Friday, December 22, 2017

Curriculum Conflict and Collaboration

At times educators see curriculum in different ways and conflict occurs. One team of educators may feel that one strategy is best while another team believes another strategy is best. When this happens, the work requires greater scrutiny, discussion, data analysis, and research.

In the current issue where this has occurred, there's been some frustration. Yet there hasn't been the discussion, data analysis, and research so I'm thinking about the steps to come, and these are the questions I have.
  • Why is using a document a more efficient and helpful strategy than using a spreadsheet?
  • Why are groups of defined numbers better than making groups based on student need, observation, and positive study attributes? What research supports this?
I want to listen deeply as educators share their perspectives, process, and goals? I want to hear the research, data points, and success stories that support this work as well as the information that does not support the strategies I've deemed successful.

Also as we continue to build our student interventions and targeted teaching, I want to listen for the research and learn about these questions too.
  • What efforts are in place that are truly working? How do we know that those efforts work--what evidence, observation, stories and research do we have?
  • What can we do to raise our level of success with students; what are others doing to elevate their work and success that I might try too?
For my own work, I want to dive deeply into the following efforts:
  • Building ways that student reflection and showcase portfolios can promote better effort, strategy, and learning.
  • Matching figures with meaningful, relevant student-friendly data, essential questions, and focus. 
  • Integrating science and math more.
  • Listening to colleagues more to cull wisdom, good strategy, and links to effective learning and teaching.
  • Adding more extra support times to work with students who profit from the extra one-to-one attention and time.