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| Believing scripted curriculum would take books out of the hands of kids and teaching out of the hands of teachers, Sonoma Valley High School English teacher Dan Alderson staged a protest by reading aloud from Fahrenheit 451 before school each day. |
WhenSonoma Valley High School English teacher Dan Alderson learned that his district might force him to replace novels with scripted curriculum and pacing guides, he staged a one-man protest. Every morning before the start of school he stood by the flagpole, reading aloud from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The book depicts a future in which books are burned and people preserve them through memorization.
The symbolism of Alderson’s protest, which was highly publicized, was not lost on his administrators. The school did not adopt scripted curriculum, “but it could still happen here,” says Alderson, a member of the Valley of the Moon Teachers Association. “My contention is that it would take books out of the hands of kids and take teaching out of the hands of teachers. And to me, going through four years of high school without having read a whole work of literature is not really an education.”
As more schools enter Program Improvement under No Child Left Behind, scripted curriculum and rigid pacing guides are fast becoming the norm — especially at schools with many poor and minority students. Some teachers, like Alderson, are fighting back. In fact, his protest was emulated by several teachers in the West Contra Costa School District. Some of those who stood outside their schools reading aloud and whose schools adopted scripted curriculum anyway left to teach elsewhere, angered by their loss of academic freedom.
Jill Guerra, a teacher at Sankofa Academy in Oakland, left a teaching position at a Bay Area school after her first year because she found the curriculum too rigid. This is her second year teaching at Sankofa, a brandnew school with mostly African American students. Her students are encouraged to express their opinions on subjects like social justice, politics and the environment. They study problems in society and discuss responsible decision-making. And yes, they study the standards and take standardized tests, too.
“To me, part of teaching is empowering the whole child,” says Guerra. “Once they are empowered as human beings, they can do anything.”
“At my last school, I was told what time to teach each subject — the actual hour of the day — and how long to teach it,” she says. “But I won’t do that now, and if I have to, I’m leaving the profession. I’m not here to be a robot; I’m here to teach. And you can’t teach by reading a script. You have to feel out what your kids know and what they need.”
Not all teachers dislike scripted curriculum. Some credit it with raising test scores and improving academic learning. Others believe programs like Open Court can be especially helpful for teachers just starting out in the profession.
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| Paula Cogan’s first-grade class at Annie Pennycook Elementary in Vallejo takes advantage of a teachable moment when moths emerge from cocoons. The district’s lockstep pacing guides leave little time for such departures from the schedule. |
But a growing number of teachers — even those who embrace scripted programs or have learned to live with them — say the pacing guides and assessment schedules are too rigid, and they’re fighting to allow some flexibility and creativity back in the classroom.
Members of United Teachers Los Angeles recently worked out a compromise with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that would, among other things, give individual teachers more flexibility around curriculum.
The compromise agreement with the mayor, who initially sought total control of the Los Angeles Unified School District, went to the state Legislature in bill form and survived. It was recently signed into law by the governor. The bill’s language calls for teachers to be given an “authentic and central role” in selecting curriculum and instructional materials for LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the nation.
“We are not trying to throw out Open Court, but we’d like to modify it,” says UTLA President A.J. Duffy.
Scripted curriculum has some advantages: helping new teachers learn the ropes and allowing students to keep up if they transfer to another school in the district. “The downside is that after three or four years, teachers start to ask, ‘When can I get creative?’” says Duffy. “We would like to allow teachers to recraft these programs so that some of the core academic values can be taught in a more creative, interesting way. We want to bring back the joy of learning as well as the joy of teaching. We think a big danger with Open Court is that kids are losing the ability to think critically.”
He believes the program should be modified to free teachers from having to do so much assessment, which he says can eat up as much as 20 to 25 percent of instructional hours. UTLA members have been negotiating with administrators to reduce the mandated number of assessments for some time.
“I tried to make it really clear to the district that one reason we are fighting so hard for this is because we believe it’s imperative for children who are low achievers to receive the maximum amount of instruction,” says Duffy. “Instead of being involved in deepening content knowledge, the schools of highest need are bogged down with the most testing, prep time and the fine art of ‘bubbling.’”
Paula Cogan, a first-grade teacher at Annie Pennycook Elementary School in Vallejo, would also like to see some flexibility with scripted curriculum — especially when it comes to the pacing schedules. During a recent visit, the Vallejo Education Association member showed off a cardboard box in which moths were slowly emerging from cocoons. Her students crowded around the makeshift hatchery.
“This is a teachable moment,” Cogan said with a sad smile. “It doesn’t happen too much anymore.”
After just two minutes, it was time to read the Houghton Mifflin anthology of folk tales. According to the district’s pacing guides, she has to devote two and a half hours each day to language arts, one and a half hours to math, and squeeze in some social studies, science and physical education in the time that’s left.
“Houghton Mifflin has some wonderful material and is a really good program to use,” she says. “But this administration is demanding that it be taught lockstep.”
The problem with pacing guides is they overlook a key factor in helping children learn, which Cogan defines as “knowing what the children need, such as more time before they are ready to move on.” Children forced to move on before they are ready, she says, struggle academically and lose self esteem.
She finds it ironic that when the district first adopted the Houghton Mifflin program, company representatives came to the school sites and told teachers they should feel free to use their expertise and creativity to augment the program. However, that doesn’t happen. The district’s rigid schedule dictates that teachers in the same grade level be on the same page on the same day at the same time.
The loss of academic freedom is linked to the loss of freedom of speech, say some teachers, who confide that they are afraid to deviate from the script in any way, afraid to use supplemental materials, and afraid to voice their opinions about scripted curriculum, whether it’s at school or in staff meetings, out of fear that they will be punished or ostracized. Probationary teachers who can be terminated “at will” are especially afraid to question the status quo.
“My school doesn’t encourage any kind of discussion about Open Court,” says one longtime UTLA member. He and some of his colleagues are concerned about some obvious omissions from the curriculum, “but we don’t say anything. We don’t speak out or ask questions. I think one of the major concerns I have about the teaching profession is that teachers are being put in a position of silence.”
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| Jill Guerra, shown here with her class at Sankofa Academy in Oakland, lefther position at another Bay Area school because she was told what to teach, what time it should be taught and how long she had to teach it each day. ‘I’m not here to be a robot,’ she says. ‘I’m here to teach. And you can’t teach by reading a script. You have to feel out what your kids know and what they need.’ |
The one time he did speak out, Open Court coaches were sent to his classroom to monitor his compliance with the program.
This is not uncommon in LAUSD, says UTLA President Duffy. While many coaches work extremely well with teachers, others are referred to as the “Open Court police.”
Lysa De Thomas, a second- and third grade Montessori teacher at Margaret Sheehy Elementary School in Merced, fears her program will be replaced by scripted curriculum, even though her students are scoring well on standardized tests. Designed to teach many types of students via differentiated instruction, Montessori is a strand within the school that has scripted programs in other areas.
There were no problems until a new administrator arrived on site and targeted the Montessori program. When De Thomas, member of the Merced City Teachers Association, pulled her students’ scores to show how well they were doing, she was accused of cheating on the test. While she was eventually vindicated, De Thomas knows the creativity she is allowed is a departure from the norm, and worries that her strand’s existence is tenuous. “Sometimes I think that they will take it away no matter how happy the children are or how much they are learning.”
Her program’s mere existence threatens one-size-fits-all instruction.
