Cycles
One of the wonderful things (yes, there are some) about my place of employment is that we are known for actually testing our curricula in actual classrooms with actual teachers and actual students. (Seriously, it's kind of horrifying to think of the number of programs on which school districts spend millions of dollars that do not do this.) After we go and teach the stuff ourselves to try it out, we then send every unit out for a national field trial. This essentially means that we mail some teachers a box of materials, a giant binder, and a bunch of tests -- cold turkey. In return, we get mountains of feedback about what worked and what didn't.
Typically, the original developers of a unit are not assigned to rewrite that same unit based on the teacher feedback. This is simply because it is human nature to become wedded to what one has written and to lose the ability to look at one's writing objectively after one has -- just for example -- spent half of the hours one was supposed to be on vacation on it, scribbled notes about it on bar napkins, or written large parts of it while nursing hangovers. One tends to get attached.
Despite this policy, however, I have been tasked with rewriting a unit for which I was one of the original developers. This means that for the past week I have been poring over feedback from teachers I have never met about curriculum materials I wrote during the first few months at my job. Some of the feedback is a little harsh, but I am trying hard not to take it personally. After all, I have had much worse, much more immediate feedback -- no one is throwing a chair at my curriculum. No one is vomiting on my curriculum. No one is running away from my curriculum. This is an improvement over my previous curriculum development attempts ("please, please, write down something. ANYTHING. Okay, just don't eat the paper and I won't call your parents").
The good news is that teachers, all in all, received almost everything pretty favorably. Students tested well in most areas, and appear to have learned a few things. I don't think we even made any students cry (although there were many unfortunate reports of groaning). However, there was one comment that truly slayed me:
Question: What would you change about this curriculum if you were to teach it again?
Answer: I would cut out all of the unnecessary language arts material*. Great science lessons!
Uhhh...what part of integrated science and literacy curriculum did you not understand??!?
* = everything I wrote
Typically, the original developers of a unit are not assigned to rewrite that same unit based on the teacher feedback. This is simply because it is human nature to become wedded to what one has written and to lose the ability to look at one's writing objectively after one has -- just for example -- spent half of the hours one was supposed to be on vacation on it, scribbled notes about it on bar napkins, or written large parts of it while nursing hangovers. One tends to get attached.
Despite this policy, however, I have been tasked with rewriting a unit for which I was one of the original developers. This means that for the past week I have been poring over feedback from teachers I have never met about curriculum materials I wrote during the first few months at my job. Some of the feedback is a little harsh, but I am trying hard not to take it personally. After all, I have had much worse, much more immediate feedback -- no one is throwing a chair at my curriculum. No one is vomiting on my curriculum. No one is running away from my curriculum. This is an improvement over my previous curriculum development attempts ("please, please, write down something. ANYTHING. Okay, just don't eat the paper and I won't call your parents").
The good news is that teachers, all in all, received almost everything pretty favorably. Students tested well in most areas, and appear to have learned a few things. I don't think we even made any students cry (although there were many unfortunate reports of groaning). However, there was one comment that truly slayed me:
Question: What would you change about this curriculum if you were to teach it again?
Answer: I would cut out all of the unnecessary language arts material*. Great science lessons!
Uhhh...what part of integrated science and literacy curriculum did you not understand??!?
* = everything I wrote