Cycle 3: Should the Curriculum Address Controversial Issues?

In going through this week’s readings I was not only torn in different directions as an educator and as a mother but also frustrated with my profession and our modern American culture.  While I agree that there needs to be anti-bullying education in schools and that tolerance needs to be integrated into the curriculum, I also can see how the topic of homosexuality is an extremely political and controversial topic to cover in classroom curriculum. 

Almost all adults remember a time in middle school when they were picked on for something by their peers.  I teach in a middle school, it’s a rough time in kids’ growth and development and a tough age.  Everything is all about how you appear to your peers and how you are perceived by them.  As much as we all know this is part of growing up, bullying is an increasing problem in our schools and is increasingly dangerous as teen suicides rates are staggering.  Some of those numbers can be seen here: http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-and-suicide.html.

Students who are either gay or are perceived as their peers as gay make up a large number of those suicides but are not the only reason adolescents consider killing themselves.  I believe that we have to be careful about picking out specific causes of bullying and teaching them as we could not possibly have the time to fit everything into the curriculum along with the state mandates.  Instead, I think it is probably better to teach tolerance of diversity period, regardless of whether it is body type, sexuality, or something different.

In the Joel Burns video that we saw this week, he states that “bullying and harassment in our schools must stop and our schools must be safe places to learn and to grow”.  I couldn't agree more.  As a nation, most educators agree that we have a problem that requires a solution.

The resolution that the Helena, Montana school district came up with in their quest to address bullying seems fair.  They changed the language of their bullying curriculum to be vaguer and more open ended about acceptance of others, rather than addressing homosexuality explicitly. I think this was a good move.  With so many cultural differences in today’s society, it makes sense to address the issue of bullying and acceptance while causing minimal conflict with the community and parents of your students.  Covering the topic in entirety rather than being specific also ensures that you don’t open the portal to teach about every single thing that kids are bullied over; which could not possibly all be covered individually within the existing academic curriculum.

The most frustrating part to me in this week’s topic is the thought that as an educator I am teaching academics (math, science, social studies, and language arts), as well as life skills and values (common courtesy, caring for others, anti-bullying, accepting diversity, etc.)  If we are teaching them everything in school, what are they learning at home?  I feel that as educators we are constantly being told to do more; to be parents as well as teachers.  Many of the things we are being asked to teach, such as kindness to others, I would consider common sense and ideas that should be ingrained in a child from birth in your home structure.  These lessons taught from home are then reinforced at school and in life.  The problem is that kids are not getting these lessons at home because the United States culture has seen a complete breakdown in the family structure.  The majority of families are no longer teaching life lessons, skills, and values, we are asking our schools to do that instead.  Schools have to teach these things all while also covering an increasing list of state mandated standards and when we can’t do it all, we are failures; frustrating to say the least!

An article on the breakdown of the American family structure can be seen here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/the-breakdown-of-the-trad_b_675444.html, and an interesting article on teachers as parents can be seen here:  http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/08/living/ron-clark-reactions.

Cycle 2 Resources

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/24-life-lessons-to-teach-your-children-2480134.html

This site has some of those life lessons that I was talking about in my post that I often feel my students need to know but are not learning at home.  Since teachers are being asked to parent more and more at school, maybe we should be responsible for teaching them?

Begun, R.W. (1996). Ready-to-Use Social Skills Lessons and Activities for Grades 4-6. San Francisco, CA. Jossey-Bass.

This book gives teachers lesson guides to use in the classroom to teach life lessons and important social skills.  You can preview the book at amazon.com here: http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Social-Skills-Lessons-Activities/dp/0876284748/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z

McCall, J. (2011). Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History. New York, NY. Routledge.

This book is written all about using progressive education such as video games to connect and engage students in learning history, much like the Quest to Learn schools. You can preview the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Social-Skills-Lessons-Activities/dp/0876284748/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z

Cycle Two: What Should Schools Teach?

           As I saw the topic for this cycle and read through the material, it really resonated with me.  The funny thing about this topic is that I was just telling my student teacher, that I should to quit teaching American History and teach a class titled “Life Lessons/Personal Etiquette”.  In this class, students would learn important idioms to live by and proper social etiquette they need for life such as “when things get hard, try your best”, “you are in control of your own destiny”, and when someone gives you a compliment, you acknowledge them and thank them politely.  Although these items may seem common sense to you and I, today’s generation is lacking them.  I feel that most students are not being taught important lessons for life the way that they should be.   As a parent myself, it makes me feel like these important skills and lessons for life should take precedence over the history content.  Of course, this is fiction and I cannot totally dismiss the history content, so instead I must find a way to integrate them together.  An example of this integration would be teaching the life lesson “try your best” while using examples of famous people in history who made important decisions for our country while “trying their best” to solve major problems.

            In the New York Time’s article about the Quest to Learn school, you can see the importance of student-centered and student-directed learning.  In this type of environment, you find a balance between traditional content and required standards with modern unconventional styles of learning and student engagement. I agree with the fact that you need to find a balance between traditional and progressive education, as well as do whatever it takes to get students involved and excited about their learning. If moving students beyond textbooks and into the world of gaming gets it done, I am for whatever it takes.

            Geoff Mulgan’s talk on Studio Schools in England follows this same idea of practical, hands-on knowledge rather than traditional education that most students find boring.  It is no secret that most people, not just students, learn by doing, and so it comes as no surprise that students would like schools and environments that would give them more opportunities to do real world things.  Personally, I like this type of school better than the Quest to Learn schools as they seem to focus more on career training and less on video gaming; which seems more practical.

            The Hirsch Jr. piece was confusing to me.  On one hand I agree with him that we need more progressive education and not just educationally accepted norms that are not working. On the other hand, he talks about how there is not enough uniformity in education about what is being taught and uses American history as an example.  In that area I disagree with him because if a teacher is covering their state standards as they should be, we should all be covering the same topics/ time periods in our history class. I know that is not always the case, but if you are doing your job properly as an educator it should be.

            With the standards based, high stakes testing world that we live in, I do believe that it would be extremely difficult to carry-out and measure these new out-of-the-box schools and progressive ways of teaching, but I don’t think that means we shouldn't do them.  If these Quest to Learn schools and Studio Schools are what will work for kids in education then let’s make it happen.  I think that education is not a one-size-fits-all item and that is why having all students tested on the same material is so hard, and why having state mandated curriculum is so difficult.  Like anything else in life, we need to find a balance and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I think that in the world of education, it is unfair to say that we have been doing everything wrong, but we can definitely do more right.