"If Only I Could Remember Those Key Concepts"
I’ve wanted to do a post like this since the middle of the semester. I was going to hold off on this post until about June but a recent epic Facebook commentary made me realize that this issue needed to be addressed sooner.
Before I go further with this issue, I just have to put it out there that I’m not the most vocal person in the world. However, as my anxiety levels reached a near boiling point last Monday evening, it’s safe to say that I share my classmates’ disgust with the unit plan project. This post will serve as my retaliation and for those in my EDS methods course you guys can feel free to post your opinions.
One final thing before I begin is that even though I will be making criticisms on some of my professor’s viewpoints, I will in no way belittle, or berate him. I’ve learned from past mistakes to never burn bridges and if you want to leave comments make sure they’re nothing less than cordial.
In my previous post, I mentioned that the hardest part about being a teacher is becoming one. Actually, if you think about it, most jobs feel that way. I’ve been in the education program for a year and a half. Between the three education courses I’ve taken and the student observations, it’s enough experience to warrant your opinion on the curriculum.
I find it rather funny that 85% of the stuff we’re taught about schools in EDS 201, 202, and 316, I have yet to witness inside a high school classroom. In EDS 201, we’re constantly reminded of the poor, underachieving schools in New York, which has no effect on future Staten Island teachers, since we don’t have a single school on the island that’s in danger of failing. Also a teacher will NEVER tell you, “I use the Vygotsky method to get through to my students.” I learned this during my first observation when the teacher said, “Ah! You must be starting out.”
“Conceptual Unit Plans” are another of these things you learn during your education curriculum that serves no useful purpose in a real life school setting other than to give you heart palpitations as you figure out how to draw key concepts and make text to self connections to 17th century Salem witch trials. For those of you who are asking, “what’s a conceptual unit?” In a nutshell, it brings all the ideas you want to cover within a set period as one whole, meaning you pick one big text and four other poems or short stories that relate to a theme and you just teach it. Everything is interlinked and it might sound good until you realize you only have four weeks to get through all of it. I know what you're thinking, "Sorry I asked!" So that’s the best way to define that since Google didn’t seem to know much about it. For those who do know what it is, please forgive me for robbing a minute of your life.
You might think that conceptual units are not such a bad thing and I can understand that feeling because quite honestly it sounds really good on paper. Then again, Communism looked like the perfect economic solution on paper and we all know how that turned out. The primary problem with conceptual units and unit planning in general is that they could really never hold to be accurately achieved in today’s classrooms. In fact, it’s very difficult to pre-plan how every lesson and unit will go because for the most part your students will make you decide how you will run your class. You’re going to have some days where students are going to be lost in the book they are reading and you’ll have to alter your lesson plan to make sure that they understand everything. For other days students might not care about the book, you’re reading so you might have to restructure and figure out a way to get them interested. Plus other things come up that need to be addressed. If you have a student, who’s in tears over a bad break up, you can’t pacify the issue with a group activity.
Now just because I’m against conceptual unit planning, doesn’t mean I see a problem with having a structured system. In fact, if you don’t use any type of structured system, then you’ll never make it out alive for your first year. Now there are different options you could choose in making your structured teaching plans, but I personally feel the best is a student set goals structure. This is when you allow students to create their own personal goals to reach at the end of a marking period or the school year. This gives you the opportunity to work your curriculum around helping your students achieve those personal goals. I feel this is much more realistic set up than giving students a bunch of key concepts, which they will never use again.
You’ll notice that I’ve been referring to unit plans as unrealistic and this has a lot to do with time management and the change of politics in the public school system. It’s nearly impossible to run a classroom like it’s a factory assembly line because each student requires different kinds of needs. For example, if I had to teach Romeo and Juliet to a regular class and ESL class, I would be able to complete it with both classes, but it would take longer with the ESL class. I also witnessed a middle school teacher reading “The Giver” with her “SP” class and a street lit book with her other classes. So if we have different expectations for different students then how can we incorporate a universal conceptual unit plan?
One of the things that irritated me was that my professor hadn’t taught in a New York City Public High School in over ten years. That ten years plus is a long time not to be teaching in a high school and especially since “No Child Left Behind” has changed the way English classes are run, conceptual units may simply just be suffering the issue of being outdated. Also, the mayor did not have control of the schools back when my professor was teaching in high school. So it doesn’t matter if you teach a conceptual unit or one book at a time, if you can’t make the right connections, you won’t be able to get a job in a school.
As I sum up my thoughts and feelings, I feel I need to tug at the heartstrings of this issue. I feel frustrated over the fact that all of this hard work had to be put into a bogus 29 page conceptual unit plan, which I nor any of my classmates will use once we receive our masters.
The only good thing that came out of the project is the fact that we all got to watch a group of great, potential teachers.
I hope that you'll find this argument compelling and hopefully one day we can live in a world where we won't need teachers to teach us how to be teachers.
This has been Ian K. Feldman speaking words of wisdom
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