For a little over a year, the teachers and administrators of AOS 93 have been working to build a district-wide curriculum. The project has involved more than 1000 hours of work by teachers thus far, and will continue throughout the 2010/11 school year.
The district hopes to fully implement the new curriculum in the fall of 2011, said AOS 93 Curriculum Coordinator Sharon Marchi.
Last year, the district worked with more than 40 teachers on four curriculum committees to complete a district-wide curriculum for English/Language Arts, Math, Social Studies and Science. This year they will work on Health, Physical Education, Art and Music.
The new curriculum reflects an effort by the district to ensure there is unity throughout the district and that schools are meeting the grade level expectations of standardized tests such as the Maine Learning Results and New England Common Assessment Program.
The actual changes to the curriculum are seemingly fairly minor: For example ancient studies, which was taught in fifth grade in some schools, will now be taught in sixth grade in all schools as part of a geography unit; the math texts and teaching program are being unified throughout the district; in keeping with national standards, American history will be taught in fifth grade.
The bigger changes are the way teachers collaborate and an increased focus on ensuring that schools comply with national standards.
“This is a very strong school system,” Marchi said. “The quality of the teachers and leadership is fantastic, and this is just one more step to ensure that kids are getting a high quality education.”
When AOS 93 – which comprises Jefferson Village School, Nobleboro Central School, Great Salt Bay Community School, Bristol Consolidated School and South Bristol School – formed in 2008, it was required to create a unified district curriculum.
Work on the new curriculum began in earnest in the fall of 2009, and Supt. Bob Bouchard said the process, as well as the new curriculum, has been a benefit to the teachers and schools.
“It’s been a great chance to review what we have and unify things,” Bouchard said. “It’s a moving target, and I give the teachers and administrators that worked on this a lot of credit.”
One of the most important side benefits of the project has been that it’s given teachers the opportunity to work together,” Bouchard said.
“Teachers historically work alone,” Bouchard said. “This gives teachers a chance to get together and discuss what goes on in their classrooms, which doesn’t happen often enough. It’s important that teachers look at each other’s work, critique each other’s work and learn from each other.”
The new system should continue to provide an opportunity for teachers to learn from what’s happening in other classrooms, because along with the new curriculum, the district is also implementing new software that catalogues the overarching district curriculum and provides an opportunity for teachers to track the day-to-day work being done in their classrooms.
The Atlas Rubicon electronic mapping system is a digital catalogue, or map, of the district curriculum that can be accessed by teachers and easily modified to reflect future changes. The system also allows for individual teachers to create maps of the curriculum as it’s being implemented in their classrooms.
“That’s our next phase,” Marchi said. “It takes time, but the goal is to determine how the real curriculum that’s being taught in classes compares to the district curriculum.”
The district curriculum is designed to be a guide for teachers that dictates all of the broad themes and topics they have to cover during the year. The pacing and details of how those topics are taught is left up to teachers.
With the individual classroom maps, teachers and administrators can see how the curriculum is being implemented, and furthers Bouchard’s goal of teachers working together to critique each other’s work and learn from each other.
It’s unclear at this point whether the public will eventually have access to the curriculum maps.
The addition of tracking day-to-day lessons in the Atlas Rubicon system is one of the only points of friction that Marchi said she’s encountered in the process.
The problem for teachers, Marchi said, does not come from a philosophical opposition to the tracking, but rather comes simply from trying to find the time to take on the new responsibility.
“Teaching is a very demanding job,” Marchi said. “When you throw in new things to do, it creates stress in a profession where you already feel like you’re giving 150 percent.”
The district “realize[s] that teachers have a lot on their plates” and is currently working to find ways to free up time in teachers’ schedules for entering their classroom information into the system, Bouchard said.
The important thing for both Marchi and Bouchard is the district create a unified curriculum for all the schools that gives enough flexibility for teachers to create rich programs, while ensuring every student is receiving an education that meets commonly accepted standards.
“Assessment has become a big part of education,” Marchi said, “but we have to be careful that what we’re teaching and what we’re assessing are the same.”
This applies to state and national standardized tests, as well as tests within each school. As part of the curriculum development process, the district is seeking to unify some of the ways kids are assessed within the classroom.
During the curriculum development meetings, teachers discussed methods of testing they’ve used and then created some unified models, which are being implemented this school year. Once they’ve been tested, the teachers will reconvene to discuss what worked and continue to develop new methods of assessing students’ progress, Marchi said.
“It creates some great conversations among teachers, and helps make sure we’re working on developing high quality standards,” Marchi said.
Many aspects of the new district curriculum were developed based on a desire to ensure the schools are meeting the state and national grade level standards set out in standardized tests.
“The district curriculum doesn’t come from people’s favorite projects,” Marchi said. “It’s based on standards we have to meet.”
Marchi acknowledged common concerns that arise from what’s often referred to as “teaching to the test,” but said she “would be more concerned if the standards weren’t based on good education.”
“You can’t be so narrow that you’re only teaching to the letter of what’s on the tests,” Marchi said. “The district curriculum isn’t everything a teacher will teach – it’s just the core. It’s about creating a rich program that also hits on these key areas.”