How do I find balance between the required scripted curriculum and pacing guides, mandated by school districts, and my own voice as a teacher?
With all that I am learning in my Teacher-Ed program, as well as in my interactions with students, it is clear that the best learning happens when students are deeply engaged in their learning. How do I get my students engaged in math when the textbook itself seems so dry and naturally unengaging? I definitely believe it is my job as a teacher to take the curriculum and mold it in a way that works best for all of my students, not just some. I also realise that doing this well will take time, perhaps a lot of time. I don't expect to perfect this in my first year of teaching. But, it also doesn't mean I am going to wait until my 5th year of teaching to begin trying to use alternate methods of teaching subjects like math. I am constantly trying to figure out how I can make learning more interesting, exciting, fun and accessible for my students, both now and in the future. For example, the interactive, hands on, small group ways of teaching math, that I am learning in my Math Methods course, seems like a drastically better way to teach math! So why am I not seeing this style of teaching math in classrooms?
This is what I spend the most energy worrying about as a student teacher. How do we keep up with all of the demands of being a (new) teacher while making sure we are actually effective teachers? I don't have the answer but at least we are all in this quest together. I think the best answer we have so far is that the scripted curriculum is the concepts we need to cover and not necessarily the method in which we teach it. That leaves room for us to incorporate the dynamic group activities and other differentiation.
ReplyDeleteI think while all of the non-scripted curriculum pieces are important, beneficial, and preferred; they also take a lot of commitment, energy and time on the part of the teacher. While it is my hope that I can bring the curriculum alive and meaningful, I worry that this will be the ideal and not the reality. Otherwise, why isn't it more common place?
ReplyDeleteI agree that dynamic curriculum is more desirable and more engaging but it must be difficult to implement or else I do think it'd be more commonplace in the classroom. That being said, I don't see why you couldn't take the learning targets from your scripted math curriculum and mold them into the kind of lesson you want to do. If all they care about is that you are covering the targets, then I think that would be perfectly acceptable. But, if you literally have to teach out of the textbook then I don't know how you get around that! I think it'd be great to start with trying to incorporate one dynamic, hands-on math lesson a week, and then see if you can increase it.
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