Making Curriculum Matter

How to Build SEL, Equity, and Other Priorities into Daily Instruction

Angela Di Michele Lalor

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781416630258
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Curricula nella didattica

At the heart of education are two fundamental questions: What should we teach? and How should we teach it? Educators striving to design and deliver the best-possible learning experiences can feel overwhelmed by the possibilities. To help them make these critical decisions, Angela Di Michele Lalor identifies five key priorities of a curriculum that matters—practices, deep thinking, social and emotional learning, civic engagement and discourse, and equity.

Emphasizing the importance of schools' determining their own path forward, Lalor provides a framework for action by* Describing how each element contributes to a rigorous, meaningful curriculum,
* Providing strategies for incorporating each element into daily instruction and assessment, and
* Offering reflection activities to identify strengths, needs, and possible next steps.

With insightful observations, research-based background information, and real-world examples from a variety of schools and districts, Making Curriculum Matter presents teachers and administrators with a path for reaching their most important overall goal: to provide comprehensive, meaningful learning to all students.

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Chapter 1

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What Matters to Your School?

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In most schools, students, parents, and visitors are welcomed with banners and signs that display clear statements of vision and mission, such as these:

We believe that students should learn in a safe, supportive, and student-centered environment. We are committed to meeting the needs of all students, helping them to achieve academic excellence, and preparing them for a global society.

We will provide our students with a safe, supportive environment and prepare them with the knowledge, values, and skills to become responsible citizens in a diverse global society.

We will work together with our community to provide an equitable education where all students can develop personally and academically.

Although their wording may differ slightly, the statements focus on students' academic and social well-being with the intent of preparing them for the world beyond the classroom. The vision statement and its accompanying mission statement serve as the first form of communicating what matters in a school. They, along with other evidence that can be observed and collected through both informal and formal methods, can help schools define what matters and serve as the basis for decision making, including what curriculum and instructional practices teachers use in their classrooms.

This chapter examines how schools communicate what matters through their words and actions, and it considers how the curriculum, used by teachers to make decisions every day, should reflect these valued outcomes. The process of aligning curriculum to what is valued begins by establishing personalized criteria for its design. Although the criteria will reflect the school's unique community, the curriculum should not be limited by what is known and familiar. Every curriculum should address the elements of the framework presented in this book, with its intended goal of providing all students with an excellent and equitable education. The chapter ends with a tool that enables you to make connections between the framework and your school's curriculum and classroom practices.

Three Questions for Schools

To identify what they value for their students, schools should answer three questions: What does our school say about what it values? How does our school show what it values? How does our curriculum demonstrate what is valued? Let's take a closer look at each of these.

What Does Our School Say About What It Values?

When carefully considered and thoughtfully prepared, vision and mission statements can be essential to communicating what matters and guiding district and school policies and practices. The vision statement articulates the desired outcome, and the mission statement provides direction for how to achieve this goal. Yvette Jackson (2016) writes of how acknowledging the power of language in vision and mission statements is the first step in ensuring equity for all students:

When districts embrace belief in and the value of the innate potential of all their students, these beliefs and values are clearly articulated in their vision and mission statements. Mediators astutely recognize the power of language to broadcast a message of equity and excellence. (p. 85)

Given their potential power, the words of the vision and mission statements should not be taken lightly. If written and used as intended, the statements serve as the basis for decision making and as the catalyst for developing a school that lives what it believes. A discussion of the vision and mission statements is an obvious place to start in identifying what matters to your school or classroom. For some, a return to the vision and mission statements may remind them of the school's intention. A review of the statements may also lead to revisions. Some teachers might even be inspired to write student-friendly statements for their own classrooms, which become even more powerful if students are involved in creating them.

How Does Our School Show What It Values?

Evidence of what matters abounds in schools—in what hangs in the hallway, what happens in the classroom, what is scheduled on the calendar, and what is written in communications. For example, consider the following description of an elementary school: Hallways are lined with student writings that represent a wide range of content, genres, and authentic experiences. The 1st grade classrooms display how-to booklets about a process selected by students to showcase their expertise. Outside the 4th grade classrooms are "newspaper accounts" of events that students have participated in within the local community. A peek inside a classroom reveals students working with partners in a peer-review process. One student is intently listening to another's feedback, knowing that his classmate is offering valuable advice that will help him to revise and improve his work. On Mondays after school, teachers meet in the "Zen room" to learn about and practice mindfulness strategies. Teachers share these strategies with their students and integrate them into their daily classroom routines.

School practices such as these reveal what the school values for its students. It is evident that this school values collaboration, reflection, process, application, and mindfulness as outcomes for student learning. However, schools are complex institutions. In this same school, prep books appear the month before the state test, and the school district relies on numerical grades for report cards, indicating an emphasis on traditional forms of assessments and the value placed on state test scores. There may be many reasons for this obvious conflict, as well as a plan in place for addressing the disconnect. What is most important is acknowledging what exists so the school can move forward in providing students with an educational experience aligned to its values and move away from what holds it back.

How Does Our Curriculum Demonstrate What Is Valued?

This book is grounded in the belief that the curriculum is a tool that teachers use to make informed decisions about classroom instruction, so reviewing the current curriculum is an important part of the process. The depth of the analysis can range from a simple read-through, with a listing of what people notice or wonder about, to a formal evaluation.

You may discover that when you decide to examine the curriculum, there is no formal written document or no standard curriculum for teachers at the same grade level or for those teaching the same course. Your search may also reveal that a textbook or a program is considered "the curriculum." These are important findings. The first indicates that not all students are being held to the same expectations, and the second indicates that teachers may not feel they have the flexibility to achieve the goals set forth in the vision and mission statements.

You may also find a traditional curriculum that focuses on content and includes a long list of detailed facts and other information that students "need to know." Often this kind of curriculum results in classrooms where the teacher is at center stage, delivering information in an attempt to "cover" all that needs to be taught by the end of the year.

When a written curriculum is focused on developing conceptual understandings, uses assessments to produce as well as measure learning, and incorporates active learning strategies, it provides a strong foundation for addressing the elements of a curriculum that matters (Lalor, 2017). Reviewing the curriculum provides insight into the gap between the curriculum and the values that have been communicated through the vision and mission statements and school practices.

Determining What Matters in Your School's Curriculum

In the Southampton School District in New York, Superintendent Nicholas J. Dyno was committed to engaging the district in a comprehensive, multiyear curriculum-design initiative that had been carefully laid out with the assistance of Larrilee Jemiola, director of the Peconic Teacher Center, which provides training and resources for teachers. Teachers on special assignment—Kathryn Schreck, Virginia McGovern, Kimberly Milton, John Wendt, and Sean Zay—served as curriculum liaisons, facilitating the design process with teams of teachers.

In the initial stages of the project, the curriculum liaisons worked with district administrators to examine the district's vision and mission statements as well as evidence of the ways in which the district communicated what it valued. District administrators included Julieanne Purcell, executive director of instructional technology; Nancy Wicker, coordinator of instructional practices and staff development; and principals Jaime Bottcher, Tim Frazier, and Brian Zahn. Their examination resulted in the development of the following criteria to guide the design of the Southampton curriculum:

A quality curriculum that educates students in a safe, supportive environment and equips them with the knowledge, values, and skills to become responsible citizens in a dynamic global society—

• Is accessible to staff, students, community.
• Aligns to content and process standards.
• Provides all students with the opportunity to meet standards.
• Includes different assessment types and moments.
• Actively engages students in their learning.
• Represents all stakeholders.
• Incorporates an interdisciplinary approach.
• Addresses dispositions.
• Allows students to engage in service to their community and/or each other.

The criteria provided a way for Southampton to hold the curriculum accountable to the district's values. It would not be possible for Southampton to address all the criteria from the start, but knowing what the expectations were for the curriculum provided a road map for how to achieve them.

Connecting to the Elements of a Curriculum That Matters

The creation of criteria to guide curriculum requires thoughtful reflection about what schools want for their students. As explained in the Introduction, the framework presented in this book provides a way to recognize the necessary elements that build an equitable curriculum. To maximize their impact, the elements need to be examined individually and then collectively for successful implementation in the classroom. Although the elements themselves are not optional, schools do have options about how to approach them. This flexibility is how schools personalize curriculum to their community. If you examine Southampton's criteria in terms of the elements of a curriculum that matters, as shown in Figure 1.1, you will see how they align to the elements.

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Figure 1.1. Example of Alignment Between Curriculum Elements and District Curriculum Criteria

Elements of a Curriculum That Matters

Practices: The applications of an idea, a belief, or a method to construct understanding; often associated with specific disciplines but frequently found to be applicable across disciplines.

Criteria/Evidence from Southampton School District

• Aligns to content and process standards.

* * *

Elements of a Curriculum That Matters

Deep Thinking: Thinking that allows for application, extension, and creation of new ideas rather than a general understanding of content, knowledge, and ideas.

Criteria/Evidence from Southampton School District

• Incorporates an interdisciplinary approach.

* * *

Elements of a Curriculum That Matters

Social and Emotional Learning: Learning that includes developing an understanding of one's self to achieve personal goals, understand and appreciate others, self-regulate, develop relationships, and make good decisions.

Criteria/Evidence from Southampton School District

• Actively engages students in their learning.
• Addresses dispositions.

* * *

Elements of a Curriculum That Matters

Civic Engagement: Active participation as a local, state, national, or global community member. Civic Discourse: Successful participation in conversations with those who do not hold the same view or opinion and to learn from the experience.

Criteria/Evidence from Southampton School District

• Allows students to engage in service to their community or each other.

* * *

Elements of a Curriculum That Matters

Equity: Addressing the individualized attributes of students (e.g., culture, race, gender, ability, language) so they can engage in their learning, and eliminating those practices that prevent students from reaching their full potential.

Criteria/Evidence from Southampton School District

• Is accessible to staff, students, community.
• Provides all students with the opportunity to meet standards.
• Represents all stakeholders.
• Includes different assessment types and moments.

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Not all schools will have the same starting point or design approach. Southampton began with criteria for their curriculum, which led them to an examination of the elements during the design process. When teachers participated in professional development, th...