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Challenges of Curriculum (part 2) By Salima Moosa Sewani

This article is a continuation of the previous article from our first September issue.

The most challenging task for the religion teacher is to integrate and implement the curriculum of primary and secondary effectively. The primary curriculum is not fulfilling the needs of mentally challenged people. During my teaching experience at the Aga Khan special people religious school, I have deeply analyzed that most of the teachers could not teach the primary Ta’lim curriculum to them, because the Intellectual Quotient  of exceptional people is comparatively lower than normal children studying in religious education centre.  I am a proud of the challenged students, who wants to do every thing to fulfill their religious needs as well. I courageously took this challenge and participated in a master training program in inclusive education with few teachers. I also joined Pakistan association research in education to acquire continuous trainings. We developed few lessons plan resources and developed IEP (Individualized Educational Plan) which helped teachers to teach borderline children about faith Tariqah and basic ethics in a diluted form. 

I would suggest that there should be a same curriculum book for them in a more diluted form or there should be a permission granted to the teachers to amend curriculum according to their desires. 

I have one example of my student A. She is in class 7 in Religious Education Centre. She is borderline student. She shared the difficulties which she faced a month back with me. She told me that my class teacher had failed me in all the subjects and forced me to repeat the class; but I don’t want to sit in the same class for the third time. I asked but she refused, because this was third time teacher failed me. When I asked teacher, she told me that A doesn’t understand anything. Therefore, and we can’t promote her. When I asked few questions to A regarding the chapters of history, she was unable to reply even a single question due to typical curriculum for children with special needs.  

Before my teaching practicum, I observed the religious school for a few days, and I found a competitive atmosphere to teach secondary curriculum, given by ITREB for a time being. Teachers are planning lesson plans ineffectively and most of the teachers are not participating in the teacher training courses due to busy schedule. I hope that the future curriculum of secondary will provide adequate knowledge of the subjects to the students for leading a religious life in this progressive world. 

Challenging in the classroom is the most competitive part for teachers. Whether it’s a religious or a secular school, class room interaction is very important while teaching. If there will be no proper classroom interaction, then a child will not grow as per need. Classroom interaction plays a vital and crucial role in effective learning of the children. Teachers are facing lots of challenges during their classroom interaction.  

One of the most important challenges teachers are facing is favoritism. During my observation at the Government school, I saw teachers were giving value to those students which s/he likes a lot and appreciate those, who are extra ordinary brilliant in classroom. Those who are good at studies got the least marks in exams just because of the favoritism of a teacher.  Teachers aren’t motivating and encouraging those children who’re shy and feeble in studies. Their learning becomes stuck due to the wrong attitude of a teacher. I personally faced that challenge, when my supporting teacher was appreciating favoritism in class room. I saw one reserved child in my class, who was avoided by the teacher, most of the time. A was the shy child in my class. He didn’t speak a single sentence in class. I always supported him by praising him and inspiring all the time and tried my best to engage him in group activities. 

Another challenge of classroom interaction is communication. Teachers cannot teach the students in their cultural language, if s/he may find an exceptional case of different background student in his/her class. When I was teaching in Afghan camp back in 1999, the most important challenge I faced was the challenge of communication. They understood neither Urdu nor English. They only used to communicate in Persian. Whenever I taught in Urdu, they laughed which led to disciplinary problems. I took this challenge and worked hard to learn few foundational words and sentences of Persian language. After working hard, I was at least able to communicate them. I also was able to maintain discipline after that.  

One more challenge facing by the teachers is lack of planning in teaching, which I also faced in special night school.  Classroom interaction doesn’t mean within the class, it means to create classroom environment any where, especially for special students. When I joined religious school, I observed that the main focus of all the teachers was on theoretical learning. There was no interactive session in classroom. No indoor and outdoor activities were designed, which could help to create pleasant environment. I talked to my head and took instant action and prepared few activities for them which helped to develop their interest which they required the most rather than traditional classroom environment.                                                                  

Another issue in a class is of time management. Teachers mostly teach in the form of lecture without pre-planning. And when they feel that time is running out, few of the teachers end up their lesson by leaps and bounds, that the students sometimes feel as if their opinions are not being given enough priority. I believe, that a lesson should be pre- planned and if, incase, teachers will not be able to cover the course on time, even then, they should at least make the most out of their teaching.  

An important challenge in the classroom is classroom management as it’s very important to create and sustain healthy environment in the class through which child learning capability will be developed. When I started teaching in Karachi Kids University, I was given a room with no proper arrangement for children. There was very limited space; but the number of students was more due to which students were not feeling comfortable. I went to the administrator and asked her to divide students into two groups and allocate another class through which they can study at ease. After that initiative, children thoroughly enjoyed the studies. Our books also reflect that males are dominant in our society. 

Dr. Zaira Wahab expresses his opinion, 
“Gender inequality is a problem embedded in the fabric of Pakistan’s social structure. The problem emanates at the primary level, as low participation and high dropouts at this stage prevent females from reaching higher education and equitable opportunities for such furtherance do not become available to the female gender...…when both girls and boys are given opportunity to practice language in classroom activities, the girls will get lesser practice chances as their dialogues are shorter and fewer.”² 

I agree, because during my teaching practicum in Government school, the challenge that I faced was of gender biasness. I saw many teachers giving importance and lots of attention to boys rather than girls. Females were discouraged to participate in class room. Due to that gender biasness, girls showed lack of interest in studies and their grades were low as compared to boys. During my teaching practicum, I tried to assure females students of their equal importance in class participation.  I gave equal importance to both genders by which female students feel relaxed and their curiosity towards learning was developed. 

I must conclude,

“Sometimes struggle are exactly what we need in our life. If nature allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us.”( anonymous) 

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TECH CORNER
	Are We Moving Into A Post-Literate Society? By Mark Benn Middle School Teacher

Are we moving into a POST-LITERATE society?

I know this question might knock you over, but please stop and think about it. Wikipedia defines a post-literate society as: a society wherein multimedia technology has advanced to the point where literacy, the ability to read written words, is no longer necessary. This doesn’t mean they can’t read, but choose to meet their main information and recreational needs through audio, video, graphics and gaming. Now think about the students you have today. What do they choose to do first for pleasure, read a book, or do they seek multi-media stimulation?

Doug Johnson, writer of the Blue Skunk Blog, wrote a blog titled Libraries for a post-literate society I and is located at:

http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2008/8/13/libraries-for-a-post-literate-society-i.html

He later followed it with two more blogs titled:  Libraries for a post-literate society II and In defense of postliteracy.  Doug Johnson’s premise is that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We are just returning to a 21^st century style of communication that is quote: “similar to more natural forms of communication - speaking, storytelling, dialogue, debate, and dramatization.”

If this is true, and I believe it is, because I see it all around me (including my three teenagers), think of the ramifications it should have on education. Are we making the change in our classrooms to meet these challenges? From what I’m reading from top educational speakers and from my observations around me, not much is changing. Is it a wonder we are losing the students in school?  They are checking out on us because we continue to teach in the old way. As one parent said to me today,  “Why don’t they learn it like we did?” My reply was that these kids aren’t us. This is not a generational gap. This is a major paradigm change in the way kids think and interact with their world.

So, what are you doing or going to do about this change? The first place to start is to begin reading what others are saying and what research is telling us. Check out the blogs of Doug Johnson, Ian Jukes, David Warlick, Will Richardson, Kathy Schrock, or Tony Vincent, to name a few. Become part of an online community of teachers such as: (http://www.classroom20.com/) and discuss this topic. Observe your students and ask them what excites them. This will get you started, but it is only the beginning. In closing, let’s look back at that question again. Are we moving into a post-literate society? It’s something to think about.

Next month I’ll talk about ideas on how to address this issue in the classroom. Now go do your homework and see what others are saying.

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Most states and districts in the 1990s adopted Outcomes Based Education in some form or another. The process usually was an umbrella for other disputed methods, such as constructivist mathematics and whole language. A state would create a committee to adopt standards, and a performance based assessment to assess "learning outcomes" which might look somewhat like a content based test, or something that parents might violently reject with very little recognizably academic content. A "Certificate of Mastery" would replace the diploma. At the start of the 1990s, "outcomes" tended to be nonacademic, but towards the 2000s, the term "high standards" instead was adopted, often resulting in very difficult tests. In the 2000s, many states are slated to require passing these tests to get a diploma, compared to the earlier tradition that any student who got a D average and attended for 4 years would graduate with one. States would spend millions to implement these reform programs. Other reform movements were School To Work, which would require all students to spend substantial class time on a job site.

Education reform has been pursued for a variety of specific reasons, but generally most reforms aim at redressing some societal ills, such as poverty-, gender-, or class-based inequities, or perceived ineffectiveness. Reforms are usually proposed by thinkers who aim to redress societal ills or institute societal changes, most often through a change in the education of the members of a class of people—the preparation of a ruling class to rule or a working class to work, the social hygiene of a lower or immigrant class, the preparation of citizens in a democracy or republic, etc. The idea that all children should be provided with a high level of education is a relatively recent idea, and has arisen largely in the context of Western democracy in the 20th century.

States have tried to use state schools to increase state power, especially to make better soldiers and workers. This strategy was first adopted to unify related linguistic groups in Europe, such as Germany and Italy. Exact mechanisms are unclear, but it often fails in areas where populations are culturally segregated, as when the U.S. Indian school service failed to suppress Lakota and Navaho, or when a culture has widely-respected autonomous cultural institutions, as when the Spanish failed to suppress Catalan.

Many students of democracy have desired to improve education in order to improve the quality of governance in democratic societies; the necessity of good public education follows logically if one believes that:

1. the quality of democratic governance depends on the ability of citizens to make informed, intelligent choices, and
2. education can improve these abilities.

Politically-motivated educational reforms of the democratic type are recorded as far back as Plato, whose book The Republic was essentially a thought experiment on education reform. In the United States of America, this lineage of democratic education reform was continued by Thomas Jefferson, who advocated ambitious reforms partly along Platonic lines for public schooling in Virginia.

Another motivation for reform is the desire to address socioeconomic problems, which many people see as having significant roots in lack of education. Starting in the twentieth century, people have attempted to argue that small improvements in education can have large returns in such areas as health, wealth and well-being. For example, in Kerala, India in the 1950s, increases in women's health were correlated with increases in female literacy rates. In Iran, increased primary education was correlated with increased farming efficiencies and income. In both cases some researchers have concluded these correlations as representing an underlying causal relationship: education causes socioeconomic benefits. In the case of Iran, researchers concluded that the improvements were due to farmers gaining reliable access to national crop prices and scientific farming information.

Libertarian theorists such as Milton Friedman advocate School choice to eliminate any need for formal accountability. Public educational vouchers would permit guardians to select and pay any school, public or private, with public funds. The theory is that children's guardians will shop for the best schools.

Home education is favored by some parents who directly take responsibility for their children's education, eliminating accountability by public officials.

Montessori Pre- and Primary school programs employ alternative methods of guided exploration, embracing children's natural curiosity rather than scolding it for falling out of rank.

Some of the methods and reforms have gained permanent advocates, and are widely utilized.

Many educators now believe that anything that more precisely meets the needs of the child will work better. This was initiated by M. Montessori and is still utilized in Montessori schools.

The teaching method must be teachable! This is a lesson from both Montessori and Dewey. This view now has very wide currency, and is used to select much of the curricula of teachers' colleges.

Conservative programs are often based on classical education, which is seen by conservatives to reliably teach valuable skills in a developmentally appropriate order to the majority of Myers-Briggs temperaments, by teaching facts.

Programs that test individual learning, and teach to mastery of a subject have been proven by the state of Kentucky to be far more effective than group instruction with compromise schedules, or even class-size reduction

Schools with limited resources, such as most public schools and most third-world and missionary schools, use a grammar-school approach. The evidence of Lancaster schools suggests using students as teachers. If the culture supports it, perhaps the economic discipline of the Lancaster school can reduce costs even further. However, much of the success of Lancaster's "school economy" was that the children were natives of an intensely mercantile culture.

In order to be effective, classroom instruction needs to change subjects at times near a typical student's attention span, which can be as frequently as every two minutes for young children. This is an important part of Marva Collins' method.

The Myers-Briggs temperaments fall into four broad categories, each sufficiently different to justify completely different educational theories. Many developmental psychologists say that it might be socially profitable to test for and target temperaments with special curricula.

Some of the Myers-Briggs temperaments are known to despise educational material that lacks theory. Therefore, effective curricula need to raise and answer "which" and "why" questions, to teach students with "intuitive" (Myers-Briggs) modalities.

Philosophers identify independent, logical reasoning as a precondition to most western science, engineering, economic and political theory. Therefore, every educational program that desires to improve students' outcomes in political, health and economic behavior should include a Socratic-taught set of classes to teach logic and critical thinking.

Substantial resources and time can be saved by permitting students to test out of classes. This also increases motivation, directs individual study, and reduces boredom and disciplinary problems.

To support inexpensive continuing adult education a community needs a free public library. It can start modestly as shelves in an attended shop or government building, with donated books. Attendants are essential to protect the books from vandalism. Adult education repays itself many times over by providing direct opportunity to adults. Free libraries are also powerful resources for schools and businesses.

New programs based on modern learning theories should be quantitatively investigated for effectiveness, as was done by KERA

A notable reform of the education system of Massachusetts occurred in 1993.

The current student voice effort echoes past school reform initiatives focusing on parent involvement, community involvement, and other forms of participation in schools. However, it is finding a significant amount of success in schools because of the inherent differences: student voice is central to the daily schooling experience because students spend all day there. Many educators today strive for meaningful student involvement in their classrooms, while school administrators, school board members, and elected officials each lurch to hear what students have to say.

 

 

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New Teachers' Niche:  A Place for New Teachers, Student Teachers, and Interns
	Positive Parent Conferences

It is extremely important to make a good first impression (even if you already know the parents). Make eye contact with them, and greet the parents with a firm handshake. No weak grips! If you've never met the parents, stand up to introduce yourself. Welcome them with a smile. Remember that you are building relationships, and setting the tone for the conference.

A good way to open the conference is to ask how the student is doing in other classes. Ask about their other grades, and start building an overall picture. You will often find the student's strong and weak areas, and you may even find surprises. I've found students who were failing every class but mine. And I've found the opposite too. A good overall picture can really give you a new perspective on your students.

Always try to say something positive. Even in the cloudiest of situations, you should find some ray of sunshine. And if you do have bad news to share, opening with good news can help ease the transition.

Be objective with bad news. Give truthful and accurate facts, and keep from making speculations. Make sure you have your facts straight! Work with parents, and try to offer suggestions. Most parents will look to you for ideas. Plan what you'll say ahead of time. If you've taken the time to get to know your students well, you'll find the conferences easier.

Positive parents are what we all expect and hope for. They come in with an open mind, are pleasant, and are willing to both listen to your comments and help with solutions to problems that do occur.  These are often very short conferences at the middle and high school levels. The parents have heard the stories all before, and with good reason; students whose parents regularly attend conferences have higher grade averages and fewer instances of behavior problems than those students whose parents rarely interact with school personnel.

The truth be known, many parents are intimidated by teachers. Many do worry that their concerns and critiques will be turned around and used against their kids. Even though teachers find this entire concept laughable and preposterous, it does, nonetheless, cross many parents' minds.

So, what do you do with a hostile parent? Diffuse the situation by being patient and listening. Sometimes its hard to just listen while parents are going off on you. They may be right or wrong, misinformed or even plain out of line. It is only a mistake to interrupt them, especially if they are on a roll. Stop yourself, focus on what they're saying, even take notes to show you're listening, and let them burn themselves out. Sometimes the hostile parents are looking for an audience, and sometimes they just need to vent. By giving them the time to 'get it all out of their system', you allow them to calm down so you both can reasonably discuss the situation.

Be sure to stand when they leave, again this is being courteous and polite. Thank them for attending. And let them know you'll contact them if anything changes. Parents generally want to be kept informed about their kids, both the good and bad.


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"Stop Waiting" Author Unknown Themes on Life

In This Week's Issue 
(Click the Quick Links below):

Challenges of Curriculum (part 2)

Tech Corner: 
Are We Moving Into A Post-Literate Society?

New Teacher's Niche:
Positive Parent Conferences

Themes on Life:  
"Stop Waiting"

A Brief History of Educational Reform
(part 4)

10 Days of Writing Prompts

10 Days of Math Problems

Autumn Book Sale for Teachers

Book of the Month Club

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