Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 123: Beyond Lesson Plans: A Second-Year Teacher's Journey into Curriculum Development

Transcript

Ep 123: Beyond Lesson Plans: A Second-Year Teacher's Journey into Curriculum Development · New Teacher Talk

• 0:02
  Welcome to New Teacher Talk.
• 0:03
  My name is Amy Howerton,
• 0:05
  and I'm an English teacher and English department
• 0:06
  chairperson at Oswego High School in Oswego, Illinois.
• 0:10
  In today's podcast,
• 0:11
  I'm so excited to discuss one of my favorite topics,
• 0:15
  curriculum.
• 0:16
  Yes, I'm a proud curriculum nerd.
• 0:18
  I geek out about pedagogy and learning progressions and
• 0:21
  lesson planning and creative, engaging learning activities.
• 0:25
  And in this podcast,
• 0:25
  I'd like to focus on experiences with curriculum that can
• 0:28
  be of benefit to teachers early in their careers.
• 0:31
  That's likely you,
• 0:33
  listeners of the New Teacher Talk podcast.
• 0:36
  In the New Teacher's Guide to Common Challenges,
• 0:38
  there's a whole chapter on curriculum and instruction.
• 0:41
  This podcast builds on Dr.
• 0:43
  Mary Clement's article on professional conversations about
• 0:46
  curriculum,
• 0:47
  which appears on page 69 of the New Teacher's Guide.
• 0:50
  Dr.
• 0:51
  Clement offers excellent advice about asking diplomatically
• 0:54
  phrased questions about curriculum.
• 0:57
  And today we're going to dig a little bit more into ideas
• 0:59
  about that.
• 1:00
  So from this podcast,
• 1:02
  you should listen for ways to overcome challenges you may
• 1:05
  encounter when working with curriculum and curriculum
• 1:07
  teams,
• 1:08
  how to navigate challenging discussions and the benefits of
• 1:11
  serving on curriculum committees,
• 1:13
  even early in your teaching career.
• 1:17
  To give us some fabulous insight today is a second year
• 1:20
  teacher with who I am delighted to work, Abby Bartle.
• 1:25
  Hi, Abby.
• 1:26
  Hi, Amy.
• 1:26
  Thank you for having me.
• 1:27
  You're so welcome.
• 1:28
  Abby and I are both teachers at Oswego High School in the
• 1:32
  same curricular department.
• 1:33
  So Abby,
• 1:34
  thank you so much for joining New Teacher Talk today.
• 1:37
  So we have been working together for two years and very
• 1:40
  early in your career, oh my gosh,
• 1:42
  your very first year teaching, it was about,
• 1:45
  I want to say five or maybe six weeks...
• 1:48
  October.
• 1:49
  Yeah.
• 1:49
  It was very early in your teaching career,
• 1:51
  and we needed to start a curriculum team to revise the
• 1:57
  course that you were teaching at that time.
• 1:59
  But at that time you only had about six weeks of experience
• 2:03
  in your first year of teaching,
• 2:05
  and you said yes to the opportunity,
• 2:10
  but in that first couple weeks,
• 2:15
  coming into your first teaching experience,
• 2:17
  how much did you know about curriculum when you started
• 2:20
  your teaching career?
• 2:22
  I knew almost nothing about curriculum coming in.
• 2:25
  I was coming from a different discipline even,
• 2:28
  so I knew not a lot about the content that I was teaching.
• 2:32
  Your undergrad is secondary history,
• 2:35
  and we teach secondary English, and that's okay.
• 2:39
  I mean, it's natural not to know a lot about curriculum,
• 2:43
  pedagogy, those kinds of things.
• 2:45
  I know that your undergrads have so much that they want to
• 2:48
  teach young teachers, and there's so much to learn,
• 2:51
  but even with all of the excellent coursework that you
• 2:55
  receive in your undergrad and the practicum experiences and
• 2:58
  the student teaching,
• 2:59
  there's still so much to learn in that first year of
• 3:03
  teaching, and second, and third, and fourth,
• 3:05
  and all the other years of teaching.
• 3:07
  So it's perfectly natural not to know a lot those first
• 3:10
  couple of years,
• 3:10
  which is why mentoring and asking questions and getting
• 3:13
  support from the colleagues around you is so helpful.
• 3:17
  But you did serve on that curriculum committee,
• 3:20
  which is still going strong now, two years in.
• 3:22
  So, yep, you're too.
• 3:24
  What have you learned since serving on that curriculum
• 3:27
  committee?
• 3:27
  The first thing I learned right away was how much work it
• 3:30
  was to be on a curriculum committee.
• 3:32
  I got the email from you asking for anyone who wanted to
• 3:36
  join this committee,
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  and I had no idea what I was signing up for,
• 3:39
  but I was the type of person who would say yes to anything
• 3:41
  at that point as a first year teacher and I'm still here,
• 3:45
  you know,
• 3:45
  it's a very long process creating a curriculum but the
• 3:50
  reason that it takes so long is because teachers are so
• 3:53
  passionate about what they're creating,
• 3:54
  and we have a lot of long discussions about you know what
• 3:58
  each of us want the curriculum to look like,
• 4:01
  what we think the best way to teach it,
• 4:04
  how we think it would look best for students.
• 4:07
  Like the approaches you would take.
• 4:09
  Yes, yeah.
• 4:10
  A few weeks ago we had an entire day where we just argued
• 4:14
  about rubrics, and it was emotional,
• 4:18
  it was passionate but those are super important things for
• 4:21
  the curriculum.
• 4:23
  They are.
• 4:24
  And those are good conversations to have,
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  and they are based in things that people feel very proud of
• 4:31
  when you're done with them.
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  I mean, those are tough conversations,
• 4:33
  but the outgrowth of that are things that are based in the
• 4:37
  research that you've done,
• 4:39
  the questions that you have asked,
• 4:40
  your curriculum leadership.
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  I serve on some of those things as a department chair,
• 4:45
  as someone who works with curriculum,
• 4:46
  our building curriculum leadership,
• 4:48
  our district curriculum leadership.
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  So we have things that can help guide us and the research
• 4:53
  that has been done in the area of summative assessments and
• 4:56
  rubrics.
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  But those things can be challenging and those conversations
• 5:00
  can be tough.
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  So how did you navigate that when those difficult
• 5:03
  conversations happened?
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  Sometimes it took stepping away or stepping outside.
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  My colleague and I took a walk around the school one time.
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  We needed to cool off.
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  But when we come back,
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  we have to remember it is all about the students.
• 5:17
  Those arguments happen because teachers want different
• 5:19
  things,
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  but we have to remember that the curriculum is not supposed
• 5:22
  to be what teachers want.
• 5:23
  It's supposed to be what students need.
• 5:25
  I really like that.
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  It's not what teachers want, it's what students need.
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  The students are really at the core of the decisions that
• 5:33
  we're making,
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  where we're making those choices and decisions about
• 5:36
  curriculum for them.
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  And sometimes with them.
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  I have been on curriculum committees that students have
• 5:41
  also served on.
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  I mean, not many.
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  Most of the committees I've served on or helped to lead or
• 5:46
  co-lead have been adults.
• 5:49
  But once I served on a curriculum committee and the
• 5:51
  facilitator did something unique that helped us focus on
• 5:54
  kids, she put an empty chair in the center of the room.
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  And she told us to picture a student in that seat,
• 6:00
  and that every decision that we were making,
• 6:03
  we were making for that student.
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  Whatever student we were picturing,
• 6:07
  we were making decisions that would impact that student.
• 6:10
  And that did help us focus on students,
• 6:13
  because sometimes people feel very passionate about what
• 6:16
  they're teaching and what they want to teach,
• 6:18
  and that can get emotional.
• 6:21
  It's very helpful to also have outcomes in mind,
• 6:25
  to have structured conversations and meetings,
• 6:27
  even down to PLC meetings.
• 6:30
  It's helpful to have outcomes for PLC discussions,
• 6:32
  know what you are going to be focused on.
• 6:35
  So instead of making decisions on emotion,
• 6:38
  you're making decisions based on a shared set of outcomes.
• 6:42
  So you are, again, in your second year of teaching,
• 6:44
  you're a newer teacher.
• 6:45
  What advice would you give to a newer teacher who is
• 6:48
  working with curriculum, or like yourself,
• 6:51
  who is invited to be a part of a curriculum committee?
• 6:55
  If you're invited to be on a curriculum committee,
• 6:58
  definitely take that opportunity.
• 7:00
  It's such a valuable process.
• 7:02
  It's been so valuable for me.
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  It's definitely a jump, you know,
• 7:07
  diving into this thing that you really know nothing about
• 7:11
  and are experiencing for the first time alongside, like,
• 7:14
  your students.
• 7:14
  You know, you're learning with them.
• 7:17
  But working on the curriculum has allowed me to see the
• 7:21
  curriculum with a new set of eyes.
• 7:24
  I can see curriculum not as a day-to-day list of activities
• 7:29
  that you need to do to, you know,
• 7:30
  reach the end of the unit,
• 7:32
  but as an entire holistic process that these students are
• 7:36
  going through and they, you know,
• 7:38
  come to me as a freshman versus when they leave our school
• 7:41
  as a senior or whatever, you know,
• 7:43
  years that they're going through at your school.
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  Early in your career, early in my career, and later, like,
• 7:49
  you know, in student teaching, I'm day-to-day,
• 7:51
  and that's something I've talked about with my mentor so
• 7:53
  much,
• 7:54
  is that you can't be doing activities in class each day.
• 7:56
  You need to have eyes on the end of the unit and what
• 7:59
  students need to learn at the end.
• 8:01
  And working on that curriculum committee allowed me to see
• 8:04
  that.
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  That is so helpful,
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  and that can be something that is difficult,
• 8:09
  particularly in the first years of teaching,
• 8:11
  is understanding that bigger picture.
• 8:13
  I talked about the day today,
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  and those are like little pixels in a picture,
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  and the more you teach, the longer you teach,
• 8:21
  you have more of those pixels,
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  and you understand what makes up that bigger picture.
• 8:25
  The year-long process, and the longer you teach,
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  and I've been doing this for a quarter of a century,
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  and that makes me feel very, very old, Abby.
• 8:34
  But the longer that you work with curriculum,
• 8:37
  and you understand what students are experiencing,
• 8:40
  we are in a high school setting.
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  So we typically talk about when students are coming in from
• 8:45
  8th grade, and when they leave us as graduated seniors.
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  So what they come in with from our middle schools,
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  and when they go through 12th grade,
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  that is a vertical alignment of what they need to come in
• 8:57
  with,
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  those skills and content knowledge and then what they need
• 9:00
  to leave with,
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  and that vertical articulation is a huge picture.
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  But working on a curriculum team helps you to see that big
• 9:07
  picture, that bigger curriculum scope and sequence.
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  That is of significant value.
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  So serving on the committee, I love that,
• 9:17
  you just said just jump in and do it,
• 9:19
  it's such a valuable process,
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  and that is a takeaway that someone can gain.
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  But even if the curriculum committee isn't there,
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  that's still something I believe that teachers can gain by
• 9:29
  asking questions, by looking at other courses,
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  by perhaps visiting other classes,
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  doing maybe some classroom visits.
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  Those are things that can happen,
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  can offer those insights and windows into curriculum.
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  You need to be able to tell your kids that you know what
• 9:47
  they learned last year when they pretend they don't know.
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  You know they know, right?
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  So one of the things that sometimes can happen,
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  especially when we have more newer teachers on a curriculum
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  team and you're working with teachers that maybe are more
• 10:01
  veteran, sometimes it can be difficult to find your voice,
• 10:04
  right?
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  How did you do that?
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  What could you tell our listeners or a novice teacher that
• 10:10
  would help them find their voice and what they might do to
• 10:13
  reach out for support from a department chair admin?
• 10:17
  Definitely took me a while to find my voice on that team.
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  I walked in and I saw these people who had taught,
• 10:23
  you know,
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  for many years more than I had when I had just been
• 10:26
  teaching for six weeks.
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  And it's just daunting, it's really scary.
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  And I think it took me going back on my own and sitting
• 10:34
  down with that curriculum map and just going through it
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  from front to back and from back to front to give me the
• 10:40
  confidence to start talking.
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  And at some point, even if you're scared,
• 10:43
  you do need to just start talking and speak up.
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  But it's okay if that speaking up starts with like asking
• 10:50
  questions, as you mentioned,
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  because that's the only way that you're gonna learn is
• 10:53
  asking questions.
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  And other teachers want to help you and they want to teach
• 10:58
  you.
• 10:58
  And it helps build like a relationship between the
• 11:02
  different people on your curriculum team.
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  And hopefully that relationship will allow your voice to be
• 11:07
  heard more during the meetings.
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  Definitely asking questions is of value for you to gain
• 11:15
  information, right?
• 11:16
  If you have the question, ask it.
• 11:19
  That's a great way of finding out information.
• 11:21
  But as you mentioned,
• 11:23
  it also helps you build that relationship.
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  And people love to share the knowledge they have.
• 11:27
  So asking a teacher to share information,
• 11:30
  asking a colleague to share the knowledge that they have is
• 11:33
  a great way of building that relationship,
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  that collegial relationship with someone with whom you work
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  or sit on a PLC with.
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  In navigating difficult discussions,
• 11:42
  because you mentioned that early on,
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  like finding your voice or if you're having some of those
• 11:46
  difficulties and finding voice and sharing things out loud,
• 11:50
  I think being honest with yourself and with others,
• 11:53
  being honest with them can really be helpful.
• 11:55
  Because we always have that shared value that we want to
• 11:58
  support kids.
• 12:00
  So if we start from that foundation of we all want to help
• 12:03
  kids,
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  it's much easier to move forward and find from that common
• 12:09
  ground, find the next step.
• 12:12
  Okay,
• 12:13
  for those new teacher listeners out there who may not have
• 12:16
  the opportunity to serve on a committee,
• 12:18
  because curriculum work,
• 12:19
  sometimes it takes a couple years for that to come up and
• 12:23
  especially formal committee work.
• 12:26
  But maybe informal committee work.
• 12:27
  What takeaways from your experience could you share that
• 12:29
  could help our listeners look at what they're teaching with
• 12:33
  new eyes?
• 12:34
  For example,
• 12:35
  how did this process help you look differently at your own
• 12:38
  lesson planning and teaching?
• 12:41
  Absolutely,
• 12:41
  if you have the opportunity to work on a curriculum team,
• 12:44
  I so recommend doing it, but I think I mentioned, you know,
• 12:48
  how lucky I was to have this opportunity so early in my
• 12:51
  career, but not everyone is going to have that,
• 12:54
  and it's okay if you don't get to sit on a curriculum
• 12:56
  committee.
• 12:58
  You definitely need to find some other ways to interact
• 13:00
  with the curriculum,
• 13:01
  other than just teaching it again with those day-to-day
• 13:04
  activities that you're going through.
• 13:06
  I have found it beneficial to sit down with my mentor and
• 13:11
  go through the map together because she will offer a
• 13:14
  different perspective on, you know,
• 13:16
  something that I've already taught for one year,
• 13:18
  even as a second-year teacher.
• 13:20
  It would be super beneficial to sit down with someone who
• 13:24
  has already taught the class that you're teaching and work
• 13:26
  through that curriculum map together.
• 13:28
  They would offer different perspectives and different tips
• 13:30
  and be able to see that backwards design that a new teacher
• 13:35
  would struggle to see because they haven't taught that
• 13:37
  curriculum before.
• 13:39
  And then something that I've started doing this year,
• 13:41
  I did not do this last year,
• 13:42
  but I'm sitting down with a colleague who's also teaching
• 13:45
  the same class as I am at the same time,
• 13:47
  and we're planning together.
• 13:49
  I think that is beneficial in a different way because
• 13:52
  they're a first-year teacher so they don't have curricular
• 13:55
  knowledge that I do just from teaching it from one year.
• 13:58
  Not that I have so much curriculum knowledge,
• 14:00
  but just sitting down with someone else and being able to
• 14:03
  talk it out, I think, is super helpful.
• 14:06
  And even talking to teachers who teach different subjects
• 14:09
  within your discipline and, you know,
• 14:11
  in a different subject is super helpful.
• 14:13
  You can see the vertical progression of your own subject,
• 14:16
  both below you and above you,
• 14:18
  as well as just ideas from different teachers throughout
• 14:20
  your whole school.
• 14:22
  That's part of the fun, I think, of teaching,
• 14:24
  is talking to other colleagues and getting those ideas and
• 14:27
  co-planning, getting that excitement of, well,
• 14:30
  how might you approach this?
• 14:31
  What approach would you take here?
• 14:33
  How might you craft that lesson?
• 14:35
  What activity would you use to teach this skill or content
• 14:39
  with your students?
• 14:40
  That's part of the fun of teaching.
• 14:42
  That's part of the fun of curriculum.
• 14:43
  That's the part I really like geeking out about, really.
• 14:46
  That is the fun of curricular work, for me, personally.
• 14:52
  I hear that in your response because you're finding those
• 14:55
  people to co-plan with.
• 14:56
  What I also hear from you, Abby,
• 14:58
  that I love is that you're paying it forward.
• 15:00
  In your first couple years of teaching,
• 15:02
  you had people that were mentoring and supporting you
• 15:05
  through that.
• 15:06
  Many of our listeners may have the benefit of a mentor
• 15:09
  teacher.
• 15:10
  They may be paired with somebody in their own PLC or their
• 15:13
  grade level or content area that is supportive of them
• 15:16
  going through curriculum work,
• 15:18
  but then you can pay that forward.
• 15:20
  Right?
• 15:20
  You're only in your second year of teaching,
• 15:22
  and you are already paying that forward.
• 15:24
  How great is that?
• 15:25
  I bet that feels so good.
• 15:26
  It feels so fun.
• 15:27
  It does feel good.
• 15:29
  Good.
• 15:30
  Continue to do that.
• 15:31
  I would like to ask you, what is a specific thing,
• 15:34
  or a specific...
• 15:35
  You give us a specific example of something that changed in
• 15:38
  your practice because you now have some more curricular
• 15:41
  experience.
• 15:42
  I think the thing that I understand so much better after
• 15:47
  being on the curriculum team is backwards design and
• 15:50
  backwards planning,
• 15:50
  which is so integral to being a teacher.
• 15:53
  You need to understand that.
• 15:54
  And it's really hard to not, again,
• 15:56
  do the day-to-day activities without understanding where
• 15:59
  you're going at the end and what you need your students to
• 16:02
  learn at the end of the unit or at the end of the year or
• 16:05
  at the end, you know, when they graduate as a senior,
• 16:08
  working with the curriculum and, you know,
• 16:10
  the way that you do on a team helps create that bigger
• 16:13
  picture and you know where students need to go.
• 16:16
  And it's just working on how to get them there.
• 16:19
  Absolutely.
• 16:19
  As such a value,
• 16:21
  curriculum is especially new teachers coming into a new
• 16:24
  position.
• 16:25
  I mean, maybe you're not new to the profession,
• 16:27
  but maybe new to a new school or new to a new grade level
• 16:30
  or a new course to teach.
• 16:32
  The what is often given to teachers,
• 16:35
  the what you're teaching, the skills or the content,
• 16:37
  those what things are often provided,
• 16:39
  either through a set of standards or some materials or a
• 16:43
  curriculum map, a planning and pacing guide,
• 16:45
  scope and sequence.
• 16:46
  They're called lots of different things,
• 16:48
  but the what is often provided.
• 16:51
  And then the how and the why are things that kind of get to
• 16:56
  play with a little bit.
• 16:58
  But the why is what you have figured out.
• 17:00
  I think that's the underlying thing that you've talked
• 17:03
  about in the backwards design.
• 17:04
  Why are you doing what you're doing?
• 17:06
  What is the end result you're going for?
• 17:08
  That summative assessment that you know you are targeting,
• 17:11
  you know that at the beginning of the unit and then you
• 17:14
  have to play with how am I going to do that?
• 17:17
  How am I going to really engage those students to maximize
• 17:20
  the learning with the time that I have?
• 17:23
  That is also the fun of teaching.
• 17:25
  That is also really fun.
• 17:27
  Yeah.
• 17:27
  Those are things to continue learning over time.
• 17:30
  Abby, thank you so much.
• 17:31
  I really appreciate you sharing your insights and your
• 17:34
  experiences with the listeners of New Teacher Talk.
• 17:37
  It's really wonderful to hear both your insights and also
• 17:41
  your excitement of what you've learned about curriculum.
• 17:43
  I know you share in that with me.
• 17:45
  It's just it's so much fun to continue learning about those
• 17:48
  things and talking about curriculum with you.
• 17:51
  So I truly appreciate your time today.
• 17:53
  Thank you for having me.
• 17:53
  You're welcome.
• 17:54
  And to our New Teacher Talk listeners,
• 17:57
  thank you for listening.
• 17:58
  I do hope you become a regular follower of the New Teacher
• 18:01
  Talk podcast channel.
• 18:03
  And remember, as a new teacher, we are here to help you.