Gaining Clarity on Our Goals
In Chapter Three, long-term goals in planning are highlighted. The authors claim, “With no long-term goals, there is no perspective—hence no check on the teacher habit of merely teaching to short-term, content-related objectives” (58). I completely agree with this statement and unfortunately can relate. I had a semester in which I was studying and working so much that I didn’t have sufficient time to fully design a curriculum for each of my private adult classes. Although the classes went smoothly, and I at least felt that the students learned, I had no real list of priorities at the end of the course to say, “Yes, these objectives were achieved.” Now, I always have a full idea of the entire course before the first class and make everything explicit for the students so that they have a clear idea as well.
The chapter also describes the standards phenomenon and mentions the fact that we would need about nine more school years to cover all the benchmarks we are supposed to (61). I feel it is true that there is a lot of content to cover, and it is impossible to do so, but I also feel that we must concentrate on what we can do with these standards and not take it so literally. We learn that in these cases, what we can do is make a graphic organizer consisting of three ovals to clarify what content we are going to focus on in our lessons.
The ovals in the graphic organizer that I mentioned are labeled as “Big Ideas and Core Tasks,” “Important to know and do,” and “Worth being familiar with.” This organizer is very useful, because it cuts down the overload of material that a teacher is supposed to cover. If we really do not have enough time to cover the material, this chart will at least let us teach the most important material in the time allowed. To be honest, I feel like a lot of time is spent complaining about the standards situation rather than working with it and not letting it affect our classes and lessons. With the tips given in Chapter Three, we can definitely plan our courses better.
I absolutely agree!
ReplyDeleteInstead of waisting time complaining, we should use all these strategies we've discovered to really improve our practice.
Yes! Tools, strategies, creativity are there to be used! The point is we need to find out the "how"...
ReplyDeleteI also agree, we already know that we don't have enough time, the thing now is to make the best of the time we have and try to improve our teaching using the strategies we've been reading about in Wigins' book.
ReplyDeleteI agree on the fact that we complain a lot! We should spend our time trying to create a better lesson plan than complaining about it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. We already know all the problems that the system have. We deal with them everyday. I think we need more time for us in order to reflect and something for our teaching. We spend so many hours doing classes and marking that we actually don't have time to improve our job.
ReplyDeleteTeachers have dealt with issues like lack of time and resources for decades, however very little has been done about it.I believe that keep on complaining is not only a waste of time but a safe attitude to not commit ourselves on changing our education system, as well.Reading this book can be a very useful tool to achieve our main goal, meeting our students' needs.
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