Professional Learning Conception #1 – Managing Curriculum

For clarity, I am broadly defining curriculum as the standards AND materials used for instruction.  If you teach a curricular program in which lesson plans are provided, scripted, or otherwise laid out, there is still plenty of room for teachers to adjust, personalize, and target instruction for current student needs.  Likewise, if you teach a “less-than-formalized” curriculum where you must create themes, gather materials, and write lesson plans, there is more than ample room for the act of collaboratively managing the curriculum.  In both scenarios, professional learning is unavoidably central when student needs drive improved instruction.

Consider this: You are part of a department, grade-level team, or content team, who realizes that students need to know X, but aren’t getting it.  In this case, there are pieces of your lessons that need to be adjusted for these students or they just aren’t clear enough for you to teach them consistently or explicitly on your team (YOU have data that defines YOUR problem.).   There is time allotted for professional learning, so your team decides you need to spend it adjusting the lessons that are keeping your kids from learning X.  Included in this, your team realizes there are fundamental qualities of pedagogy you must incorporate, but there are also new elements of content and instruction you need to acquire through research or engaging other resources and support from within your building, district, or beyond (YOU have developed a plan.) Immediately, you will teach those lessons or changes to your students. (YOU have implemented YOUR plan.) As part of this plan, you will review new data showing if your kids learned X any better.  (YOU evaluated YOUR plan.)  This is the problem-solving process enacted in curriculum management.

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I propose that any professional would be hard-pressed to go through this process without enduring learning that develops collective and individual instructional quality for students.  This probably doesn’t sound incredibly far-fetched to teachers who go through this process on a daily basis in reflecting upon their instruction, but puts it in the context of a team using dedicated “PD” time to learn for and about their students.  When these enduring understandings are then defined and shared with other teams and buildings, the learning itself becomes part of the research and support that informs others’ plans.

How do you see implementing this model into your work?  What might enhance or inhibit it for you?