supply the heat while the others get to shed the light. How unfair!

It made me think about the light/heat dichotomy. Maybe it's not either or. Too many heat sources forget that they can also provide light.

Think about it. Too much heat is dangerous, uncomfortable, deathly. But too little heat is dangerous, uncomfortable, deathly as well. When principals begin with heat, it can be a huge comfort for teachers. Think of my process in reverse.

1. Tell teachers what you expect and hold them accountable. Don't make them guess how to do the "right thing"  (heat)

2. Ask teachers to step out of their comfort zone in ways that are uncomfortable, but not unattainable. Support their work and show them that what you have asked them to do is valued by providing time and attention while also limiting the number of things you are asking them to focus on.

3. Inspire teachers to do the right thing (light) by showing them examples of the work done right. Send them to other schools, ask them to observe their colleagues, and perhaps most importantly, model it yourself.

It's not heat OR light. It's heat AND light.

Agree or Disagree?

The 5 Most Significant Responsibilities of the Online Facilitator

1.       Differentiate- Know the students

Create opportunities for getting to know the students: their interests, their learning preferences, their past experiences in traditional school and online environments, their tech savvy. Make the course personal for students in a way that is difficult to do in a traditional classroom.

2.       Set the tone- Ease tension by making a good first impression

Make the first experiences students have with the course positive. Send an introductory email that gives students a clear picture of expectations and requirements for the course, but personalize the first email and module so students get to know you as a person. Make sure they are aware that you are available any time.

3.       Be available- Provide feedback and respond promptly to concerns

Do what you say you’ll do. When a student sends a question, answer it as soon as possible. Check many times per day. Provide feedback as immediately as possible. Make sure the feedback is specific and helps the student understand how to improve and what to continue doing.

4.       Know the content- Be an expert in the information

Be well-versed in the content prior to class beginning and have a variety of professional contacts and information to access in case a question comes up that you cannot answer. Online classes offer students to opportunity to learn from anyone. Give the impression that you are the BEST person for students to learn from by knowing more than the person who may be teaching the traditional course.

5.       Be a good teacher- Utilize the best of traditional pedagogy, but adapt for an online environment

Use time-honored techniques from teaching in a regular classroom (see above), but also adapt to the online environment by trouble-shooting things like technology glitches and ethical issues. Utilize opportunities that online learning gives students and teachers that traditional classrooms would not be able to benefit from (such as asynchronous communication, videos, Skyping, etc.)

My Brain Hurts

Do you ever have the feeling your brain is so full that it can't possibly take another bit of information? I'm having that feeling this morning.

In the past 2 months, I have learned more than I have learned in the past 2 decades. I have read more books, blogs, and articles than I have in a lifetime (at least professionally), and I have had more in-depth, intellectual conversation in 2 weeks than I have had in my career.

It's awesome.

This is what it's about, this "innovation" thing you always hear about. It doesn't feel top-down because my colleagues are real people, with the hearts of teachers, trying to do right by kids in a way that will change our school system in a lasting way, not just to make themselves look good.

I clipped this article byAllan Kelsey from www.leadingleaders.net after an excruciating committee meeting where 16 people were expected to work as a team to write a unit using the UbD framework without dividing up any part of the work. I googled "idea group size" in a passive-aggressive attempt to make myself feel better about the futility of the project. Rereading that article today while looking for something else, a quote struck me:

"Perhaps it is at 5 that the feeling of “team” really begins. At 5 to 8 people, you can have a meeting where everyone can speak out about what the entire group is doing, and everyone feels highly empowered."

While my team of 8 is often divided in a variety of combinations of 2-8 people, the feeling of the 8 meeting together and working together to solve the problems of the world, is pretty amazing.

One of my current favorite professional reads...

... begins the final chapter with this line: "The best educational leaders are in love- in love with the work they do, with the purpose their work serves, and with the people they lead and serve."

I'm definitely in love, but my brain hurts today. Thank goodness I'm headed to a school for a learning walk this afternoon at:

Curriculum 2... 1?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gforsythe/5617505546/

As a 2001 graduate of high school, I have only taught in the 21st century, yet most of my general education took place in the 20th century. The term "21st Century Learner" was part of my vocabulary from the day I entered an undergraduate education course. The "skills" associated with these "learners" have been the focus of my training from my first days on the job.

I'm no closer to understanding who the heck this 21st Century Learner is.

Am I a 21st century learner because I went to college and began my professinal life in the 21st century? Is my brother? He graduated in 2005 so he was in high school only in the 21st century. Were my second grade students, most of whom were born in the 21st century, the earliest members of this group?

Ultimately, the question is pointless, because, really what is different in the 21st century? How is school that much different for students today than it was when I was in school? The internet and computers already existed. Social networks did not, but instant messaging and email did. Cell phones did (although they certainly did a lot less then!). My teachers forbade all of these things. We still mostly do.

One could argue that school is different, I suppose, but how is curriculum different? Are kids learning different things in different ways?

I suppose these questions led me to purchase only one book at this years' ASCD conference in Boston:

http://www.curriculum21.com/

I agreed and disagreed with much in the book, but I noticed a pattern as I was highlighting away: I was highlighting an awful lot of provacative questions. I decided to begin compiling a list of items to contemplate later, including:

• Is the use of technology an "event"?
• Do (the students) feel as if they are entering a simulation of life in the 1980's?
• How are millions of students still struggling to acquire 19th-century skills in reading, writing, and math supposed to learn this stuff?
• Do our students know what addition is, or only what it looks like?
• What if students are expected to demonstrate their readiness to graduate with independence? What if it takes whatever time it takes, with reasonable guidelines?
• What is the difference between the test we give students in formal learning settings, versus the work portfolios that we discover in the informal learning spaces on the Web?
• What is global competence?
• What values, lifestyles, points of view are included or excluded and why? Where can I get more information, different perspectives, or verify the information? (research, critical thinking)
• How will (our) students be different from how they were on the first day of school?
• Can we change our traditional culture of teaching and learning so that students are empowered to take more responsibility for making important contributions to their own learning and to their learning community?
• Are we educating students for a life of tests or for tests of life?

Wow. Now these are some "curriculum mindshift" questions! When I took a position in the Office of Gifted Education and Curriculum Development, this was the first book assigned to my group of curriculum developers. It has been the topic of 3 formal professional conversations and countless informal conversations. Some key ideas I have taken away from these professional opportunities include the following:

Oh... IN the computer!

In preparation for a professional development session I am attending, I have been reading Heidi Hayes Jacobs' "Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum & Assessment K-12". Though published in 1997, the book has new relevance for my school system as we prepare to map our curriculum K-12, all subjects, for a variety of features including, but not limited to:

• 21st century skills
• Macro concepts such as "Change" and "Systems"
• Habits of Mind
• Integration of content areas
• Literacy (including media literacy)
• Technology integration
• Models and strategies

While most of the book was surprisingly relevant and timely, one thing struck me as interesting and rather amusing: Jacobs regularly refers to putting district information "into the computer" with no reference to how, why, or with what program. My, how far we've come in our use of terminiology since 1997! I keep a OneNote notebook page for my professional reading and included the above image to summarize the HOW of mapping. Ohhhhh... we need to put the information IN the computer!

Stay tuned for a less-sarcastic update on the relevance to "Mapping the Big Picture" post-collaboration with my colleagues!

Curriculum Survey

From UConn

Curriculum Survey

In my new capacity as an instructional specialist for the Department of Curriculum Development, I have recently been tasked to work with my colleagues to develop a survey of questions for teachers and administrators, grades K-12, across our school division to get a sense of the state of our current curriculum. Our aim was to keep positive and look forward, rather than backward. Our plan was also to keep the survey under 10 minutes because we are hoping for some really substantive feedback, but also realize that September is not exactly the best time to ask teachers and administrators for 10 minutes!

Throughout the creation process, one question kept rolling around in my head: How would I answer this question, 3 weeks after leaving the classroom and the world of curriculum consumers rather than producers? I thought it only fair that I answer the questions myself.

1.       What is essential and timeless in your curriculum?

• Inquiry (scientific, mathematical, historical, etc.):  One will always need to inquire, no matter the time or context.
• Written and oral communication: Basic writing and speaking skills connect us all and help us to understand one another. This may evolve over time (for example, Skyping skills or blogging), but will always be a relevant part of the way we connect.

2.       What is non-essential or dated in your curriculum?

• (Dare I say it?) HANDWRITING! This is not something we should teach over and over, but rather something we expect or practice over time. 
• Memorization of dates and names in the absence of conceptual understanding: Why bother? This is what our students are asking themselves (as they should be!).
• The "right" answers: I have a colleague who proclaims that nearly any right answer can be refuted if one "assembles an arguement with evidence".

3.       What should be created that is currently missing in your curriculum?

• Cohesive planning documents that help to integrate content, particularly at the elementary level: All subjects should agree and the order in which we teach should make intuitive sense to students.
• Flexibility guidelines: Explicit directions are needed for what can be changed and what must stay consistent throughout the years.
• An emphasis on LEARNING rather than on TEACHING needs to be evident when pacing guides are created.

4.       To what extent does your curriculum guide help you meet division objectives?

• Balanced assessment: The curriculum (in some areas) models a balanced assessment approach by providing formative and summative assessments, mostly in the form of performance tasks. In other areas, the formative assessment piece is lacking. A list of possible formative assessments or hints for places that may be good to evaluate students and provide feedback may help teachers make this a priority.
• Integration of technology: This is lacking. Specific tools are listed from time to time, but they can quickly become dated. Instead, a bank of different tools that suit different purposes could be included as well as hints for good places for KINDS of tools (such as social networking, collaboration tools, organizational tools, production tools, etc.)
• Responsiveness to student needs: The documents support it if the teacher prioritizes it. I would like to see a stronger emphasis on this part with tools for scaffolding. I would also like to see explicit pre-assessments that evaluate what individual students know/don't know against the standards with which the summative performance will be judged.

5.       The written curriculum is:

a.      rigorous and challenging for all (emphasis added) students. Disagree- Gifted units were locally developed to address this issue. In an ideal universe, this would not be necessary.

b.      engaging for all students. Disagree- This does not appear to be a priority in the curriclum beyond the superficial level

c.       differentiated to meet the needs of all learners. Disagree- Tiered tasks rarely appear and when they do, the activities are not equally engaging which is unfair and disrespectful.

d.      relevant to 21^st century learners. Disagree- Our curriculum (about 98% of the time) is firmly rooted in the 20th century, and occassionally in the 19th century.

Additional Comments: There is much room for improvement in the current curriculum, but there is also much good. Changes for conceptual understanding, transfer, engagement, and 21st century learning absolutely need to be made. Teachers are sporadically making these changes when given the chance and could have a lot to offer at a system-wide level.

What would YOU say?

Top Teachers List- Part 3



During my third year of teaching, I was introduced to someone who would prove to be a great influence on my teaching life. Until that time, the only meaning I associated with the term "consultant" was the "Bobs" from the movie "Office Space". If you have not seen this film, I recommend you stop reading this post immediately and check out the movie (or at least this scene) because this post will not make any sense to you. My next great teacher was an educational consultant. For humors' sake, let's call her "Barb".

Barb arrived at my school to host a session on creating a vertically aligned plan for improving vocabulary instruction in grades K-6. We determined that many of our rural, impoverished community was lacking a solid foundation of everyday and academic vocabulary and without explicit instruction, we would not be able to close many of the achievement gaps our school was suffering from. This was my first opportunity to represent my grade level at a meeting where not all of us were able to attend. I was nervous, but excited to be part of the team.

Before that time, my professional development experience was limited to in-house meetings with long agendas of to-do items or data analysis based on own students' performance led by the building administrator. My only other sources of educational information came from my step father, a teacher in the school district, and my mother, a guidance counselor in the school district. Barb was my first outsider.

The vocabulary meeting was good, but relatively uneventful. Barb worked with our school on several other projects throughout the year, but it wasn't until my second year working with her when I began to really see her as one of my "top teachers".

My building principal created a leadership team and asked a representative from grades 3-6 to attend a series of workshops about becoming teacher leaders. I was in the midst of obtaining my masters' degree at the time and had heard the term "PLC" and others thrown around, but knew very little about what this would entail. The first day of training was fabulous, with a fancy lunch, time away from the classroom, other adults to speak with, free books... but it was the content that truly made a difference.

"I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Barb."

The first session was a very emotional one. Barb asked us to examine our own beliefs about teaching, our attitude towards our students, our demeanor when faced with change. As a new teacher, I'd spent precious little time examining my philosophical beliefs about teaching because I was still learning how to read a manual and get my students to line up quietly. I learned that year that building my own content knowledge by reading current information about education was absolutely vital to my growth. Barb exposed an area of weakness in me that I didn't not even know was there. Luckily, I had a supportive principal and colleagues who shared this value so it was nurtured in me early on and still serves me well today.

"I celebrate his entire catalogue..."

Another great lesson I learned from Barb was that every original idea that I've had is not even remotely original. Someone somewhere has probably already written articulately on the subject. Conversely, I learned that I have something to add to that body of research based on my personal context and expertise. I wasn't ready to understand this lesson that first or second year with Barb, but it is something I walked away from and revisited later in my career. Some of my most beloved authors (Wiggins and McTighe, Marzano, Maxine Greene, Brunner, etc.) were introduced to me in snips and quotes. These little soundbites resonated in my mind and I was able to read their work in its entirety when my own capacity was greater.

"Do you know I have eight different bosses? Eight, Barb. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation, it's not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Barb, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."

We spent a great deal of time talking about teacher motivation. It was at a session with Barb when I first learned the link between student success and teacher effectiveness. Building the capacity of teachers is the number one most efficient pathway to increased achievement. I also learned that being motivated myself was not enough. If I wanted to be an effective teacher leader, it was my job to motivate my colleagues, some of whom were worn out and disenchanted with the changes to public education since the beginning of their careers. This continues to challenge me today, but at least I know now that blaming is not the answer. I need to advocate for children by building the capacity of my colleagues whenever possible.

"The pleasure's all on this side of the table, trust me."

I also learned the power of an energetic and passionate speaker. Barb cared about her topic, she cared about us, and she truly believed that change was possible. The very next year after my Barb experience, I took a new position that thrust me into the role as presenter. I spend a lot of time these days in front of adults, both parents and teachers, who need to see my passion and belief in the success of each and every thing I am recommending. It made all the difference in myself as a participant and I hope it does the same for participants in the workshops I now lead.

"Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too..."

The most important lesson I learned was that my job would never be an 8-3 kind of job. I looked with envy upon my older co-workers who clocked in and clocked out each day. I longed for this kind of freedom and automaticity in my teaching. I learned from Barb, however, that these were no longer effective teachers (or at least that they were not working to their potential). A truly effective educator does not "clock out". As a classroom teacher, I often stayed at school until 6 or 7 PM (and on one memorable occasion until 9 PM because of a blinding snowstorm!). As a resource teacher, I am often able to leave much earlier with much less work. I could, if I wanted to, clock in and clock out, but Barb instilled in me a passion for working to my potential. This may mean reading educational philosophy in my beach chair in July or attending a conference during a holiday vacation. It may be as simple as maintaining a blog that helps me to reflect on my practice or making a connection via Twitter that can make me see things differently.

Regardless, Barb "fixed the glitch". I now see my role in an entirely different way.

Critical Friends

 

As an adult, I accept criticism readily and even eagerly. I appreciate a challenge and like to have direct feedback on areas of improvement. I awkwardly accept compliments and move on quickly to how I can improve, especially when it comes to my work.

Recently, I was introduced to a new concept I was not so comfortable with: the role of the "critical friend". I was charged, at a staff development session, with surrounding myself with and acting like a critical friend during my professional meetings.

A critical friend is someone who challenges our beliefs and makes us consider our viewpoint with a critical eye. Sometimes this leads to a change of heart and sometimes it solidifies our position, but the purpose is to deeply reflect and commit to the ideas we so fervently defend.

This made me think. Do I have critical friends at work? Do I act as a critical friend? Do I have critical friends in my personal life? Have I always? What happened to my relationships with past critical friends? For this examination, I reached deep into my personal history for answers.

I grew in a fairly liberal household surrounded by extraordinarily conservative households. Our news was conservative, my friends' families (and therefore they also) were conservative, my teachers were conservative. I took pride in my liberal perspective and wore it like a badge of honor. My eighth grade lunch table regularly held debates about abortion which consisted of shouting across the table and ultimately led us to other friends with similar views to our own. I found critical friends and abandoned them quickly after the novelty wore off.

I was a senior in high school during the election of 2000. Although I was unable to vote because I would not turn 18 for another year, my school was a polling place and I got heavily involved in the election. A friend and I drove around town replacing Bush signs with Gore ones or painting red x's on the ones we did not replace. We were very proud and very disappointed by the results of the election. I went a full year without talking about politics with anyone because I was so angry. I had no critical friends at this time. I couldn't stand to.

I started college three weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks. I had just begun bonding with my dorm mates when the attack happened and we quickly became a tight-knit family. It did not matter what our political beliefs were. Like many places around the country, we were united... for a time.

The debates about the Iraq War and other post- 9/11 issues surfaced within months of the attacks. Many of my new friends had very different perspectives from my own. Some were from military families, others grew up in conservative religious families, some had Muslim backgrounds. Suddenly I had no shortage of critical friends, I just never realized they were critical. I got into heated debates and challenged not only their beliefs, but my own and those of my family. I found that some of my most precious values were naive and based on a limited life experience. I began, finally, to see things from my critical friends' point of view.

Somehow though, in my professional life, the ability to find critical friends has escaped me. I have colleagues who drive me insane. My husband teases me that I am not happy in class unless I found someone to "hate". Some of my bosses make me want to scream when they do not see things my way. I do not want critical friends at work. I want work to work my way.

This is a new professional goal for me. I plan to embrace my colleagues and seek out critical friends. I'd like to challenge my own pedagogical beliefs the way I once challenged my political beliefs. I'd like to do the same for others. As long as we all truly have kids at the forefront of our minds, I think the idea of critical friendship can do wonders for professional growth.

I dare you to criticize that goal!

"I am what I am not yet".

un·pop·u·lar [uhn-pop-yuh-ler]-adjective

1. not popular; disliked or ignored by the public or by persons generally.
2. in disfavor with a particular person or group of persons.

—Related forms

un·pop·u·lar·i·ty, noun

un·pop·u·lar·ly, adverb

 

Dictionary.com Unabridged  Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2011
 This weekend I was reading with my four year old niece. We were talking about different jobs people have and what those people do. I asked her what a doctor does and she said "They give me shots in my legs". I asked her what the police do and she said "Be mean". Her perspective on the world is always intriguing to me because it's just so pure. To her, doctors don't make you better and the police do not protect you. She only knows how these people have directly impacted her small, short life.
Lately, I've felt a bit isolated at my school. My ideas have not always been well-received by my colleagues and I've been feeling kind of, well... unpopular. Most times, when I push a certain initiative in my school it's because I have a certain long-range "vision". Sometimes it's for my students in my school, but sometimes it's for public education in general. Regardless, my co-workers, like my niece, only see how these ideas and projects impact their own small, short lives. Another deadline, another item on a to-do list, another person who doesn't "get" how much work they have. They don't like me pushing their boundaries and expecting more for a higher purpose. They want me to leave them alone in their little bubbles.  This has happened to me before. It happened as an undergrad during group projects when I refused to use an Internet-ready project as-is instead of creating something that came from my heart. It happened when I was a classroom teacher, young and green among more experienced teachers. It's happening now, as I work as a resource teacher in a school where most of the staff have worked since it opened its doors in 1984. I'm a generally likable person in my personal life. I have a decent sense of humor. I'm knowledgeable enough about the things I have to be and humble enough to learn the things I don't know. I care deeply about my students and the success of my school. So why am I the outcast? The truth is, I don't know exactly. I have my suspicions, but I can't pinpoint the exact issue. If my co-workers and I were listed as "in a relationship" on Facebook, we would be described "It's complicated". It wasn't until I took an educational philosophy course a few years ago that Maxine Greene put a name to my lack of popularity. As a poet and an admirer of the arts, she articulates the idea much better, calling it "wide-awakeness". As Greene says, 

"I'm very influenced by existentialism and the thought that you can be submerged in the crowd, and if you're submerged in the crowd and have no opportunity to think for yourself, to look through your own eyes, life is dull and flat and boring. The only way to really awaken to life, awaken to the possibilities, is to be self-aware... I use the term wide-awakeness.Without the ability to think about yourself, to reflect on your life, there's really no awareness, no consciousness. Consciousness doesn't come automatically; it comes through being alive, awake, curious, and often furious." 

Maybe there's nothing more scary than encountering someone who is already wide-awake (or at least attempting to become wide-awake). It makes a person realize they have blindly wandered through life and missed the point completely and it terrifies the person who'd prefer to hit the snooze button for the rest of their career and lifetime. 

I strive to be "wide-awake" everyday. I choose to acknowledge the deficits in our system and my own school. I question my own abilities and choices. I challenge my own conceptions of what my students can do and what the role of public education can be for society. I make a lot of mistakes and hold myself accountable. I hold myself and my colleagues to the highest possible standard and always wonder if we are doing enough, trying hard enough, asking enough of ourselves. 

I refuse not to be wide-awake. I will not apologize for expecting more. It may make me unpopular, but I accept that. I hope that my niece realizes someday that doctors cure diseases and help the healthy stay healthy. I hope she figures out that the police put themselves in harm's way to protect others. I hope  my colleagues realize that I push them because I know they (and I) can be better than we are right now.

Maxine Greene famously said "I am what I am not  yet." This is a hopeful statement. I hope what I am not yet is better than what I am. I hope what WE are not yet is better than what we are.

Mis-Understanding By Design

I first heard of Understanding by Design when I got a crash course in the "Learning-Focused Schools" initiative. (See http://www.learningfocused.com/) My principal at the time time taught a 2-hour professional development session to myself and 2 other new teachers as part of our induction process. We were brand-new teachers, fresh out of college, no teaching experience beyond day-to-day subbing and student teaching. Those 2 hours were more beneficial to me than 4 years in college.

My love affair with Learning-Focused was short-lived, however. I began to realize that this Max Thompson fellow had marketed a bunch of basic teaching principles and was making millions off of administrators eager to try the next best thing. Essential Questions? They're just objectives. "Beginning with the end in mind"? Well, duh! The teachers I worked with acted like these were novel concepts, but to me, they were just what I like to call "simple logic".

So I decided to dig a little deeper and find out where ol' Max Thompson got his ideas. It was then that I discovered my holy grail as an educator: Understanding By Design. It was everything Learning-Focused Schools had promised, but never fulfilled on. It made perfect sense and it changed me as a teacher.

Now, years later, I am still uncovering pieces of UBD. I learn a little more about it every time I design a unit and wish I could go back and change my first years of teaching every time I discover a new layer that didn't occur to me, but should have.

I spent part of last week out of my building working with colleagues from across my school division on revising our Social Studies curriculum for grade 5. As we went through the painful process of designing Stages 1 & 2 with more than 16 people, I became frustrated with my colleagues' lack of understanding. Later that week, however, during a class that required me to write curriculum for gifted students, I realized that some UBD principles make sense to me on paper, but are much more complex when used in the context of actually creating a unit.

In short, I was disgusted with my colleagues for their lack of knowledge, but was humbled by my own misunderstandings only a few days later. Our entry points may have been different, but neither were closer to putting the entire puzzle together.

I consulted my Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, a favorite among my students, and discovered that the word "understandan" comes to us from before 899AD as an Old English word which meaning (literally) to "stand in the midst of".

 As I "stand in the midst" of several curriculum units in various stages of revision, here are some things I KNOW, but still struggle to UNDERSTAND.

1. Stage 1 is the most difficult, stickiest, time-consuming, and VITAL stage of the unit-design process. Weak Enduring Understandings lead to weak Essential Questions which lead to weak rubrics and performance tasks supported by weak lessons. A good Enduring Understanding can MAKE a unit while a bad one can DESTROY it.
2. Creating a concept map is one of the most arduous and necessary tasks for designers of curriculum. When conceptual understanding reaches graphic form, it creates clarity for the designer, the implementer, and the student who will stand "in the midst" of the unit.
3. While it may be tempting to create a unit independently, teamwork is the best policy when designing a unit. Even if it is just for feedback, a second (or third, fourth, fifth) pair of eyes makes a unit richer, more universally understand, more complex, and more streamlined. This idea is the one that is most difficult for me, as I prefer to work alone and initially do not think a single one of my ideas isn't perfect!
4. There is always someone smarter than you. Elementary teachers, in particular, are trained to be expert generalists. We are rarely content experts and are certainly not working in the disciplines we train students to understand. Tapping into the mind of an expert, even if just by researching, is key.
5. True performance must be measured by action. Performance tasks, while difficult to design and time-consuming to score, are the best way to show transfer of information in students. Pitched high enough (but with support), performance tasks can uncover a depth of understanding in students we never thought possible. The tasks should aim for authenticity, in whatever form that can take, whenever possible so students see the value of the task.

This is only the beginning of my list. I'm no where close to designing Stage 3 in my units so my generalizations stop short of actual learning plans and revision. As arrogant as I was at the beginning of the week, I was reminded how important it is to withhold judgment of others when designing curriculum. As a wise woman once said of me, "She has a lot to learn."

I do.