Changing Education Paradigms, Research Paper Example

Introduction

Context

The curriculum will be implemented in a rural school district. The school district consists of 1,309 high school students broken down in the following manner: 507 freshman, 300 sophomores, 177 juniors, and 325 seniors. In total there are 56 teachers in the school broken down in the following manner: 12 English teachers, 2 art teachers, 4 science teachers, 2 sociology teachers, 10 math teachers, 2 gym teachers, 3 music teachers, 5 government/history teachers, 4 home economics teachers, 6 study hall teachers, 3 librarians, and 3 geography teachers. There is one superintendent, one principal and two vice principals. The community has a population of 3,221 people with an unemployment rate of 6% (about average for the national unemployment rate). Parents typically have blue collar jobs and the community exists mainly from the traffic from the highway as two major highway systems intersect, as well as the gas and oil company employees populating the town (bringing in a majority of the revenue). Blue-collar jobs consist of mechanics, and factory workers mostly.

Educational Philosophy

Education should not be insular. Even though students are unique unto themselves and learn at different levels or in different ways (e.g. aural, auditory, kinesthetic) it is not always possible to teach one student at a time as the sizes of classrooms are increasing rapidly as the population experience a boon. What can be done is organize a lesson, or curriculum based on the known learning difference of students and implement this plan into the school district. This may take extra persons in order to maintain a status quo in the classroom, as teachers may be focused on the lesson plan, the extra tutors in the classroom can speak to the students’ individual learning needs. It is therefore important for a teacher to be great at their job.

In order to implement a proper curriculum for students to be at the apex of their learning the teachers should acquire the following: masters degrees, specialized teacher training every two years, teacher evaluation every two years (to be administered on the opposite year of the teacher training), stricter evaluations for teacher tenure, peer as well as student evaluation for teachers (an evaluation system that parallels doctor evaluations in which patients or in this case peers/students/parents, evaluate the progress or strength of a teacher and raises are based on these specific criteria), as well as less restriction on firing teachers who are not receiving consistently good evaluation forms (this way the district stays not only innovative, but also desirable to potential parents in other districts).

In order to accomplish these goals it’s important that administration, teachers, and parents are on the same page, therefore a public forum may be necessary in order to hear out grievances, changes to infrastructure, and new teaching techniques. The point of any teaching philosophy is to help students learn; this is the teacher’s job as well as the students’ anticipation of what teachers are at school to do. In order to foster this outcome and philosophy, it is necessary to maintain communication, innovation, and to have clear and succinct goals not only for individual teachers, but the district as a whole. In a student’s life, it’s the journey that’s important, but for a teacher, it’s the things they student learns along the journey that are the necessary life lessons to impart.

Mission Statement

The mission of the school is to create a learning environment in which students progress in their learning in fundamental ways; embrace their confidence and unique abilities in partnership with teachers, and parents.

The school’s goal is to enable every student a chance to become brighter, more disciplined, and prepare them for the world.

The school’s objectives are:

• To initiate innovative technologies to include in the classroom learning
• Prepare students for real-life scenarios
• Improve students test scores
• Ensure proper college readiness
• Award students, parents, and teachers for their time and effort
• To create a school with proper grant funding
• To encourage community involvement from the students as well as the teachers

Curriculum

Massive changes to the current standardized curriculum must be set in place. Part of the curriculum must be changed in this capacity: according to the Waldorf paradigm, children work best in a habitual environment; therefore, the first major change in curriculum will be not a shift to the content of the class but rather in its teacher. In order for a child to fully comprehend subject matter, they must learn in an environment infused with trust, therefore, it is this proposal’s suggestion that children stay with the same teacher. Meaning, an English teacher who has a certain group of students one year, will stick with the same group up until the time of their graduation. The same goes for each subject. This way, the child and the teacher begin and maintain a rapport. The Waldorf curriculum is structured for the different developing phases of youth: infant to 7 (imitation), 7-14 (imagination), and 14-21 (truth, judgment, and discrimination). Although this curriculum will focus on the last year or two of the second phase, and the first two or three years of the second phase (Why Waldorf Works, 2014, para. 1).

Other incorporated changes to this curriculum include changes in groupings. Ken Robinson (2010) states that children shouldn’t be grouped together based on their age. People develop differently on different levels: some develop cognitive abilities early than their peers, while others have better motor function skills (this also relates to a student’s ability to learn). Thus, why would a school, group students according to age, instead of according to ability? This curriculum suggests that schools group their students according to their abilities, thus, this curriculum will implement testing that will effectively group students according to their abilities. Thus, when a student masters one class they will level up in that subject (Robinson, 2010, para. 2). This will ensure that students are being challenged in the proper manner, and that they are not being educationally neglected.

Educational curriculums are also suffering from a culture of isolation, therefore, this curriculum proposes a change such as this: to teach in a cross-discipline fashion. Meaning that art and music can be taught in a cross-discipline manner. Teachers may collaborate to have their students do a more in-depth project that focuses on the contingencies of one area of focus, to incorporate more subjects. For instance, if a history class project focuses on the Renaissance, art teachers may be advisors on the project as well, or the project can count for credit for art, with the inclusion of studying the monk Savonarola. This calls for an open-ended unit of instruction (Curriculum Design, n.d. p. 60).

Classrooms will begin a more hands-on approach to curriculum for instance, government classes will take field trips that include sitting in on court trials, and joining community council meetings in order to more fully understands politics, and how complaints or actions are made and implemented. Home Economics courses will have special guest lecturers come in to teach about urban gardening so that students know what types of foods can grow in their neighborhood, how to cycle plants (crop rotation), vertical gardens, water tables, etc. (Urban Farm Business Plan, 2011, p. 20). These plans help students know where they live, their role in their community, and how to be contributing members to a society (and all that society needs in order to function).

The curriculum will also offer online classes to students who may be unable to join in the conversation in a typical classroom because of certain physical restrictions. Therefore programs such as Facetime, or Skype may be implemented into the design of the curriculum.

Curriculum Development Process

It’s important to not just have a course of study but instead to improve upon a student’s learning (Curriculum Design, n.d., p. 43). This curriculum will answer this question: how to improve upon high school drop out rates, and keep students motivated to learn. This will be answered by not breaking down the school into age groups, but rather by ability, which will be done through a standardized test. The test that will be used will be the pre-SAT and/or pre-ACT test (as male students have been known to do much better on the SAT and female students have been known to do better on the ACT – therefore both will be administered to both genders in order for a medium comparable score to be offered in the student’s placement.

As this course of action requires an adept understanding of test scores, scoring, gender performances, the curriculum will require heavy technological development. This means that the school district will depend on standardized testing before each new school year, mid-way assessments during the school year, and teacher evaluations on a student-by-student basis.

Curriculum development will be based on a consensus comprised of a board of directors that include an elected parent, tenured teacher, new teacher, and a school official. All decisions for curriculum must pass board approval before they are implemented. The above-stated designs of new curriculum however will be ingrained in the new curriculum, as they will set the bar for standard in the school. Thus, while peer-group determination is made through standardized testing, other curriculum questions such as pacing guides, or testing for mastery of subject will be up for the board’s approval.

Since the curriculum does not have a set model, a model will have to be created according to the board. Thus, tenured, new, administrative, and even parental input will be utilized in order to create a standard school curriculum. As the peer groups will be broken down by ability, it stands to reason that the school curriculum will also follow suit. Thus, the standardized testing that was done in order to determine mastery of a subject will not necessarily be implemented with this school curriculum. As level of proficiency is more sought after than standardized understanding, new pacing guides that better serve the fluency of a student will have to be devised. New pacing guides will be based after the Waldorf curriculum (if any curriculum is needed as an example). Thus, the Waldorf ascending spiral will be implemented (Why Waldorf Works, 2014, para. 3-7). English, for each level (9-12) will have various levels of competency that students must acquire before moving on to the next level. Level 9 will be focused on vocabulary, speech, grammar, and literature. Level 10 will be literature, essay writing, composition, grammar, speech as well as poetics. Level 11 will be all of the former elements plus emphasis on vocabulary. Level 12 will be overall composition and communication (Why Waldorf Works, 2014, para. 3-7). This model will be used as it serves as a baseline (if studies of proof of a curriculum working need to implemented or shown to doubtful parties).

The curriculum’s aim, goal, and philosophy will be implemented with board’s direction. As the mission of the school is to create a learning environment in which students progress in their learning in fundamental ways such as embracing their confidence while maintaining their individual uniqueness, this type of curriculum seems almost necessary. The Waldorf curriculum allows students to grow, mature, and become educated in an environment of trust, and coming back to the same teachers each year allows the students to truly bond with their educational experience and to rely on the praise, critique and direction that such bonds with teachers foster.

Since the school’s goal is to foster brighter and more disciplined children, then having them accountable to the same authority figures over the course of their high school career will encourage them to be brave in their worlds, to study hard in order to please their teachers and to feel better about themselves through their accomplishments. The school’s curriculum will help students do this through not only implementing a Waldorf style curriculum on a public school spectrum but also to encourage and fund necessary technologies in the classrooms to account for differences in learning (some of which have been neglected such as kinesthetic) for different learning types. Thus, a smart board will be installed in each classroom, guest lecturers from different universities will be projected onto the smart board screen to give their expert advice. Face Book, Twitter, etc. will be platforms for making more creative school projects that may have an influence on the world (e.g. sociological experiments dealing with promoting positive messages through youtube videos, etc.). By using this technology, students will be better prepared for the real world, and the expectations of technological understanding it presents. Such hands-on learning may also encourage students to study more, and in turn have higher test scores (for college entry purposes, and for school-ranking purposes). This in turn may become beneficial as the school’s need for grant-funding for such technological advances will be necessary to acquire.

Implementation Process

The implementation process will have three key areas: ensuring that the curriculum matches the goals/aims of the school; the students exposed to the curriculum are learning at measure or above standardized public schools (their grasp of knowledge according to the state’s pacing guide is at or above par); and finallywhat the students learn is actually beneficial to their overall education.

The implementation process must also account for the type of culture the school is, thus, the fact that it’s a rural high school, with a student body population of 3,221 coming from mostly blue-collar employees, must be considered. This may effect the implementation progress as a resistance to changing the standard of schools will be difficult with such a population (resistance as seen from a standpoint of distrusting change, innovation, or diversity).

In order to curtail such resistance an implementation plan will be utilized. This plan centers on the board. As one member of the board is an elected parent, that parent will ensure that the desires, and voice of the parents is heard for their child’s education. This may waylay any unnecessary communication fraught with misunderstanding, or a feeling of misrepresentation.

Evaluation Process

As the school is relying heavily on already implemented curriculum (i.e. Waldorf) it makes sense to use Waldorf evaluation as a baseline, but one that can be improved upon by the committee. Thus, mistakes that Waldorf has made (or that the board perceives it has made) may be addressed and weeded out from this curriculum (Iowa Core Curriculum, n.d. p. 3). This fits in with the design and implementation models by being uniquely catered to the school and the progress and innovation the board will trumpet for the students. As the curriculum is based off of a standard Waldorf curriculum that includes innovative ideas brought about by Sir Ken Robinson, then the evaluation process should be just as unique. As the point of the school’s curriculum is create an educational experience adept at the changing needs of the students in a technological meteoric society, then the implementation process should reflect such progression. If the school’s motto is to champion the individual through proper educational guidelines that include catered pacing guides, tutors in every classroom, technological advances and inclusion, then the evaluation process must be an extension of these ideals. Thus, every few years not only will the students be evaluated according to the board’s designed set of standards, but the curriculum will also be fine-tuned during this time to ensure that students are still getting what they need from their educational experience as well as being stimulated intellectually.

References

Curriculum Design. (n.d.). Designs for science literacy.Retrieved from http://www.project2061.org/publications/designs/online/pdfs/designs/chapter1.pdf

Iowa Core Curriculum. (n.d.) District self-study guide. Retrieved from www.nwaea.k12.ia.us/…curriculum/…/District_Self_Study_for_Outcome_5_B533341615C26.doc?

Robinson, K. (2010). Changing education paradigms. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Urban Farm Business Plan. (2011). Urban farm business plan handbook. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/urbanag/pdf/urban_farm_business_plan.pdf

Why Waldorf Works. (2014). Waldorf education: the essential phases of child development. Retrieved from http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/02_W_Education/child_development.asp