Reaction to UBD

As I was reading about understanding by design, the content made sense to me. A large reason is because my professors at RIC already introduced me to the idea without putting the formal name to the concept subtly being taught. For instance, during a reading about how different educational philosophers view education, my FNED professor made the point that we, as educators, need to be thinking about how to actively engage learners with the skills being taught so as to gain evidence of their understanding. Also, in my SED 406 class last semester the professor stressed that the goals should be one of the first items addressed when creating a lesson plan. In fact, the template he gave us for such an assignment had the goals put before the instructional part of the lesson plan. These are just a couple examples, but the first two stages of UBD (evidence and results) were regularly brought up in FNED and SED 406. Each time I agreed with the sound logic of these method because I want my students to learn well and not by accident as this author states on numerous occasions (The Big Ideas of UbD, 7). Despite this desire and slight familiarity, I still have issues conceptualizing this theory into the reality of a yearlong curriculum.  

One difficulty stems from the fact that I fell into the second "sin of typical unit planning" well before I reached section A of the assigned reading (8). Back in chapter one, the author gave a visual representation about how to prioritize the curriculum (10). At first, I thought “great this makes so much sense; of course I can easily do that.”  Then I thought about how much history content I have to also cover in a year and I became far less confident. During my recent observations at TS the teacher I was assigned to, who has been teaching for years, constantly struggled with staying on top of the required material. By the time I left, she was over 100 pages behind in the text book from where her administration wanted her to be. If an experienced educator still hasn’t figured out a good solution for this problem, how is a novice teacher expected to stay on task?

When I stop letting my anxiety take hold, I can see that the teacher I observed didn’t exactly follow the guidelines set forth regarding prioritizing information. To be fair, the teacher spent many days trying to increase the “enduring understanding” of her students by giving close readings and critical thinking assignments. However, there were plenty of other lessons she wasted covering topics outside the priority diagram outlined in Chapter one (please see page 10) just to appease administration. A prime example for this is when she spent two weeks on ancient Egypt and Mummies. I find this unnecessary because the political scientist in me thinks it is important to choice topics that allow the past lessons of history to be applied to the present. Try as I might, I can’t think of anything relevant about Ancient Egypt. I really just prefer spending the most amount of my time reading about WWI onward as those lessons have the most obvious impact on our current society (at least in terms of the United States, Africa and the Middle East are a different story). Yet, most people I talk to never reach these significant eras because the educators run out of time. This problem seems to be a curriculum planning error that would need to be resolved through a restructuring of each district’s History agenda. A few schools have done this by including current event electives, but not many. I just hope I am able to become part of the more progressive schools or help led a campaign to negotiate the curriculum with administration because I won’t be able to stand covering topics just to appease administration at the expense of significant lessons.

Keeping in line with my political science roots raised one last concern in regard to resources. Reviewing the nutrition lesson at the end of the first UBD chapter displayed how the teacher didn’t think his book was well equipped to use the entire time (17). I feel like a large portion of my assigned classroom book won’t cover what I want in regards to current event either. Now the author of Subjects Matter makes the point that a wide variety of generas be utilized, such as “newspapers, magazines, websites,” etc. (15). I will probably resort to these most often. However, I start to wonder how costly will my constant copying be. Should I just have students read everything online? Will that always be possible? Though most importantly, I wonder about what content I will provide my future pupils with to read.  This weekend, I came across a NPR blog about the plague and how its lessons could be applied to the Ebola outbreak (see below link). It was an interesting read and something I would like to incorporate into a class if I were forced to be teaching the plague like the teacher at TS, but then I would spend forever researching the perfect article to give my students. Maybe, with time, I will get better at choosing resources, but that is not the case at the moment. Yet, time in the teaching profession is an immensely valuable resource. So I can’t always squander it trying to find the absolute best lesson. So once again, I am left wondering how should I handle curriculum design and where do I compromise?

The best answer to my final question comes from the end of chapter one in Subjects Matter. Specifically when authors says that they hear everyone’s criticisms towards the new fast food unit and respond with the logic that, “we’re not saying…that this is where you begin” (14). In my head, I have these great lessons. However all great lessons, like the fast food unit, take time. I need to continue to move forward slowly and work past my anxiety in a progressive manner like I did in this blog. Furthermore, I need to pay close attention to the content of Subject Matters as the authors do promise that the pages after chapter one will “show how content teachers can take steps-carefully and thoughtfully toward more promising reading (15).” I hope they keep their promise!   

Link

1. http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/20/349271621/ebola-battlers-can-learn-from-venices-response-to-black-death