Revolution... One Step At a Time

I handed my students a content map. It has essential questions I hope to challenge students with. It has major understandings that I intend my students to absorb and internalize. It has skills I expect my students to improve and build upon. It even has a vocabulary list of content related words.

I was quite proud of this content map as I passed it out, having worked on it over the summer. I’d been looking forward to sharing it with my students as we set out on this unit of study together. As I read it with them, I told them, “Pay attention. This little piece of paper contains the questions and answers to 70% of any test I may give on this unit.”

Granted, content maps aren’t just for students. They provide continuity among grade levels. They set a foundation of instruction and objectives which can then be supported. They allow for some degree of equity in terms of what all students are learning. They are helpful to support staff, ESL, paraprofessionals, and parents. The kicker is that they are required.

Such a wonderful document for everyone else, why not share it with my students? A bit novel perhaps, but you know, it’s just the kind of teacher I am. No secrets. Laying it out there. Just giving it away! They’ll eat it up and love me for it.

So, why do my students not remember that valuable piece of paper from two days ago? Why do I see it crumpled at the bottom of a backpack, in the recycle bin, and left on a desktop after class?

Easy enough to say I should have given my students the opportunity to help create the essential skills and understandings for the unit. And easy to suggest that I provide some choices to students regarding what they are going to learn. However, right now I don’t have the fortitude to enact a paradigm shift of student-centered curriculum design. The inertia of the current system, the steady stream of daily tasks, and the reality of tomorrow’s lesson plans make the chances of this one man’s heroic stand pretty much nil.

I thought I was doing my little part for the revolution by passing out the content map to my students and sharing it with them. But my students did not catch the spirit. That’s the catch.

Tomorrow, I'll pull out the content map again, and try to involve my students with it in something more than a cursory way. Is there a found poem in it? Maybe a comic strip. I’m wondering if a couple of students can make a quick game of it.

The short of it is, I need to resolve that every document I give to students is, or becomes, meaningful to them. That, or don’t give it to them. I like that idea.

I’m taking suggestions on how to make documents meaningful. Not just the ones students like. The one's they need.