I remember my first years in the classroom…..swimming in standards and text books and lesson plans and IEPs and assessments and test data and all of it. I remember feeling pulled in a bazillion different directions. It was incredibly overwhelming most of the time, and I longed for a target and some sort of way to measure whether or not I was hitting it. I hope that as teachers start making use of tools like formative assessments, they will feel a greater sense of mastery over all that they are confronted with.

With the inclusion of formative assessment building and processes like collaborative scoring, it seems like there is a possibility that something that often ran the risk of pitting teachers against each other–assessment–now shows tremendous promise as a tool for bringing them together to find solutions that will help kids and discover what sense can be made from it all. It makes me want to head back into the classroom myself, sometimes.

It’s a whole new world out there.

The History of the Project

The call for the creation of a deeply aligned, regional English Language Arts curriculum came from various members of the Erie 1 BOCES Instructional Development Advisory Board. This board is compromised of district-level administrators who oversee the development of local curricula and Associate Superintendents for Instruction from across the region. The process itself was conceptualized by Fenwick English and Betty Steffy and illustrated in their book Deep Curriculum Alignment (Scarecrow Education Press, 2001). During the fall of 2005, members of the Instructional Development Advisory Board worked with Dr. Jan Jacob, a former Superintendent of Schools with extensive experience in the process, to better understand the benefits of working toward a deeply aligned curriculum and to define a concrete process for doing so.

Phase I of the Project: Defining and Unwrapping High Frequency Performance Indicators

One of the founding premises of Deep Curriculum Alignment lies in the understanding that written, taught, and tested curricula must be tightly aligned in order to best serve students. During Phase I of the project, approximately 100 teachers from the Erie 1 BOCES region and surrounding areas gathered together to learn more about the New York State English Language Arts assessments and standards. These teachers began by identifying which Performance Indicators were linked to “high frequency” items on the assessments, historically. As they studied the longitudinal trends in testing and uncovered those Performance Indicators that were tested most often, it became apparent that the identified skills were not arbitrary in nature. In fact, it became very clear to the teachers involved that the high frequency Performance Indicators were some of the more vital skills that all good teachers need students to become proficient in. During this phase of the project, teachers were also exposed to Douglas Reeve’s conception of Power Standards and challenged to understand how the high frequency Performance Indicators present on the New York State English Language Arts assessments might begin to help us define what is most vital in our own curriculum….not because it simply shows up on the assessment, but quite possibly because the assessment might actually be testing many of the skills and understandings that everyone agrees are most important.

Once the high frequency Performance Indicators were identified, teachers worked together to revisit and deconstruct the assessment items mapped to these Performance Indicators at grades 4, 8, and 11. At the conclusion of Phase I, teachers had a clearer understanding of the types of text that students were challenged to read (content), the manner in which questions were posed and responses were given (context), and the level of thinking that each item demanded (cognitive load). Most importantly, teachers uncovered a host of embedded literacy and thinking skills that students needed to have at their disposal in order to perform well on these items. In this way, simple Performance Indicators were unwrapped, and the complexity of the items and what they demanded of students was more specifically defined.

Phase II of the Project: Articulating a Scope and Sequence

Phase II of the project challenged teachers to revisit the high frequency Performance Indicators and those embedded literacy and thinking skills uncovered during Phase I. Working groups, compromised of K-12 teachers, defined a clear scope and sequence for these embedded skills, ensuring a type of precision alignment that would provide for effective scaffolding across all grade levels

Phase III of the Project: Creating a Deeply Aligned Curriculum

Phase III of the project will bring teachers back to the table to begin building grade level curriculum that is tightly aligned to the scope and sequence articulated in Phase II. Larry Ainsworth will be working with members of our group and our region as a whole to guide us in the development of common authentic, formative assessments at each grade level. This will provide educators across the region with essential pieces of curriculum that will help students perform well not only on the New York State Assessments, but in the classrooms they are trained in and the world that we will leave to them as well.

This final phase of the project will serve to demonstrate this group’s belief that preparing kids for New York State Assessments has little to do with skill review books and practice testing. Good test preparation looks like good instruction: it is engaging, creative, rigorous, and rich with varied opportunities for success.

Angela Stockman

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to listen to him speak at the closing session of the Western New York BOCES High School’s New Face Conference in Ellicottville. Truth be told, I was not looking forward to this. Having spent three days having every last brain cell that I possessed pushed to its absolute limit, I was more than ready to hop in the car and head for home, where the most cerebral thing I planned to do was order a pizza and celebrate the fact that my children survived three days at home alone with their father (a situation that might have forced me to go completely postal).

I’m glad I stuck around.

Peters’s message was a simple one: in order to teach your students, you must first come to know them…deeply. Having accomplished that task, you can then go about the business of inspiring them to learn. Sounds simple, right?

Um…………maybe not so much. Of course, we all strive to do exactly what Peters spent an hour motivating our group to do yesterday. Contrary to what some people may believe, most of the teachers that I work with each year have the best of intentions. I know very few who seem to be in the field simply because they would like their summers off.

Schools can be toxic places. Not only for students, but for the teachers that work in them as well. Ask any teacher at the secondary level what a typical work day requires of them, and they will mention the realities of full class loads that amount to 140+ students per day. They will tell you about class periods that might last as little as 35 minutes—on a day free of assemblies. They will reflect upon the weeks of instruction lost to test prep that they feel pressured to fit in. They will tell you about the students they can’t reach, the parents who don’t care and the ones who care more about their child’s “self esteem” than they do about holding the little darling accountable for anything. There are teachers who will tell you that they have to fight to secure necessary resources for their classrooms. I have a friend who teaches at the elementary level who has spent the last fifteen years of her career purchasing toilet paper for the restroom in her wing.

The reality is this: teaching demands so much more of a person than the effective construction and execution of a lesson plan. Teaching requires confronting all of the issues above…and many more. And it requires doing so in isolation, much of the time. Teachers spend their days in classrooms, fighting the good fight, alone.

Yesterday, Stephen Peters asked a room full of educators to recall who their favorite teacher was and to remember exactly what it was about that teacher that made them so memorable. We all had the same story to tell, and I’m sure you can guess what was shared. Our favorite teachers were the ones that made us feel like we mattered. Our favorite teachers engaged us, and they were able to do so because they knew us. And they came to know us because they genuinely respected us. Even when we didn’t bring the very best of ourselves into the classroom each day. Even when we refused to pay attention, forgot our homework, or responded to a finely crafted lesson with supreme apathy. Our favorite teachers kept right on trying, in the face of that.  They knew it was part of the job. Some of them even knew that it was the best part of the job: turning kids on to learning, in the face of all of that negativity.

Our favorite teachers let us be human, with all of our flaws, and they inspired us to want to do better. It wasn’t about meeting their agenda, so that they could feel like teacher of the year. It was about inviting us to the table, and making us feel included, no matter who we were or where we came from. It was about making us feel like we COULD do it. It was about respecting us for trying our best, even when we didn’t perform as well as we wanted to. Because doing our absolute best was and still remains the highest standard in this standards-based world we teach and learn in today.

Above all, it was the absence of judgment, shame, and perfectionism. It was the absence of fear.

Peters’s message and his personal story resonated with all of us in the room. But one piece of that message meant a great deal to me as a former teacher and as someone who spends her time training teachers today. And I’ve been wondering this: How much more effective could teachers be if those in positions of leadership in their buildings and districts and regions and states left their assumptions about teachers aside and truly took the time to inspire them? To respect them? How much more effective could teachers be if they entered their classrooms each day knowing that they were not going to be judged, shamed, or subjected to perfectionistic standards? How does one do their best to inspire teachers? How do we go about inviting teachers back to the table that so many of them have walked away from?

I think that these are important questions that people in positions like mine need to grapple with. Because the fact of the matter is this: our favorite teachers treated us like worthwhile human beings. It was that simple, and it was that complex. For a brief but very important moment yesterday, Stephen Peters suggested that educational leaders at all levels might begin to treat teachers in the same way. My guess is that this has always been their intention all along. My guess is that they would appreciate being humanized themselves.

I began this blog as a participant in Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s cohort at the High School’s New Face conference. I honestly haven’t given a whole lot of thought as to how I might use it as a tool for teachers, for staff developers, or anyone else who might be reading. But my hope is that I can create a tiny space here in this ocean of information that might be of service to educators out there who are thoughtful and interested in improving their practice. A place for all of our favorite teachers and those who are striving each day to become that teacher for the students they work with every day.

So…welcome! I am excited about growing this blog into something useful.

Angela Stockman