The Curricular Question

What should a teacher do when they don't buy into their district's mandated curriculum?

Last summer I reported a story about a local public school teacher who decided to leave our district for a neighboring one, due to the adaptation of a new Language Arts curriculum at the middle school level.

This particular curriculum is called StudySync and was created by McGraw Hill.

StudySync was sold to us teachers by district administrators as “a real time saver.” It will save you, they promised, time in planning and preparation. And yes, there is truth to that campaign promise. Because absolutely, I do spend much less time building engaging units. But that time I save is instead spent in complete and utter despair in not being able to build units in the way research tells us to, by genre or mode of writing.

Recently, after my district hired consultants to run a curricular professional development session that I could have run in my sleep, on the first day of my period, I hit a breaking point.

This session focused on an educational concept called backward design, which is a best practice approach to planing units and lessons. Backward design is exactly how it sounds. We start at the end—what are the goals; what do we want kids to know when they’re done with this lesson or unit?—and we move backward through the material to the beginning.

Backward design is a basic concept studied by all education undergrads the world over. And yes, it is absolutely worth reminding educators about this concept, because a nudge to utilize best practice methods is always appreciated. But I’m not sure an entire session dedicated solely to this topic was worthwhile.

Because during this particular session, while the presenters could have been focusing on impactful student writing samples or trends in our student’s writing data, they instead focused on explaining to us how to use backward design in order to plan lessons around writing with StudySync.

For background, each StudySync unit, and there are six per grade level per year, is pretty much identical to the next. The units all have a very general essential question that is meant to guide instruction. Something like: Why do we feel sad when bad things happen? (That’s not an actual question, but you get my point.) The curriculum writers craft essential questions vague enough that any text they choose for the unit will fit under its umbrella.

Also, the final writing pieces students are given, which are meant to culminate the unit, are all very similar. They’re all different versions of this prompt: Using the texts you read throughout the unit, and maybe an anecdote from your own life, answer the following question…

And then, for good measure, the curriculum writers slap on a different label for each piece of writing.

Let’s call this one argument.

Okay, we’ll call this one informational.

Spoiler alert: every culminating writing piece at the end of each unit is technically a literary analysis. And literary analyses are great! They’re very important, but that is only one mode of writing, and *surprise-surprise* it happens to be the mode of writing we see most frequently on state testing.

However, if we want kids to write an argument, we have to give them something to argue about.

If we want kids to write an informational piece, we should give them something juicy that they’ll be excited to figure out and unpack.

Creator: SIphotography | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto Copyright: SIphotography

When I first started teaching in my local district, I used to teach this incredible argument unit to my sixth graders. The kids would choose their own topics to argue, and I’d let them write about whichever side they wanted. Then they conducted independent research. For students who struggled with reading comprehension, I’d have sample topics and texts on hold for them. But first I gave everyone the opportunity to research and pick their own topics.

During that time in my career, I happened to be participating in something called The Master Teacher Project funded partially by the NEA, and I wrote up the unit, which you can still find on the site.

Prepping and conducting these units built around student inquiry took a lot of work. But it was worth it. Because we saw real results. We saw the kid’s writing grow and flourish and blossom. We also saw kids who were really buying into their education. We saw that little spark in their eye.

After the aforementioned professional development session, the one where the consultants walked us through how to conduct backward design while using a scripted curricular resource, I just sort of reached rock bottom.

On the feedback form provided by our district, I wrote something along the lines of: StudySync is really starting to negatively impact my mental health. Yes, I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic. (Just know, I’m actually laughing while I type this. Because if I didn’t laugh, I would cry.)

My husband, with a huge smile on his face, keeps calling me a disruptor. Honey, you’re my disruptor.

Maybe I am. Because I know words have consequences. A lot of people in charge and some even in the community would prefer that teachers not take a stand. I’ve seen this first hand. I could get disciplined for writing this edition of my newsletter. I own that. But I’ve hit a wall, guys. I’m really sad. I don’t want to teach this way anymore. I don’t think we should have to.

StudySync should be a curricular resource. It is a bank of texts that we as professional educators should be able to draw upon when necessary. Not unlike Common Lit or Newsela.

I have a confession to make. I actually have a bit of a complex, where I desperately want all of my bosses to really like me. I know that might come as a surprise to some, but in reality, I am a very compliant person when it comes to my professional life. I do what I’m told. Which is why this model of teaching just isn’t working for me. Because I’m doing exactly what I’m told to do, and what I’m being told to do is not correct.

And to quote one of my literary heroes, Maya Angelou, when you know better, you do better.