A Day with Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs
9.25 AM--The School Calendar
Already this morning, Dr. Hayes Jacobs has made the connection between how a doctor does and should do his or her job and how a teacher does or should do his or her job. She has repeatedly commented on how the current traditional school calendar has nothing to do with learning. She did correctly point out that the current school calendar is rooted in the industrial revolution of the late 19th Century in the U.S. She did not go on to state that it is not an agrarian calendar. (If it were based on an agricultural society, the kids would be off in September and October to help with the harvest and in school during the summer when there's not much to do except hope you have the right mix of rain and sun for your crops!)
While Heidi did not talk about this, here it is... Why is there no school in the summer as a result of the Industrial Revolution? It was too hot for the machines in the factories to operate during the summer, so factories were closed. Employees (parents) were home, and the children of working class parents could be home with them. Heidi's suggestion--There should be a "summer semester", not summer school. According to her, students in Canada have 195 days of school. Students in Western Europe typically have 205 days of school. Students in Japan have 220 days of school. Students in the U.S. typically have about 175 days of school. Who is going to learn more?
Our curriculum is really written for a 300-day school year. We have to pick what is really important. We need to use Power Standards.
9.35 AM--The Role of Technology
"When I picked up the NY Times this morning, it was already out-of-date. If I want up-to-date information, I go to the Internet--on my computer or on my phone. Teachers say, 'I don't really use technology.' What if I went to a doctor and he said, 'Yea. I've heard of the X-ray.'" (Everyone laughed nervously at this point!)
"Kids go out in to the 21st Century, and then, they go to school." Our schools are not designed for our kids' futures, looking out five or ten years. "If we want kids engaged, let's at least be in the 21st Century. We're almost 10% of the way through it."
9.35 AM--The Definition of Curriculum Mapping
Curriculum Maps have three basic elements:
- Content
- Skills
- Assessment
Curriculum mapping is:
- Calendar-based
- Focused on the operational curriculum
- Housed and revised electronically to provide direction (like an online map)
Curriculum maps are framed by essential questions that are based on key concepts, enduring understandings, and big ideas--like District 21's concept-based curriculum. Why? People retain more when they have these deep understandings.
9.50 AM--The Role of Technology in Curriculum
Mapping
The move from Professional Learning Communities to a
Global Learning Community--Curriculum mapping
software and online collaborative tools allow people
to work together and share expertise and units across
time and space.
9.55 AM--Why map?
To solve specific problems in a school or district
to:
- Gain information
- Avoid repetition
- Identify gaps
- Locate potential areas for integration
- Match with learner standards
- Examine for timeliness
- Edit for coherence
10.05 AM--How do we map curriculum?
The information below will be published in the
new book that Dr. Hayes Jacobs is working on...
Short-term upgrades--"Revision and replacement" of
dated curriculum and assessment types with more vital
contemporary forms. Every teacher should upgrade at
least one thing each year. For example, we replace a
paper with the development of a documentary or a
podcast. Begin using e-mail or Skype to collect
information. These replacements should be
technology-based for our current and future students!
Long-term upgrades--"Versioning" is the creation of
new versions of the programs and structures within
our schools as institutions. This is like coming out
with an entirely new operating system for a computer.
We should do this every few years.
10.40 AM--Electronic Portfolios
In Rhode Island, students are
responsible for completing an electronic portfolio
to prove their knowledge and skills in the
standards areas prior to graduating from high
school. This was implemented six years ago, so
students graduating from high school now will have
work from middle school and high school in their
electronic portfolios. Today, kids begin
collecting this work in the primary grades. There
are between 15 and 18 school districts currently
participating in the Rhode Island Electronic
Portfolio System based on the quick glance that I
just completed with a Google search. With a web-based
electronic portfolio, it is very easy to "see" and
"hear" student growth within a particular standard
over time. We saw a demonstration of a particular
student from a Rhode Island elementary school. You
do not need to be a reading specialist to see her
growth from year-to-year. You do need to be a
reading specialist and use other assessment tools,
too, in order to determine if she is "where we
want her to be" with her reading and if she has
shown "as much growth as she should have shown".
10.50 AM--Curriculum Mapping
Curriculum maps should allow us to "zoom in" and see
actual lessons and "zoom out" and see the big
picture of what we're teaching more generally
with fewer specifics. This should work just like an
online map, such as Mapquest, which allows you to
very quickly and easily see more-or-less detailed.
What are the questions that we have at our table
about curriculum mapping? (Rosemarie and I are
sitting with five other people...)
- Do we need to purchase some version of software to
do curriculum mapping? (Two individuals at our table
use Atlas Curriculum Mapping
Software.)
- What type of school culture do you have? Does it
promote these type of deep conversations that focus
on curriculum and learning?
- We need to think about the difference between what
teachers teach and what students need to learn and
have learned?
11.00 AM--Questions from the Crowd
- What is the role of homework? "Students
need to be doing the work, and families need to learn
how to provide the right environment for this (time
and space and student responsibility). In sports and
music, you do drill and practice when it is necessary
and where it is diagnosed. You only do drill and
practice when someone does know how to do this
differently. If you do have the skill and do drill
and practice, it's called busy work. Prior
to drill and practice, there should always be a
diagnosis of our need for drill and practice. When a
teacher marks up student work, who is getting better
at the work? When we do the work for the student, we
are not teaching."
"How do schools combat an anti-intellectual element
that exists in American society? Parents say that
they do not want their children to be too smart, to
be nerds. This is different than how culture
surrounds students and schools in other countries."
"We should set-up student/parent homework centers
rather than use study hall. Parents and students come
together and get support in helping students with
their homework at school, after school."
How do we target the needs of individual students?
- The students' ages
- The students' stages of development
- The students' learning characteristics
- The students' communities
- The students' aspirations
- The students' needs (background knowledge, skills,
social/emotional)
- Our District is embarking on a PLC initiative,
and we're going to devote lots of time to analyzing
data. How do we also have time for curriculum
work? "I believe that they are not at all
exclusive, but mutually dependent. You need to be
doing both of these together. Your data may show you
that your map needs to be re-drawn. The map always
need to be revised. Analyzing student assessment data
should be a major time saver when done in conjunction
with instruction. Likewise, if we just look at
curriculum mapping without ever paying attention to
student data how do we know if the map is taking us
where it should be. The Latin root of the word
curriculum is curricula, which means course.
What is the course that each child will travel to
learn the articulated skills and content
(knowledge/concepts)?"
- How do you get started with introducing
curriculum mapping with your staff? "Mapping
occurs at the building-level because that's where you
improve performance. It cannot occur at the
District-level. The District may coordinate
communication and provide resources and support, but
it is a building-based problem. So, what should
happen within a building? First, we need leadership
teams in each building. Structure conditions that
will make a difference in planning for and initiating
the curriculum mapping process. These conditions will
need to be based on the specific needs of the
students and teachers in a particular school. This
will vary from school-to-school. Then, the school
needs to create meaningful opportunities for
participants to be involved. Finally, long-term
professional development plans must be put in place
to support the process of curriculum mapping and the
technology needs of the teachers with mapping and
instructionally moving forward."
***
Gail Forshall just posted a really interesting
comment. One of the powerful facets of online
curriculum mapping would be how people in
building-wide roles can integrate instruction in a
meaningful and effective way. Additionally, in that
setting, core academic teachers and other educators
can shift the focus of meeting from what we are doing
to how we are doing it and how we are differentiating
instruction for individual students. This is where
the real action is in creating new opportunities for
kids to learn more.
***
11.35 AM--What is a concept? Why are they so
important for curriculum mapping?
Given that we have a concept-based curriculum in
place in District 21. This part ought to be good for
District 21...
Currently, Heidi is describing how we would teach
SYSTEMS across traditional subject-based
academic disciplines. For the concepts, we write
guiding questions, which she calls essential
questions. Regardless of terminology, at the end of
the unit, students will develop their essential
understandings in response to their ongoing study of
these questions throughout the unit. In planning the
unit, we identify the content and skills that will be
taught. Some choices do need to be made at this
point. Of course, we should identify our assessments
prior to beginning the unit.
***All assessments should have a noun. The students
should be asked to create a product or do a
performance. Good assessment is:
- A demonstration of knowledge/skill
- Observable
- Evidence of student knowledge/skills
- Clearly defined for students with rubrics,
checklists, and/or right and wrong answers
A short side rant from Heidi just ended. Bottom line:
"Kids need to be talking to learn--vocabulary and
content. Our classrooms are too quiet!" (She's right
about this! - JK)
12.50 PM--Back from lunch & learning
again
We're back underway. About 50% of the
people in the room work in schools and school
districts that are using electronic mapping software.
Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs is going to log in to one
teacher's map from one of these actual schools, and
we're going to improve her map this afternoon while
we work on our own maps. Now, we're reading pages
from Coaching Protocols for Developing Quality
Curriculum Maps. We are reading more about:
- Content-Content
begins with a concept, such as systems, patterns, or
interdependence. "If we do not use a concept to
initiate our content entries, then what we have are
random facts..."
- Essential Questions-Essential questions are engaging
for the students, include the concept, aligned with
standards, and tied to the assessment(s).
- Precise Skills-Desired or targeted proficiencies
that are defined with the use of an action
verb.
- Targeted Assessments-Targeted assessments always take
the "form of a tangible product or a temporal
performance. As assessment is something we can
observe, so our entries must take the form of a
noun."
Now, we are back to Dr. Hayes Jacobs at the front of
the room. She is showing us the curriculum maps of a
school in Westchester, New York that she has accessed
via Internet Explorer. She has made the blanket
statement that these pieces of software all have
quality behind them. Clearly, she is not selling a
particular piece of software. She believes in the
idea that underlies the use of such software. These
pieces of software include State Standards from
around the country, so a teacher can pull a standard
directly in to the curriculum map.
Instructional Aside from Dr. Hayes Jacobs
"We need to teach math as a language. Look at this
curriculum map. Do you see these action verbs?
Translate, translate, translate. The kids have to
define their math vocabulary if they are going to
understand the math."
1.22 PM--Master Class
We are now going to participate in a Master Class. We
are going to look at Emily's class. (Emily is a
teacher who is here today from some Chicago-area
school who uses curriculum mapping software.) What is
going to happen in the Master Class? Heidi is going
to interact with Emily on improving her Curriculum
Map. Our job, as audience members to the Master
Class, is to take notes on Heidi and Emily's
interactions--as they apply to us and our situations!
Then, we are going to be able to transition back to
our own map and revise it based on our notes of what
we've learned from them.
My notes for me based on their interactions--
Emily wants to focus on her assessments. I think that
most of our teachers would pick out assessment as the
area that they would also pick first from among the
choices of content, guiding questions, skills, and
assessments.
They are focusing on the level of specificity that
she has used in writing completing her curriculum
map. This reminds me of when we look at an assignment
as teachers and someone (usually not the person who
wrote it) says, "What does this mean?" Often times,
as teachers, we don't know what we are looking for in
kids' work. If that's the case, how do the students
know what we are looking for? As Heidi just said,
"Teaching cannot just be in the heads of teachers."
For teachers to implement really profound classroom
instruction, they need to be able to articulate
exactly what they are doing and why with different
students. Once again, Heidi just said, "I don't know
what you mean. I don't understand what you are
thinking and doing from seeing this." This is an
underlying premise of the National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards process, too. Teachers have
to write detailed entries because if they cannot
articulate what they have done and why, then, so
the thinking goes, they are not going to be able
to communicate it to students either.
Heidi felt that the soft-spot in this Curriculum Map
actually proved to be her content. Heidi believes
that the development of guiding questions, what she
calls essential questions, will significantly help
this. How many classrooms in District 21 are
effectively using guiding questions today? What's
more--we even have the advantage of having concepts
built right in to our curriculum.
1.45 PM--Mapping Software
***Want to know more about what software is
available? Curriculum Designers: Mapping
Software
2.00 PM--How do we begin working with
mapping?
Consider a range of different types of professional
development venues, including different strategies
for different people. Keep in mind that curriculum
mapping is easy for teachers to be resistant to...
Mapping requires teachers to share their actual units
and assessments. You need to consider individuals'
readiness for curriculum mapping and with technology
in how you create your professional development.
These various groups may include:
- Hands-on labs
- Small workshops
- Work sessions
- Online courses
- Focus on data; Use of "Mapping Mentors"
2.25 PM--How do you make decisions about
curriculum and teaching?
Who decides what gets taught? When do they make these
decisions? How? Heidi recommends that these decisions
are made by a single, site-based council. Agendas
focus on short-term upgrades and long-term upgrades.
To help with long-term upgrades, you may very well
implement task forces that oversee the long-term
upgrade. Once it is created and implemented, that
task force disbands.
2.35 PM--Two Types of Curriculum
Mapping
Diary Mapping--Like a doctor's chart or an athlete's
training log, you record exactly what you have done.
This will give you a record that you can use when you
analyze student assessment data to determine which
strategies did and which did not.
Projected Mapping--This is like a coach's training
plan in that you articulate out what you intend to do
in your units and lessons.
2.40 PM--Mapping Benchmark
Assessments
Benchmarks can be designed on multiple levels: State
tests, District assessments, and classroom
assessments. Schools identify the skills that need to
be developed and assessed. The most powerful
benchmark assessments are developed locally by
teachers. Benchmarks should occur when it makes sense
within the scope of instruction. Benchmark data
should be used to guide further differentiated
instruction. As a result, benchmarks are necessarily
different for different students.
Conclusion
The day just finished with a very funny YouTube video that
Alan November shows, too. It is about the movement
of technology from the scroll to the book. It is
in Norwegian, but there are English sub-titles.
(Remember, you can only watch this from outside
District 21.)
