What constitutes a successful curriculum…another very difficult and thought provoking question. When I consider my options for what I believe constitutes a successful curriculum I think of outcomes. More specifically I think of two different outcomes or goals that I would like to see schools produce. The first goal, which seems to be globally quite popular so I will keep it brief, would be the goal of producing intelligent and competent citizens who are ready to attend a facility for higher learning or are ready to enter the work force and be a productive member of society. So in this case, providing a curriculum that prepares students with not only “book smarts” but also “street smarts” would constitute a successful curriculum. Not only would students learn enough math, science, language arts and history, but they would also be given the opportunity to explore how the world really works. This curriculum would prepare students for a world that can be very competitive and it would also educate students and prepare them to be productive members of society.
This next concept of what constitutes a successful curriculum came to me as I was reading the article Lauded Harlem Schools Have Their Own Problems by Sharon Otterman and as I read Meier’s The Power of Their Ideas, I fear will be a bit taboo and may strike the nerves of those who are uncomfortable with the issue of which I am about to speak. Even though my first suggestion seems like a good equation for what constitutes a successful curriculum, I whole-heartedly believe that we are leaving out a large part of the equation. We are leaving out our students’ psychological wellbeing. Sure we can say that we take our students’ psychology into consideration when we think about what each student would prefer to learn or what makes them thrive, but I rarely see instances where we, as educators, offer our students psychological support. Granted this is a specialized position and frankly most of us are not qualified to handle these situations, but if we can feed our hungry students so that they can no longer be hungry and are more capable to learn and clothe our students who cannot afford snow pants and boots during our harsh winters, shouldn’t we be able to offer more regular support for our psychologically or emotionally struggling students? We also keep close track as to how much exercise students are getting each day, but we don’t build time into the day for our student’s emotional needs. A students emotional bank account has the same impact on a child’s day as the amount of food he/she has eaten and how much sleep they had the night before. I have numerous students’ whose parents are currently incarcerated. I have two students who lost their mom this year in a terrible accident. The list of shocking tragedies, as well as less shocking every day concerns, goes on and on. What better place to nip these issues in the bud than a place where the child must go 180 days a year (give or take a few). I believe that these issues need to be taken into consideration alongside a rich curriculum that is child-centered and follows the core subjects of math, science, language arts, history and specials because they are equally as important. This second possibility of what constitutes a successful curriculum encapsulates the mind, body and soul in order to send out into the world students who are not only competent and knowing, but who are also well adjusted (or at least better adjusted). Some may argue that this is an issue that should be kept at home, but sometimes there isn’t a home- in the physical sense and in the emotional sense. As we know, we are the gatekeepers. We can afford our students a world of possibilities.
Otterman’s article highlighted the importance and the success found by teaching each child, not children. Not only did the Harlem school make classes smaller for a better learning and teaching experience, but students were also provided with much needed health care for their Asthmatic needs. This is an inspiring idea. Not only did the school begin to care for the student’s classroom needs and their health, but the school also provided support for parents.
In general it seems like our education programs in the United States are too watered down. And it is evident that what we are doing now in schools is not as beneficial as it once was. It would be great to use the Harlem school as a model to reform our educational programs. We need to stop looking at schools and education as a business and start viewing them as an enriching life experience for all who are involved.
Resources:
This is the website to a school which is a psychoanalytic preschool. As stated on their own website, this is the philosophy of Allen Creek Preschool: “Allen Creek Preschool is founded on an understanding of healthy child development that is based on psychoanalytic developmental principles. We believe that early childhood experiences profoundly affect a person’s lifelong adaptive capacities, which emerge in the ability to love, to work, and to play. Understanding the inner life of children is of utmost importance in all that we do. “
http://www.allencreek.org/aboutus/mission.html
This is a program that supports the education of students as well as teachers about issues in mental health and how to seek change. This program encourages students to work closer with the school specialists in order to gain a better understanding of what students may be experiencing. This site also provides statistics regarding who needs help and for what reason.
This New York Times article discusses how many schools turn to sending students to the ER after mental health issues turn into violence. The article discusses how it is possible to take preventative measures in order to not need to turn to calling 911. It is also suggested in this article that the lack of support in schools can simply be related to funding issues.
This news article by The University of Northern Colorado’s The Mirror is about a festival that is thrown by an on campus school group to raise awareness of the importance of mental health and also as an effort to destigmatize the disease that so many college students are suffering from.
This a blog dedicated to Mental Health Awareness Day. This blog discusses the merits of “mindfulness” in schools.
Becky, I really liked how you were able to create two themes or goals. To begin, your reflection was easy to follow and well organized. I also felt you raised some excellent points at which I will address below. Thank you for giving wonderful insight.
ReplyDeleteYour first goal addressed the issue of having street smarts as well as book smarts. I see that you find it equally important to teach subject matter as well as how to be successful in the world. You mentioned that it is important to either produce students who are prepared for work or prepared for high education. It seemed your main point from this section was to produce successful members of society.
I couldn’t agree more with your first goal. I think it is so important to not only teach subject matter but have students who can apply these concepts in the real world. It seems schools have gone in a direction of teaching subject matter….and that’s it! Students then graduate, even from college, and get positions at which they are communicating and using critical thinking skills for the first time. Other areas I see students lacking is how to use technology in real world scenarios. A student can make a PowerPoint with transitions and creative clip art, but can said student communicate his/her thoughts? Can the student insert a chart that was created off of critical analysis? My question for you is how would you set this up? You gave a great foundation, but it would have been great to see an example of how this could be implemented.
Your second goal addressed another issue schools have which is not giving enough time to the emotional needs of the students. You had excellent support when you stated that we find time to feed our students or clothe them but we don’t focus on their emotional baggage. The main point I got from this section was to have a curriculum that enables the development of mind, body, and soul.
This is such an important need that gets dismissed often. As teachers we are given high demands of so many objectives to teach that we don’t have the time to help our students with emotional issues. Our counselors are so busy dealing with the higher behavior risk students that other student who need them just as much don’t get the needed attention, but I ask you, what are the jobs that get cut immediately? The councilor. This section of your paper really hit home with me as I have a student whose father passed away, the mother has a self -induced closed head injury and therefore is extremely irrational. This girl is alone when it comes to her home life. School is the only constant for her. What breaks my heart is that aside from talks her and I have after school or at recess, this 10 year old doesn’t have weekly meetings with the councilor. She is a well-behaved young lady and does not raise any flags so is ignored when it comes to attention from beyond my field. Why can’t she have meetings with someone weekly who will listen? This needs to be adjusted in all schools.
Thank you again for your well written reflection!
Becky
ReplyDeleteThank you for your nice article. Your introduction of the concept “the street smarts” versus the “book smarts “ was so smart. I would say also that for the students to learn “how the world really works” they would learn “ math, science, language arts and history”. It was just today when I sent my 6 years old child to the cashier in the store to pay for the merchandise and I just stood following him from away. I think this way he will learn something about how the world works but at the same time he will learn some math and some language arts when he talk to the cashier.
However, I find myself specifically interested in the issue of psychological support for the students. Because this issue touches a point which is directly related to my life. I completely agree with you in the importance of the psychological support of the students in the school. However, I would like to emphasize that, this should not be only to deal with the disasters that may happen to the child but also, should deal with the everyday psychological needs of the child. These every day psychological needs of the child is a very important factor in his overall performance. I can give an example from my second child who is in the kindergarten. He faces a problem that is he is a slow performer in any single task he is doing. So he needs a special kind of encouragement to finish every task he has to do. His teacher in the school is dealing with him in a very high degree of understanding to his nature. She is very patient with him and encouraging. So, she could manage to bypass the problem and he is advancing and doing better job. His mother at home also is dealing with him in a highly supportive manner. She realized that he is doing will when she links finishing the task with getting more time to play video games. I can imagine what happens if the teacher is not understanding or she is not well trained to deal with the psychological aspect of the child or the class is so big that she have no time to manage my son case. I think in this case my son should have been neglected and his performance should have been always deteriorating.
To take care of the psychological aspect of the children I think we need better preparation of the teachers. We need the teachers when they graduate from college to be able to understand and deal better with the psychological needs of the students. Also, the reasonable number of the students in the class would be very important to enable the teacher to deal individually with each child in the class. I think here we will need to refer to the Harlm school experience which tries to keep the low number of students in classes.
While writing my response to you, It was so amazing that I received an email related to what I am writing about. The email tells a story of an extreme case of failure of the school personnel to deal with the psychological state of a child. The story is about a 6 years old girl who got angry to an extent that all the school personnel were unable a manipulate the situation. Imagine what they did!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThey called the police for her. The police came, Handcuffed the girl and took her to the police station for at least one hour before her parents knew about the situation and went to receive the girl. “No comment”
ReplyDeleteYou can read the story here
http://www.change.org/petitions/justice-in-the-handcuffing-and-arrest-of-6-year-old-salecia-johnson?utm_campaign=iAYgUBfXSW&utm_medium=email&utm_source=action_alert
Hi Becky,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your work here. I think it beautifully sums up a semester of thinking and writing.
First off, let me say: bravo. Whether we call it psychological or even spiritual development and well being, it's important. You might even recall from the Nel Noddings piece in cycle one where she talks about the duty of adults working in schools to help kids in this way (and not just put it off on school psychologists, who can be, of course, helpful resources in this as well).
I think it is our primary duty as teachers--to help grow up. I mean that in the broadest possible sense. (If you have ever read the works of Vivian Paley, you know what I mean.) If it's one thing I learned in my own dissertation research, there is nothing that damages kids more than when they bring there problems to school, and the school turns its back. Kids need help sorting through all sorts of tricky things in their lives--this sorting out, if not the exact heart of the curriculum, needs to be co-equal with the more formal learning of subject matter we usually equate with curriculum.
Teachers, perhaps more than any other adult (aside from parents, and maybe clergy), hold immense power to heal and to hurt children. This needs to be continually recalled. I can't think of a more important piece of writing to emerge from a course on curriculum.
Thank you so much for your work this semester!!
Kyle