When I started this
venture as an instructional coach I knew the potential impact I could have on
supporting teachers in the classroom. I also knew that there would be
opportunities to work with teachers through professional development and one-on-one coaching cycles. What I
didn’t really foresee was how involved in curriculum planning I would be and
how accepting my colleagues were of me in this sort of role. In the Spring of
2018, I went with my future district (as I had not officially started there yet
and was still the Director of Technology at Carl Sandburg College) to a PD
training on #FutureReady. The gears presented to me in this training were
nothing that I didn’t already fully value and believe in, nor was the
conversation new to what my wife, myself, and my core group of educator friends
had been talking about since about 2011.
- After leaving my previous district when a technology initiative had veered off course and spending time in higher education, the workshop was revitalizing to me. Moreover, the structure of #FutureReady was what I was most interested in as I viewed it as a successful way to immerse my future staff in the model, specifically in the way of curriculum alignment. You can view the logistics and results of this entire rollout on this slidedeck of the UJHS #FutureReady Initiative if you are interested but in short, the model allowed to develop several things.
- It allowed
for us as a building to develop a strategic plan to deploy over the course of
the next three years.
- It allowed
me to meet with each department (except math because of our 15 snow days...ugh)
to look at that strategic plan and our current curriculum.
- We
started out the meeting with the expectation of confidentiality and without the
building administrator (he would join the meeting at a later time). This was
key in the process of gap analysis as everyone was given the opportunity to
express their thoughts. I was glad we waited until January to begin this
process to allow me the time to gain the trust of the teachers and to build relationships.
- The
strategic plan served as a catalyst for the restructuring of curriculum and the
meeting among department teachers to come up with a shared vision for what the
new curriculum would look like as well as accompanying instructional practices
- As I am in
every class, it also gave me the opportunity to identify potential
interdisciplinary units for our teachers.
- It gave me
an opportunity to share successful instructional practices that I have viewed
in my role as an instructional coach.
- Taking from
a process we used at Carl Sandburg College, each department will develop its
own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are SMART goals for the department
to implement.
All of the departments
that I have worked with have done an amazing job of identifying areas of
potential growth and have worked together to develop new ways to reach our
kids. Science has adopted the OpenSciEd curriculum and developed a three-year
plan for implementation along with department KPIs to reflect this strategic
plan. ELA identified gaps in their reading and writing, adopting 6 Trait
Writing as a common tool they will use to focus on areas of potential growth
within the writing. They were able to identify these areas when looking at each
standard laid out horizontally from 6th, 7th, and 8th. They are also putting
into place book study groups based on a theme for each grade level. 6th grade will
take on the theme of character building, 7th grade will address social justice
issues, and 8th grade will focus on heroes. To see how these book study groups
will play out, check out the social justice posts on www.instructionalcoaching.net. This
format was a huge success last year as far as student success and I can’t wait
to see it in practice again this year.
The department I would
like to highlight throughout this process is social studies. With changes to
the Illinois social studies learning standards, it took some time for us to
unpack what this new alignment would look like for UJHS. Mr. Westart and I
really began looking at this as early as August of 2018. The biggest change
that we wanted to embrace was that as we began to align the curriculum for
social studies, we wanted to construct a curriculum that really focused on the
skills needed to authentically do the work of a professional in the field. With
this focus shift on skills rather than content, we began looking at what those
skills would look like for us. We also began to take a look at gaps in our
current curriculum.
6th Grade:
Mr. Westart and Ms.
Wynne decided that foundationally for students to understand not only social
studies topics but the topics that are covered in each of our thematic areas
within ELA student needed to have an embedded knowledge of world cultures.
Also, with the state expectations in regards to civics in the middle grades, we
felt that dedicating our focus to such skills in a semester of 6th-grade social
studies would be essential. This will be the first year with this
alignment, and as we progress I would like to identify a few core driving
questions, as well as case studies in civics for the students to consider.
7th &
8th Grade
For 7th and 8th grade,
we had the revelation that we no longer needed to do things how we have always
done in the past. The typical social studies course in 7th and 8th grade begins
in pre-Columbian times and go chronologically as far as the teachers and
students can get by the end of 8th grade. This no longer needs to be the case.
The focus is on the skills that need to be acquired in the field of study. For
example, can students navigate through two primary sources, and develop an
argument when studying a historical topic. The topic itself is secondary to the
skills acquired. This is where Mr. Westart and I began to think critically
about interdisciplinary units and parallel content, specifically with the ELA
department. Because of the themes that ELA have taken on for next year with
their book study groups and that process, Mr. Westart began to explore the
opportunities that were available for his curriculum to parallel that of the
book study groups to allow both subject areas to play off each other.
For example, as the 7th grade
student begin to dive into social justice issues or as 8th grade students begin
to explore heroes in their ELA book studies, this is a prime opportunity for
Mr. Westart to supplement or expand on what students are learning there. This
format would allow Mr. Westart to restructure his courses to reflect what is
happening in our OpenSciEd curriculum, in which for each social studies
content-area we identify not only what skills need to be addressed, but also
what the driving question will be for the unit content. Students will then
develop their own questions to create a driving question board. These questions
will allow for student inquiry to drive student understanding of historical
topics and students will use historical evidence to draw their own conclusions.
We can also adapt what science uses for modeling their understanding to fit our
needs in social science. Students can compare and contrast multiple texts,
perhaps multiple texts written from both the perspective of the left and the
right and students can construct their own arguments from their own
interpretations. Mr. Westart has even observed the structure of the OpenSciEd
lessons in class and feels confident in deploying the same instructional
strategies for a different content area. I am excited to support Mr. Westart in
his efforts in this upcoming school year.
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