The Minimalist Educator Podcast
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 050: Simplifying Curriculum for Deep Learning with Christine and Tammy
Can the act of simplifying curriculum transform education? On this episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast, we promise you'll gain a fresh perspective on how decluttering the curriculum can lead to more meaningful and effective teaching. Joined by Christine, we unpack what curriculum truly means and scrutinize the various forces that shape it, from societal expectations to the avalanche of new educational programs. We weigh the pros and cons of purchased curriculum products versus teacher-created ones, highlighting the immense value of teacher involvement and agency in curriculum development. By ensuring that curriculum aligns with a school's mission and values, we can achieve a more coherent and purpose-driven educational experience.
Teaching with autonomy and creativity is not just a lofty ideal but a necessity for fostering student engagement and enthusiasm. This episode examines the dangers of rigid adherence to scripted materials and the pitfalls of focusing solely on content coverage. We argue that true educational success lies in adapting curriculum to meet the needs of diverse learners and allowing teachers the freedom to bring their own flair to the classroom. Beware the temptation of visually appealing but shallow activities; instead, we advocate for meaningful, curriculum-aligned experiences that enrich the learning journey.
Inspired by Dr. Wendy Ostroff's "Cultivating Curiosity in K-12 Schools," we champion the concept of "slow schools" and deep learning. Imagine teachers having the time and space to co-create and plan creatively, leading to profound and interconnected educational experiences for students. With examples from a school in Kona, we illustrate the power of connecting content across the school year and focusing on teaching skills and strategies over mere content. Let's rethink our approach, emphasizing backward design to ensure that every educational activity drives towards meaningful learning outcomes. Join us for an engaging discussion that challenges conventional wisdom and celebrates our vibrant conversations, and thank you for being part of our community.
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Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher Book, Tammy Musialski-Borneman and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:In this episode we discuss decluttering curriculum. We first discuss what we mean by curriculum and what influences curriculum, before moving on to some strategies and tips for what we can do as educators.
Speaker 3:Welcome everyone to this week's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Today, christine and I are talking about a pretty big topic, and one that can be pretty daunting for school, so we're talking about decluttering the curriculum. Maybe you had a few chills just listening to that title, because it can be a little scary, and it can be a place where we don't actually know how to do that. So before we dig into that, though, how are you today, Christine?
Speaker 2:I'm very good. I'm excited to get into this topic with you. How are you going, Tammy?
Speaker 3:I'm pretty good. I've been thinking about this topic quite a bit just because of some of the curriculum development work I've been doing with the school that I used to work at and that I'm doing with another couple of companies. So this is kind of like front of mind in some of the work that I'm doing right now.
Speaker 2:For sure, and I feel like it's something that I have been. It's been like a niggling annoyance for me for possibly, like I don't know, maybe the last decade or so, because I feel like maybe I'm overreacting, but sometimes it feels like every time something is happening in society, the answer is they should teach it in schools. Yes, yeah, right. So it's like well, we have an obesity epidemic, we need to teach health and nutrition. Yeah, exactly, ai is coming. Oh, we need to teach that in school. Like everything that comes up. It feels like we need to add something extra to our curriculum at school.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's tiring, it really is. It's tiring, it really is and I kind of feel like it will be something that just is a forever more thing, because if you think about you know, long before we were teaching there was a lot less that teachers had to worry about. I think in a lot of aspects, but I would say in our careers as educators, the last 20 years or so, we've seen a, a lot of growth in the things that we have had to teach and just the number of programs that have come out. Different curriculum resources, different versions of the same thing. You know only a fixed typo or something or a tiny little edit and then you buy a new product.
Speaker 3:I don't know like it's just the curriculum world is very crazy and it's it's a little bit scary for teachers. It's a little scary for administrators too, because often they're making the decision about what curriculum products they're bringing into the school and this kind of like comes into a point that we talk about with curriculum types, right. So there's the type that our schools choose a product from a publishing company versus there's teacher created curriculum and some schools have a marriage of both of those, which is kind of great because then you have some resources to work from. Teacher created allows for a lot of creativity on the teacher side, but it is a different workload and requires a different way of thinking sometimes. But on either side of that, it is a lot of work for teachers to be able to understand what the content is, what the curriculum is asking for and the direction that they're going with the content and the skills that they're teaching students.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think another thing to keep in mind, especially when it comes to purchasing curriculum and curriculum materials, is that they are a business and they are working to create a profit, and so, while they might be selling it to you under the guise of like this is helpful, this will solve your problems, we're going to, you know, make things better for our students. Ultimately, their end goal is to make a profit, is to make money, and so I think we do need to be super, super careful when we're thinking about purchasing curriculum materials as well from that point of view. On top of, is this meeting our needs?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and something that you just mentioned about. You know it is a business and the curriculum has been. The products are created, often by, you know, educational researchers and former educators and people who know education, which is the way it should be, but I think that when I'm thinking about how we teach younger learners, right, we know that we learn by constructing our knowledge and sometimes when we're giving teachers the thing that they're supposed to teach, it takes away some of that ownership in their teaching right.
Speaker 3:So, yes, it's great to have a guide to help you, but if they have some ownership and agency in creating the content or not, the content necessarily sometimes the content, because it depends on the grade that you're teaching and the standards you need to meet. But when teachers have that sense of agency in developing curriculum, they really know it well then and they can teach it better because they've created it. And I think there's just a greater investment. Like I co-created the curriculum that we have at the school that I worked at and you know it was a three-year cycle and the content was super interesting. So we put high-level, interesting content paired with the skills that we wanted our kids to learn, based on our mission and vision for the school and what the school valued. So we had, you know, these four community pillars. We have four C communication or four C skills, and then that was all integrated into the planning that teachers did.
Speaker 3:Did it mean that we couldn't use other curricular resources? Of course not, but the investment that teachers had in developing their own curriculum and then delivering that to their students was so exciting to watch, and I know that we have taught in that way. You know, in IB schools, where you have your set of units, you know what you're teaching, you know vertically every year, you know vertically every year, but you have the autonomy often to co-create units with your teams and and you can use purchase materials as supplements, which is really great. Um, and I think sometimes we just over complicate what curriculum is looks like in our buildings because there's just so many options. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:or 100. As soon as you were talking about agency there, I was like, yes, 100 every time. But the difference that I feel when someone gives me something pre-written to when I am involved in creating it or adapting it myself, like the, the feeling I have is completely different. And I mean, it's like when we give kids ownership over their work, right, they're way more engaged and interested and motivated than, um, when they're just, you know, following along with something that they're being made to do or instructed to do, and it's the same for us. You know, you really do not have the same level of interest as when you're creating it yourself and you're excited about it and you can't wait to get into it and looking forward to teach and, you know, adding on all those extras that deepen the learning, like field trips and bringing in guest speakers. When you have ownership over all of that direction, it's way more motivating, for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do think that packaged curriculum has their value, you know, because they're often differentiated pieces or really good text sets that are in there. That can reduce some of the amount of time that teachers need to look right, because finding good texts takes time. But that's one of the pieces that I find is helpful in a curriculum guide is the text often and the themes are often really good as well. And so if you can have like kind of the best world possible for what you're teaching students, you can use your you know programs that you have and create some of your amount of time to like learn the whole curriculum that you've been given right, this thing that's been handed over to you, versus that creation.
Speaker 3:So it's kind of like a balance of time, I feel like, where you can like get to know a program but you don't have to know it in and out, like I remember, or inside and out. I remember moving when I moved from Edmonton to New York City and I had as a newer teacher in Edmonton to New York City and I had as a newer teacher in Edmonton I had quite a bit of autonomy already to be able to plan what I was teaching for students. So like obviously I use the standards but I could use, like you know, different programs and different activities from different resources that we had. But then when I moved to New York, we lived in the readers and writers workshop world, where that was like the huge adoption time, where it was like here's your script for your reading workshop and I was like what do you mean? What? This is my script? Like I have to read this to my students.
Speaker 3:And I just felt like so, like I was going back in time, right, and I'm like, okay, so that means that I'm not really, I can't really be myself if I'm just reading this to the kids in front of me because they know it's not really coming from me, which takes a level of engagement away and a level of confidence in your teacher type of thing, right.
Speaker 3:So like it was such a weird thing to be able or to move into that and like some of you know, some of those materials had their value as well. But you also have to recognize that, like I mentioned before, you got to make sure those materials match the values of your school and what you're trying to achieve for the learners in front of you. So not every program is going to suit every school or every district or you know like. So you can't really just blanket say we're all going to do this in this large city because it doesn't suit every school, right, and I think that was such a pedagogical conflict for me um was that like I'm like this is probably great for you know people in this other school in another district, but for who's in front of me right now, this curriculum doesn't work like it's not.
Speaker 3:I'm not seeing what I need to see from students because they're missing some things and we also have. They have different interests, like I want to use different books. I don't want to teach these other books that don't match what they are interested in. And that's such a huge piece of a curriculum. Is getting kids engaged in what you're trying to teach them, right? You don't want to like otherwise why are we teaching it?
Speaker 2:For sure trying to teach them right. You don't want to like otherwise, why are we teaching it for sure? So I think we've touched there on on. You know the power of having some, some say in what you're doing and how motivating that can be, and I think we've also thought a little bit about what's driving the curriculum as well. So I know in our book about decluttering curriculum we talk about four influences on curriculum, and that is the more broad one is like you might have a federal or a national curriculum, and then you might have a state curriculum, you've got the school's mission and vision and then you also have your own pedagogical beliefs and you really are navigating at all times those different push-pull forces, aren't you?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah it's a lot to manage.
Speaker 2:It is a lot to think about, for sure, and obviously, if you, if you can be in a context in which you're matching the vision and the values that are around you, that's awesome, but it doesn't necessarily always happen, does it?
Speaker 3:It doesn't, and I always think about when I made the shift from teaching in New York to Singapore and how just I was able to teach according to how I believed in new students learn best school or district that you're in, and not that I totally disagreed with what was happening in our school in New York or what happens in New York City as a whole, because there's a lot of great things that happened there, but it was just a very different environment with very different beliefs and very different trust in people, and that felt like such a mental weight being lifted for me when I knew that, okay, you know what, I have some autonomy again in the curriculum because we are we're an IB school. So, yes, we know the units, but we can create and we can use these resources as supplements, and that just really worked out well. It helped it, just it just really helped me become a better teacher again.
Speaker 2:I think I feel like I've heard from things coming out of the US this word fidelity a bit of late and it scares me a little bit because it feels like maybe we're going back to that, as you say, going back in time. Am I reading that correctly that there's this idea that you have to follow? You don't, you shouldn't, adapt and modify the materials that you're given that you are supposed to do it day one, day two, exactly in the way that it was written. Am I reading that right?
Speaker 3:I think maybe for some things like maybe some of the programming for, like, the science of reading, okay, but I don't know enough about that because I haven't worked directly with any programs that are in schools for that specifically. I do know that you know there's some language and that's language development, right. So I do know that you know there's some language and that's language development right. So I do know that there are some language development programs like Fundations or Wilson that are very structured and you do really need to be to implement those with fidelity to see the growth in students because they're very structured and systematic, to see the growth in students because they're very structured and systematic. But when we're talking about, like a general ELA or math curriculum, I think it's a little bit dangerous to say you have to teach this with fidelity, because that those creators of the curriculum don't know who's in front of us and so we have to be mindful of who we're teaching and so like.
Speaker 3:While we might be able to take a lot of that and implement it, and a lot of the times it's not anything new for teachers who've been teaching for a while. It just might be. You know some new games, or so you know some new strategies or new language, so it's not completely foreign. So you know some new strategies or new language, so it's not completely foreign. But I think that when we take away teacher autonomy and creativity it's a little bit dangerous because it sucks some of the passion out of teachers absolutely for sure.
Speaker 2:another word that I feel like I'm just hitting on buzzwords here. Another word I feel like I hear a lot around curriculum is coverage that when we're looking at a set of standards or goals or objectives that we really need to cover all of them. What are your thoughts around coverage?
Speaker 3:That's another word where I feel like it's kind of an icky word, like you've got to cover the content because we know that there's a lot of content, there's a lot of standards. But I think that when you become a little bit more experienced in how to navigate and integrate standards and content and skills, it's a it is a little bit easier to you know. I'll air quote cover the content because you're being strategic with how you're delivering, let's say. But when I it really dehumanizes teaching and learning.
Speaker 3:I think if we just say we're covering content, like it just totally removes that we have kids in front of us or younger learners yeah, like it removes them as individuals with different needs and identities when we're just focused on covering everything in the curriculum yeah, and I think, um, because I was able to do some curriculum development with teachers at the school that I was at in Kona, like I feel like curriculum development is a fun place to work, like it can be so much fun and it's so exciting to see when teachers get jazzed up about what they're going to be teaching, up about what they're going to be teaching, so that then feels less like we're just covering content, because they're so excited to share information, help develop skills. And that's what it becomes about when we kind of have stripped away some of the the must do's of a program.
Speaker 3:Let's say or you know there's a little bit of wiggle room. It just feels better when we can focus on.
Speaker 3:Okay, this is, this is my group of kids and this is how we're going to approach this Same standards, same whatever. But you just have to think about it a little bit differently, which is a fun process, because then you're really showing that you know who's in front of you and you're and you know what you're going to be teaching. But you can just be creative with it and it's the pro like I nerd out with it. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. It's amazing I get so excited when we can do some curriculum designing. I feel like we should touch on. But I'm a little bit scared because I know it's. Triggering for you, tammy, is when we see all of these really cute, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing things on Pinterest and Instagram and so on and how you know it might have that initial appeal because it looks great, but it might not necessarily be worthy of our time and effort and resources. But I'm just dipping my toe in that topic because I know from previous conversations that it can stir us up a little bit it, can it?
Speaker 3:yes, and we're just being honest about that, and it's great when teachers get excited about that, but or and or, yet or. However, I don't know what the connecting word is, but you do have to think about how does that connect to your curriculum? Like, you want everything to be aligned, so like are you choosing this cutesy activity because it really aligns with what you're teaching, it really aligns with the skills that you're showing, or is it just like a thing that the kids are replicating because you think it's cute and that's like schools that I've been in, that's what it looks like. It just looks like here's the, here's the template, just fill it in without any student creativity. And if we're taking away the creativity from our students at a young age, right, like, just fill in this template. And sometimes they need a template, it depends what it is, it totally depends what it is. We're just not allowing our students to develop skills, then either.
Speaker 3:So you know, there's some things that I've seen up in on displays where I'm like that's really cute and it's like you learn a little bit about a student from that, but I'm not seeing the connection between what you're teaching and why that's there, yeah, and we, and not to say that it always has to be that way. However, if you're going to spend the time to create that or like prepare that for your students, wouldn't you want it to be something that's very high value for them, right?
Speaker 2:For sure, no-transcript. The activities or the lessons that you could tell took a lot of time and effort and money to prepare, knowing that, while it might meet your objective and it might really engage the students, you can probably only use it once in a whole year. And I really just think about the sustainability of working in that manner where you're putting in an hour of preparation for an hour lesson like we can't. We can't sustain that. We don't have enough hours in our week, um, and so, yeah, that I think that's what bothers me is like, to what end are you doing this? Is this going to be something that you can reuse over and over again, that is going to be able to be used in multiple different ways? Um, I think, I think that's, you know, that's where what we need to tap into when we're thinking about, um, creating uh materials, creating lessons, creating units something that is going to help us be sustainable in our work, for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I do think that that could be an advantage to having a program, because they do tell you each lesson what you need but then sometimes that becomes death by worksheet, right?
Speaker 3:So you have to be careful of that too.
Speaker 3:So if that's one of those modifications you can make, so like if you kind of have to use your program to fidelity but can you modify the materials, so instead of creating, copying that worksheet, can the students just make it, or can they write it in their notebook, or can they use index cards instead, so you're not spending your time and using paper resources and ink when they can just make a T chart in their notebook. You know, like that kind of thing. So some of those kind of quick and easy modifications, because I've seen teachers who are like, oh, I need to make a copy. I'm like why don't they just write it in their notebook? Like it's just four numbers, they can write that in their book. So you know, it's just, sometimes we get in that like I just need to prepare all the things they're telling me to do, and again, when we get in that place, we're taking away some of the teacher thought process. However, it is taking away some of the decisions that teachers have to make. Well, that's true too.
Speaker 2:That's true too. Yeah, we can't discount that.
Speaker 3:Right, and we know that. You know, the decisions that are made each day are just like. The number is absolutely astronomical, and so if we can make one less decision, that's great. However, we don't want to take away the ability for someone to make a different decision if it's a better one yeah, and I think my experience with teachers is, more often than not they are.
Speaker 2:They do love that art of teaching. You know, they really do love being able to be a bit creative and what they're doing. So, yeah, but if you're doing something new or, as you say you, you've run out of the mental space to make those decisions, it can be super helpful to have that in your toolkit, for sure. So let let's have a little chat. Tell me about some things that we can do specifically to declutter the curriculum.
Speaker 3:Well, one of the things that we often talk about is aligning our priorities. So we do really need to have a look at a school's vision and mission and the values of the going to be purchasing the latest edition of the new ELA curriculum, or are you going to use the one that you have and just have teachers, you know, supplement or co-create something together that will supplement whatever the change is?
Speaker 2:So I think that alignment with priority and oftentimes that's like you know what's the best use of our time and money too- For sure and yeah, talking about time and priorities is make sure that the time we are spending is in line with our priorities, whether it's our own personal priorities or the school or the district, wherever it is that you're working. Because if you notice that you're putting in a lot of time in something that doesn't meet the priorities of the context you're in, like we're just it's just not helpful to us in the work that we're doing. So if you can put the time into the things that are the most important, it's definitely helpful to be in alignment with your priorities for sure.
Speaker 3:Dr Wendy Ostroff, who is a professor at I'm forgetting the name of her school, but she also wrote the book cultivivating Curiosity in K-12 schools. She talks about this idea of slow schools and deep learning Love it. And yeah, and I feel like that's really something that we were able to do at my school in Kona, because teachers had that time and space to co-create, co-plan and be creative with the content and skill development.
Speaker 3:And so like I think about all of the things that they taught this year. That is so much, but they had so much fun doing it.
Speaker 3:And the learning was very deep, like the projects that they did together, because they do class projects and vertical projects from k to six, and yeah, it was just so exciting to watch some of the things that they were able to do with students. Same content for all learners, you know, the five-year-olds to the 11-year-olds, but just the complexity was different. And then you know, watching the older kids teach the little ones about something within that same um band of content, but on a different level. It was just so exciting and even the littles to you know, sharing what they know about something in that topic like um, right now they're they're learning about the australian desert and, yes, and some austral culture, and so just, yeah, seeing the things they were learning about that, some of your Australian quips in your language, those things were really, really fun. But the learning was so deep because the content across the year was all connected in some way.
Speaker 3:And so the depth was very different from between, like sometimes when you're just skipping between different topics and and themes yeah so. So it was like I felt like it was like a slow school in process and it's. I mean they're still working on that right now. So that's very cool it's really exciting that's I like that.
Speaker 2:And thinking about deep learning, I think you know, and connecting it back to that idea of coverage. You know, in this day and age, where everyone has the knowledge of all mankind that has ever been on their phones, you know, like, I think we really need to think about the skills that we're teaching kids how to be good thinkers, how to be good learners, how to reflect on their learners, how, to you know, am I being efficient? Is this the fastest way? Is this the most accurate way? Like, have I got the right problem-solving strategy?
Speaker 3:Being able to be effective learners, I feel like, is the way of the future, rather than just what content are we covering right, because they have so much access to things they don't need it from us necessarily right and that's one of the things that I've been talking to teachers a lot about because we had started using a new unit planner and I'm like we already know what the content is in the scope and sequence, so that's not really what we need to put so much in the unit planner. It's the how you're going to teach it.
Speaker 3:So, what's which visible thinking strategies or what games or whatever. What's which visible thinking strategies or what games or whatever? What's the how? So it's less about like we already know. We all know what the content is. That is kind of irrelevant it's. What opportunities are you providing your students to think and?
Speaker 3:do and then share their learning. And so when we think about our curriculum as the not the vehicle, because the teaching is the vehicle, but the what I guess right, because it really is, the content is usually irrelevant. But it's like what are the good teaching strategies that we're using that you could use at any grade with any student, right? When you're teaching solid strategies, research-based strategies, you can use them with any learner because you're teaching them skills rather than the history of blah blah, blah. You know, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And you know, going back to my earlier comment about AI and the teachers need to teach all about it Overwhelmingly it's becoming clear that the skills we need to manage AI is how do you know exactly what to command the AI to do and can you check the reasonable answer? Is it actually the answer you want and need? Is it informative? Is it helpful? The answer you want and need? Is it informative? Is it helpful? You know so, those, those thinking skills, those other abilities are super, super crucial when you're working with something like ai. So I think, um, that's a really good one to keep in mind when we're thinking about decluttering curriculum is, is those skills, those aptitudes that we need our students to have?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, I feel like this has been a pretty like in-depth conversation about curriculum and you know there's a lot of more things that can be said about it, but I would like to know what your pare down pointer is now. I.
Speaker 2:I want to say back a backwards design, but I know that that's not really paring down. Well, maybe it is, maybe it is. But that idea of starting your planning with what is, what is the end goal, the end understanding that we want our kids to have, and all these fun, cute explorations that we can do along the way, which ones are actually going to get us there and which ones can we get rid of because they're really not helping our students get to that end goal. So it it depends how you look at it. But yes, backwards design, I think would be my, my pare down pointer. How, how about you, tammy?
Speaker 3:No, that's a really good pointer. Um, the one that is popping up for me is um, I'm thinking about this conversation I had with a teacher a couple of weeks ago and she was just teaching, just beginning the their graphing unit, second grade, and she was using the math curriculum, the little video, the questions, whatever, and it seemed like the students kind of were already on the ball with this, right. So I asked her afterwards I'm like did you know how much students already knew about bar graphs before you did this lesson? And she's like well, no, but you know, it's just kind of introductory to the unit.
Speaker 3:I'm like okay, so what about if, when you get to the next type of graph, you present them with a different opportunity? Like you can put out I can't remember what it was like a pictograph or something. Put out a pictograph and just let the students gather ideas about what they know about that type of graph and then, once you look through their thoughts and ideas, you'll know what you have to teach. Because if you don't need to spend the time teaching about pictographs, why would you use your time doing that? So, and she's like I never thought of it that way. I'm like that's why pre assessments are helpful, right, and sometimes it doesn't. We think of a pre assessment is like a paper pencil quiz or whatever, but that also takes a different amount of time and a different lack of engagement.
Speaker 3:So I'm like, if you get your kids love talking, give them the opportunity to talk about something you want them to talk about and then find out what they already know, and then if you don't need to teach it, then don't teach it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Your time, you're, you're. It's not like you're ignoring your curriculum. You're taking the idea from it and deciding, making that decision. Do I need to actually do this or not?
Speaker 2:absolutely, and being more targeted in where you do go next with your teaching. Absolutely exactly yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, this has been a really great conversation with you, as usual, as usual.
Speaker 2:I'm not even sure I remember where we started or where we went, but I know I know I was excited the whole time, tammy yes, I know we have great.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think we have great and animated conversations. Maybe our listeners agree or disagree, but you know what people? People listen, so that's great. That's true they do, yes, and we appreciate that very much. So thank you for joining us today and thanks for the conversation, christine.
Speaker 2:Today's episode was brought to you by Plan Z Professional Learning Services forward thinking educator support. Find out more at planzplservicescom no-transcript.
