ID+Thought+Provoker+5+Prompt

After reading Chapters 4, 5, and 6 in Helping Teachers Teach and Chapter 4 of Understanding by Design, describe how you as a teacher, media specialist, or technology specialist could present the Six Facets of Understanding to a group of your peers to help prepare them to work collaboratively to develop curriculum plans. Type your response in Word and simply click on "Create Message" and paste your response. Do not post an attachment.

This is a challenging prompt. I understand how teachers/media specialists/technology specialists can work together using specific learning guidelines such as GPS, and how the levels of instructional consultation fit in there. That's all fairly concrete (or is it?). But, to say that I understand how these folks can work together to think more deeply about student understanding is less true. Quite frankly, I find it intimidating. As I read through Chapter 4 of //Understanding by Design//, I kept thinking Wow, no wonder I feel so stunted. Most of my teachers didn't take the time to assess my understanding in this way. My parents, two smart people (my mom was even a teacher for a time), didn't do as much as they could have to guide my view of the world a something to be questioned. That just wasn't the way people were thinking then, even in the eighties and nineties. Adults generally weren't looking at the textbook and the teacher's views as perspectives open to questioning. And they certainly weren't teaching this to students.

Even now, I think the way in which I was schooled (the answers to questions are predetermined; just check with the experts, ask the teacher, read the book) is still the predominant way in which students are taught, at least in the secondary schools in which I have taught and in which my son Caleb is a high school student (I am always digging for information about the way in which he is taught). He recently told me of the way in which one of his AP teachers listens to the responses and interpretations from students, and then finally gives her own interpretation as the authoritative, right answer. This irks some of the students when they feel like they have provided well-reasoned interpretations. Perhaps the teacher knows best and realizes (while Caleb may not) that the students' answers are incomplete, ill-formed, and needing in her amplification. Perhaps she is gauging their understanding appropriately, and trying to allow them to question and construct meanings. But perhaps in her case, there is something unsavory about her delivery. Good teaching seems like an impossible aim.

But back to the question. How does the teacher present the Six Facets to a group of peers to help them develop curriculum plans. To answer, I'll slide into the familiar role of Spanish 1 teacher. I am in my curriculum planning group, which consisted of me and the other Spanish teacher. I taught Spanish 1, and she taught Spanish 1, 2, and 3. According to Wiggins and McTighe (2005), "the six facets should permeate our thinking about all three stages of backward design" (p. 103). In our planning, we would talk first about the big ideas across the course. We would attempt to identify the "topical" (more unit-related) as well as "overarching" (broader in scope, spanning multiple units or maybe even whole course) understandings we wanted students to have as a result of the course. But to really make this unit planning party different from all others, where the textbook was the leader (it really covers what they need to know, we would say), we would have to be in agreement that students are too passive in the face of their learning, and that this year, we should seek to encourage a more rebellious response to their learning. As the "perspective" facet of understanding urges us to ask, "What of it?" Realistically, we would still be closely tied to the textbook (we did go one year without a textbook, and that was very difficult; there is so much information in Spanish 1 that they ended up having to write their own "textbooks" through notes, which is a waste of valuable learning time that could be spent on richer activities; and students make tons of mistakes as they dispassionately copy notes yet again) though we would now have a better framework for judging the projects that came with each unit. We could springboard from the recommended projects or redesign our own, making sure that all 6 Facets were being represented throughout (hopefully, all in all units): Explanation, //knowledge of why and how//; Interpretation, //what does it mean?//; Application, //how do I use this?//; Perspective, //from whose point of view?//; Empathy, //what do they see that I don't?//; and Self-Knowledge, //how does who I am shape my views?//

I can see now, for example, how our annual hands-on project wherein student teams built Day of the Dead altars to honor people/ideas of importance could have been better planned to challenge students to really connect with the ideas behind why some Mexicans trail marigolds from the cemetery to their homes. I think some student got it and clicked, but not all. Some of them just thought it was strange and another lesson to get through and probably didn't give it much thought beyond that. Instead of relying on the assessment of the final altar, I can see how I could have inserted varied assessment checks along the way to gauge their understanding much better. I thought everything had to be done in Spanish, for one thing, but now I can see how such cultural activities would have benefited from their writing in English in their journals to reflect on important questions, to give just an example. I was so young, so narrow-minded! Does anyone else feel guilty about past teaching practices?

So, to wrap up, the 6 Facets require a shift in thinking about instruction. At the curriculum-planning stage, teacher-designers (and all others involved) must be open-minded to designing in ways that give primacy to true student questioning and understanding. Without this open-mindedness, we're just back to established facts and causes and effects and other things we like to test. And we're back to students who graduate from high school underdeveloped in their ability to reason, grapple with ideas, and question the world.

References Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). //Understanding by design//. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.