A Plea Against Standardizing Our Art of Teaching

Teaching is demanding.  There is no debate about that.  The hours we are required to work during the school day are filled obviously with teaching students.  Contractual time not spent with students is often filled with meetings, lunch duty, returning parent emails, and on a good day, some planning time.  But that is only a fraction of the job.  Any teacher knows, that in order for all of those hours we spend with students to be effective, there are hours and hours of planning.  This might sound like a complaint, but actually it's not.

The hours of planning is what I love.  You see, one of the reasons I love my job the most is the creativity that I get to pour into my lesson design.  I truly believe that one of the most influential factors of my students' success, is their level of engagement.  That level of engagement doesn't just happen.  It is crafted.  I have to use my knowledge of individual students' strengths, needs, and learning styles.  I rely on data from assessments.  I consider which teaching strategies would be most effective and which curriculum resources to utilize. I spend hours of my time on Pinterest and reading other teachers' blogs for inspiration.  I read articles and occasionally books to learn more about effective practices and the latest research.  I love coming up with something completely different than I did the year before.  I love designing and creating materials (or searching on TPT when I'm pressed for time) that will engage my students.  Putting all of this together takes a lot of thought and planning.  This is the art of teaching.  The art of teaching is what I love.

I get nervous that with all the standardizing, that this will slowly trickle down to teaching being overly standardized.  Every teacher doing the same lesson on the same day using the same materials.  I sometimes laugh when I'm showing the interactive math tutorial on the smartboard because I feel like I'm slowly being replaced.  The little cartoon bird is doing it all for me.  Any person could walk into the class and pick up my manual and teach. (Or so it seems).

But, I don't open to page 37 in the teacher's guide and become a robot.  I don't think I could teach any more if I had to become a robot.  It might be easier, but it's not what's best for my students.  The latest research based math or language art series wasn't designed specifically for my students.  The extremely knowledgable and capable group of people that wrote these curriculums often have all the boxes checked for what seems like ideal lessons and units: diagnostic assessments, clear objectives, technology integration, differentiated centers and worksheets, formative assessments, summative assessments, and the list goes on.  But any teacher knows that it is much more complex than that.  You can be a robot, but you won't reach all of your students.

It is up to me to make the curriculum work for my individual students.  The curriculum is a resource to me-some more valuable than others.  But I don't let it rob me of the joy and the art of teaching.  I don't let it rob my students of engaging and meaningful learning.

I am so fortunate to work in a district that "gets it."  I have worked under several principals in my building and every single one of them supported, encouraged, and trusted their teachers to be the "experts."  Yes, we are required to use district adopted curriculum, but we are still given the freedom to make it our own for the benefit of our individual students.  

But I know not everyone is as fortunate.  I know there are other teachers who are under much stricter guidelines.  And I imagine those teachers are not feeling very energized and motivated.  And worse, I imagine that their students feel the same way.

My energy and excitement comes across to my students.  They can sense my passion for teaching and learning.  They love when I'm animated.  They love when we actually make applesauce to anchor our informative how to writing.  They love when I check out 30 nonfiction books on sharks from the library for us to apply our comprehension strategy of asking questions before, during and after reading because they can't wait to dive into those books and find the answers.  They love when I bring in a french fry (or more) for them to eat if they promise to remember the phonics rule for y at the end of one syllable words like fry.  They love when I give them differentiated task cards that I created just for them in small group math.  They love when I bring in beach balls to practice reading ea words.  They love when they are doing multiplication and division problems, but it's not anywhere in our math books.  They love when I make an effort to make their learning meaningful to them.

Yes, we do some of the workbook problems.  We follow the sequence.  We use the common assessments.  But we do so much more.  And we learn so much more.  Don't make me be a robot.  I know more than that cute, little cartoon bird. (Well, at least on some days:)