Schools and curriculum

Okay, you asked for it, Solo, but I'm starting my own blog entry so as not to feel guilty for standing on the soap box in yours. You posed the question about schools, and I’m going to try to reply as calmly as possible without whining or curling into a fetal position.

My background: I have taught 6th graders through adults, ESOL to gifted,  in both Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale) and North Florida. I took a pay cut and left the public high school system a few years back. This was strictly a quality of life decision. I like teaching and interacting with my students constructively, and I hate mountains of paperwork and rigidly timed schedules.

Are Florida schools that bad? Yes and no. How’s that for a non-committal answer? You all brought up excellent points that deserve more time, but today I’ll handle curriculum alone.  This is long enough as it is!

The intent: Florida’s curriculum in K-12 is based on the Sunshine State Standards. As many of you know, these standards are the basis of knowledge that the FCAT tests, at least in reading, math, language arts and now science. While they are fundamentally sound, they are practically impossible to understand if you are looking for what you need to teach your students. (Google them up and try to read them) I understand that the science standards are now much improved. The language standards list skills, but really provide no useful list of concepts and vocabulary and achievement levels for each grade. ie “Students will understand that texts are used for a variety of purposes” Ummm okay. Now what? This is deliberate; writers of the standards wanted to avoid forcing teachers into lock step, teaching particular lessons on specific days, and teaching lessons who students who have already mastered a concept.

The reality: Guess what many Florida counties have done? Prepared a lock step lesson plan that teachers must follow. Students will theoretically be learning the same lessons across the county on the same day. The county has organized the order in which my son is to learn his math lessons – forget that when they reorganize the chapters in the math book, he’ll end up with questions on a chapter test reflecting something he hasn’t learned yet. His teacher does the best she can with it.

The vagueness of the standards forces teachers to either invent their own lesson plans for every single concept or rely on texts for every aspect of the class. Some of these textbooks are well written, some aren’t, ALL are very expensive - $60-75 a book, if I recall correctly from my time as department chair. That's not $60 a student, but $60 per student per subject. This is why some schools don’t hand out texts to take home (which I heartily disagree with); they’re too expensive to replace, or they can’t afford a book for every student, so teachers only have class sets.

You're not tired of reading yet? Okay.

Politics:  People in the community have a lot to say about what we should teach. I won’t rehash the evolution argument; you can find it on the other blog. I have also been told that I “shouldn’t” teach certain books that I taught in Broward, (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, off the top of my head) because they had been challenged by parents or organizations. I was also told that we are to pretend that “sex doesn’t exist” in Clay County (schools) so we won’t have teen pregnancy; I’m here to tell you, that hasn’t worked. I don’t feel attempting to hide information people find distasteful from the students is very productive.

And schools are also a dumping ground for every pet project legislators come up with. They tell us how much PE time kids need to get, then they say they must have 90 minutes of sustained reading. Fight violence, support abstinence, put “In God We Trust” posters on the wall to remind them they’re in America, teach about the constitution on September 18th. Is it any wonder we don’t have time to teach reading or history?

Is it bad? Yeah, it’s pretty rough out there. Are Florida schools worse than others? Some yes, some no. I know one teacher who cut her American Lit curriculum in half when she moved to Bay County from New England mostly because she had low income kids who couldn’t handle reading Thoreau. Some states don’t nanny the teachers, but others provide even less funding. Every state has its own issues, some of which hamper student performance more than others. Some problems you can't measure as easily. It’s all a matter of what your kid needs and what you are able to get for him/ her. Though I'd like to see my son challenged more, so far, he's fine.

Ask me about facilities, parent/ teacher relationships, administration/ teacher relationships, the FCAT, funding, and anti-intellectualism another day. I’m beat and you must be tired of reading by now.