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Teacher Curriculum – Save for the Future?
Many Man/Woman Hours Lost

Overview

During my 30 years of high school teaching, I taught several levels of physics and chemistry and a number of different math courses.  Most of the time, other teachers were very generous in donating materials and ideas. On at least one occasion, the materials I received consisted of one or two pages in a file folder.  Also, the limited time that we had to spend together meant that much of the materials that I used, I had to develop myself.

Especially during my first three years of teaching and whenever I was given a new preparation, and often several new preparations, my classroom materials were, at times, generated the night before.  But over the years, I gathered a set of loose leaf binders housed in cardboard boxes unit by unit for every course that I had taught.  The boxes for the courses that I taught more often were filled with materials that had been tried, tested, and revised in the classroom.  There were folders with masters to create copies for all of the handouts, laboratories, and tests that I needed.  I gathered video clips, made overheads, bought software, made applications for use with the SmartBoard, and even created many of my own simulations and software.

But what happened to all of those materials when I retired?  I took them home and no one ever used them again.  The school that I was teaching at was not in the middle of an inner city ghetto, but one of the best in the country.  While there, I suggested several times that there should be a set of filing cabinets with places for all curriculum for every course to be stored.  Following are some of the reasons why I think it should happen and some of the reasons it did not.

Hours Upon Hours

Many people are under the illusion that the majority of a teacher’s working day and hours are spent in the classroom.  But classroom hours are really like the tip of an iceberg.  For more on this see Life of a Teacher – Part 2 at http://darngoodsolutions.com/blogB/life-of-a-teacher-part-2/

A significant part of a teacher’s time is spent outside of the classroom, preparing for class by creating, selecting, organizing, and practicing the use of their curriculum materials.

The diagram above shows many of the “duties” that a teacher needs to perform. Note that many of these, including grading, communications, tutoring, extracurricular activities, meetings, training, and developing curriculum, do not happen in the classroom. The duties that I want to consider in this article are those in yellow, the duties of curriculum development.

Let’s look at a few examples of what is required to create some typical curriculum materials.  My examples will be based on my background as a science teacher, but there are similar examples for each curriculum area.

First, let’s look at creating a physics or chemistry lab.  The easiest way to start is to find a lab that is already written either on the Internet or from one available from a text book publisher.  This will take to search and research and make sure the selected lab covers the curriculum material that is desired.  One has to be sure that the required equipment and chemicals are available, find them, and then the solutions have to be made.  The lab has to be tested and revisions made as required.  Most likely the questions will need to be revised to fit the specific curriculum, terminology, and level of the students.  If a lab cannot be found externally, one will have to be created from scratch.  It is not unusual for the creation of a lab to take ten hours or more.

How about finding and choosing a video clip for use in class.  Showing the entire movie is seldom useful or advisable.  In order to get a few five minute clips, one has to watch the entire movie, taking notes of the exact times to copy.  So a five minute clip could easily take a couple of hours.

Tests usually require the creation of three versions, an A and B for students sitting next to each other and a C test for students who are absent.  These tests should be changed every year to thwart students who save and give the tests to their friends.  The creation of a set of tests could easily take several hours.

Perhaps you see a simulation that could be useful for your classes.  One has to preview the simulation, take data from the simulation, create plans on how to use the simulation, and then revise the plans after using them.  Again, many hours are involved.

I could go and on about the hours required to create PowerPoint presentations, lesson plans, lecture notes, classroom activities, handouts, answer keys, etc.

How Many Total Hours?

So, in my 30 year career of teaching, how many hours of preparation time have I accumulated?  I will estimate that it is at least 10 hours per week.  I’m pretty sure that is a low estimate, not including many hours spent over the summer.

10 hrs/week x 30 weeks/year x 30 years = 9000 hr = 375 days ~ 1 year

This is one of the reasons it is so hard for new teachers to jump right in and be great teachers in their first few years.  It takes too much time to develop the materials and repertoire that quickly.

What’s To Be Done?

Every school department should have a set of filing cabinets to store master copies of all materials by course and teacher organized by unit.  Materials included could be lesson plans, handouts, overheads, lecture notes, and quizzes and tests.  A similar storage should be also be setup for digital files on a dedicated computer located in the library or on the school or district’s server.  Materials included could be electronic copies of the materials mentioned so far, movies, PowerPoint or Prezi presentations, and used software and software locations.

Yes, it would take some effort to organize these materials, place them in the repositories, and occasionally weed out old materials.  This could be done during an in-service day or a workshop day during the summer.

But the payoff could be enormous.  New teachers would have ready access to materials already vetted for use with the course and students.  And new teachers are often given multiple different courses to teach and in different rooms.  Not having to spend hour after hour reinventing the wheel would give them time to be prepared for class and spend more time with their students. It seems to me to be a no brainer proposition.

So Why Hasn’t It Happened

Here are a few of my thoughts on why some sort of repository of teaching materials is not a standard procedure in many schools.

• It takes work and time on the part of the school administration and staff. Again, see http://darngoodsolutions.com/blogB/life-of-a-teacher-part-2/

A lack of time is also an issue for administrators.  When I worked in engineering, a group leader seldom would supervise more than four engineers, and a manager seldom more than 20.  In our school, one principal and 3 assistant principals supervised over 100 teachers and numerous secretaries and aides.

• It is difficult to figure out whose responsibility it is to get this job done. Can a principal know enough able to determine the form and methods of gathering and storing materials for each department (science, math, music, etc.)? Even the department heads would have trouble.  How about a science department head who teaches chemistry trying to oversee the physics and chemistry materials.
• It is difficult to allocate space for the materials to be housed. The science classrooms were spread across the building and the science storage rooms were small, cramped, and overfilled as well.  Most teachers kept materials in boxes on the top of cabinets in their rooms or in filing cabinets, again in their rooms.  This caused problems when teaching in several rooms since a teacher could not access materials in one room when teaching in another or even on a preparation period if someone else was teaching in that room.
• A philosophy on the part of both administration and teachers that teachers should develop their own materials, methods, and styles. Part of this culture is due to how isolated teachers and administrators can be captured in their individual classrooms and offices.  Most teachers are only free one period a day or less and, unless another teacher is also free that period, they find it hard to meet.  After school is taken up with meeting with students, clubs, and sports responsibilities.
• A sense that new teachers should “sink or swim” in their initial years of teaching. It takes (at least in Pa) three years to obtain tenure, so these years are years of intense evaluation.  New teachers are often given less than desirable teaching schedules with low level courses and several preparations.

  Overview

  It is time for state education departments, superintendents, school principals, department heads, and teachers to rectify this problem.  Start now to create a curriculum materials repository program in your school(s).  Reinventing the wheel is just spinning away hours of hard labor that can be better spent taking the old materials to the next level and time with students.For those districts and schools that are already doing this, kudos.  Spread the word about how your system is set up and how it is working.

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