Teaching Tip #42

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #42

Here is a blog post with a title that I just couldn’t resist clicking on:  9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should “Unsettle” Us by one of my favorite people in education, Will Richardson.

Elephant #6 – We know that curriculum is just a guess.

This is true for us in how we use Collections now.  It is structured and almost “teacher-proof” in that it gives us everything we need so we don’t have to pull in any outside resources.

Yet, when I took the Collections test, I did miserably on it . . . for someone who earned their masters degree in English!  Much of it was a guess.

In fact, this summer I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.  The last chapter from that book, entitled “Marita’s Bargain,” was actually in the senior Collections textbook.  As  I read it again, some of the guided reading questions popped into my mind.

And I realized they were ridiculous.  I don’t think I’m being egotistical by saying that I’m a skilled reader.  Yet, I didn’t read any of that chapter for any of the things Collections assessed our kids for or thought they should note.

That’s ridiculous.