This unit emphasized the critical importance of beginning with the end in mind. It is the idea that we cannot take a collection of topics and ideas and “teach” them, but rather that we must envision what it is we want our students to be able to do and to become, and then plan backwards from that vision. Using the standards to create this vision is the way in which we as educators ensure that our students truly are provided with relevant and rigorous materials and opportunities, and that this will result in a process of helping human beings realize their full potential vs being “successful” in conveying a set of information.
What I enjoyed most in the exploration of “unpacking a standard” was the call to develop a “big idea” which captures the essence of: why are we doing this and why does it matter? This helped draw me out of a somewhat technical mindset and into the real-world application of what I’ll be setting out to teach. Really, this brings to mind a vision of education in an almost classical setting – for instance, via the Socratic method. I picture a group of students who, with their teacher (me!), are getting to the bottom something together – not a group of students looking to one wise individual who is supposed to have all the answers. If I think about facilitating instruction in this way, I am flooded with really exciting images: students guiding students, students and teacher together wondering how best to go about handling a situation – in Spanish – and there being multiple “right” responses or ways of approaching the situation (vs just one). I think of a dynamic space, where students are building not only the tools of language application, but also the kinds of socio-emotional and technological skills (for example) that really exhibit 21st Century Learning Skills. I imagine students interpreting not only the language being used in a particular scenario, but also the tone and the cultural context which will drive their responses and participation in the scenario. I imagine students not only putting pen to paper or speaking aloud to express themselves in language, but also creating visual, audio and 3-dimensional representations of language that comes to life.
I know that when I entered my teaching certification program 20 years ago in Washington, D.C., this concept of unpacking a standard was at least conveyed t a high level and taught to me, but the reality is, I don’t actually think it was taught in a way that I internalized and applied it. What I think happened in the day to day then, over time, was that it was really easy to become a teacher who was activity- and content-focused — that’s often the direction I so frequently went. I was working to get my students to pass a comprehensive language exam with loads of vocabulary and verb conjugation, and so week over week, I taught chunks of vocab and verb tenses in little boxes: a unit on clothing, a unit on the body, a unit on food. Here and there, I would bring these content areas together in a project (such as a student-written book) but really the only way I applied an overlap of content was in on-going games (e.g. Jeopardy) and quizzes and tests. The result was that a fair number of my students achieved solid retention of the language that was necessary to pass a test, but I am very uncertain as to how many of them would say they grew as people because of my class, or how many would say they developed a passion for the study of language because of my class. And ultimately, really, how would I answer those two questions for myself? If I’d been teaching with a true focus on unpacking standards and planning backwards from a real-life goal of mastery, how much more satisfied might I have been personally in the work? And what might that have meant for my tenure in the classroom? As it was, I spent four years teaching 7th and 8th grade Spanish – but what might have come to be if I’d truly known how to approach my work differently back then? If I’d had/taken the space and focus to plan in this way — how might I have blossomed as an educator? What might that have meant not only for my students, but for myself, my peers in the school where I taught, and perhaps my larger sphere of peers in the education space? Although there’s no way to rearrange the past, I am grateful for the new opportunity to plant a new seed in my heart as an educator, and nourish its growth into becoming a world-class teacher :o).
The work of identifying the specific proficiencies I want my students to exhibit was both challenging and freeing. Doing so — and then NEXT considering the forms of assessment which would allow me to gauge their mastery of these proficiencies, and then NEXT considering which activities I would use to ensure that my students reach that mastery — is an order of operations that can be all to easy to flip into reverse when a school year kicks into gear. Engaging in this process emphasizes the value of a teacher having truly sacred planning time – initially over the summer, and then effectively scheduled into each week. This precious time must be guarded fiercely. It is time and space that every teacher must take responsibility for, but I also see (as the prospective school administrator that I am) how valuable it would be for a school to build in this time for teachers – and not only to build it in, but to create meaningful opportunities for teacher collaboration in this time, AND to follow up with teachers regularly to gauge how that planning time is being utilized so as to help provide ongoing guidance to strengthen its use. Doing so also conveys a true sense of value on this practice such that teachers know it matters. There is a quote that says “Attention is the purest form of generosity” and in this case, I believe that the attention that administrators place on the preservation and use of planning time, truly is generous as it gives back to teachers and students – and ultimately the entire school community – in kind.
Completing the work of unpacking a standard and backwards mapping also helped enrich my very understanding of the standards themselves. I loved and deeply appreciated the presentation we watched which provided the tangible practice of breaking each standard down by circling the skills, underlining the concepts or main ideas, and putting a dashed line under the context. It can be so easy to get lost in the middle of a standard, and to lose track of each of its valuable components. This process of making the words themselves almost like manipulatives to play with, helped me grasp the many moving parts which I might otherwise have missed. For instance, in the standard I utilized to backwards map “Understand oral communication in the target language: Respond appropriately to simple commands in the target language” – that word “respond” could easily be pictured as, “someone says something, you move your body in a way that demonstrates you understand it and can act on it.” Really though, by having to pull out and explore that word “respond” I started to uncover a much more rich definition: “Respond: Act, do or say something; Refrain from acting/doing/something.” And while THAT definition probably only scratches the surface, it brought me much farther along in conceptualizing how this skill would manifest in student proficiency, thus how it would be measured, and thus how it would be taught. I felt like the standard became something I could touch and see in a way that wasn’t possible when I just read the words on the page.
Ultimately I’m grateful for this unit, and am inspired by where it is leading us moving forward as a cohort. I’m excited to apply this learning to the lessons which I know are to follow re: lesson planning and instruction.
References:
- March 14, 2017 By Lindsey Surratt, December 13, 2016 By Lindsey Surratt, November 18, 2016 By Lindsey Surratt, November 15, 2016 By Lindsey Surratt, & July 29, 2016 By Lindsey Surratt. (n.d.). The North Carolina Healthcare Reform Digest. Retrieved January 30, 2018, from http://www.healthcarereformdigest.com/
- The Todd and Erin Favorite Five (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2018, from http://www.thetoddanderinfavoritefive.com/
trees do bend 