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Essential Curriculum for Achievement
--Mike Lindblom, Seattle Times*
The fact that you have produced this level of accomplishment with such young kids is incredible."
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Essential Curriculum for Student Achievement All public schools have the potential to perform miraculous feats: They can introduce students to the satisfactions of acquiring and applying new skills (see Mastery Learning Writing Curriculum ); They can lead students forward to surmount new challenges that are built upon previous learning; And they can help students piece together their understanding of a fascinating world. When learning activities are connected from class to class and from year to year, and when what "has been done" is a platform that can be applied to "what needs to be done," then students know that what happens in school is essential. Because they are at the center of a continuous learning journey, their classroom experiences are imbued with value and meaning. And because they are frequently called upon to demonstrate understanding of the linkages in the learning sequence, students acquire the pride and self-confidence that comes from knowing and from mastery. An essential, seamless curriculum is crucial for student success. Yet, in most secondary public schools, teachers often practice without knowing what their neighbors in the next classroom are doing. Within large high school academic departments, authentic agreement about the skills, competencies, assessments and learning sequences that should be emphasized by all teachers at each grade level are rare. Within these same departments, clear linkages between courses, concepts, high quality instructional practices and learning activities--say between 9th and 10th grade--are almost non-existent. Confirmation of this can be found in the lengthy course descriptions that are on file in Curriculum & Instruction offices at the district level. The cut & paste of learning expectations from course to course is de rigeur, and often creates an illusion of coherence and instructional quality from teacher to teacher and classroom to classroom. How do we create schools and curricula that are "essential?" What are the keys to dramatically improving school effectiveness? Two important tasks must be accomplished. First: Departmental teams must become engaged in the task of identifying their values, their expectations, and in crafting a curriculum that is not a random sequence of courses, but a well orchestrated assault upon fundamental competencies and essential questions--a coherent three to four year design that focuses on developing a student who has the knowledge, experience, capabilities and intellectual temperament that the program has described as its outcome or goal. This refashioning occurs when teams are engaged in the task of asking questions like: What is important? What knowledge and capabilities do we want our graduates to have? How can we design learning sequences and activities that will logically and deliberately lead to this end result? What key skills and essential understandings must be taught and reinforced at each and every level by each and every staff member? Second order change requires staffs to answer questions like these; and then to commit without reservation to following through in support of each other as the program goes forward (see Improving Instructional Effectiveness). Second: Teachers must be introduced to--or re-learn--instructional strategies for student centering their classrooms. They must learn to create authentic learning experiences for all students, and they must accurately assess whether what they have taught has been learned--and can be used--by their students. In sum, essential learning is imaged as a ladder or scaffold: an ever unfolding basis from which all new learning emerges. To use an example from the humanities content area: a work such as Beowulf wouldn't be taught merely because it was an early work, or because it was one of the teacher's personal favorites, or because it was on a college reading list. None of these alone would be a sufficient justification for teaching the work. Instead it would be taught because it was an advanced commentary on previous learning experiences, and because it developed anew key ideas that would be carried forward to other works, as well as carried forward to future years. It would be embedded in a niche in a curricular sequence because it was essential for it to be there. To arbitrarily remove it from this location and place it somewhere else would be analogous to removing a species from an ecosystem or a food chain. This is the premise behind the two year humanities curriculum that I offer on this website.
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