Curriculum in its Social Context

     I found McNiff’s piece to be very interesting in both its composition (as representative of her point about narrative) and her critique of the primacy of social science research and its influence on action research conducted by educators. This past fall, I took a course on inquiry (TE 808) in which I conducted my own action research and wrote a research paper. At the beginning of the process, I approached the task with more of a social science mindset, hoping my implemented strategies would provide a certain result. It took reading more about action research (texts such as The Power of Questions , Falk and Blumenreich, 2005) and continued prompting from my professor to focus on the process of inquiry and not be so outcome oriented in order to shift my mindset. I think that many teachers are conditioned in their preparation programs (and often then in their professional lives) to believe that theory is meant to be absorbed and applied more than critiqued and that pers...

  Since last March, I feel like I have experienced almost every form of teaching: full in-person before the shutdown, then fully remote with students I already knew with a synchronous option but no obligation, then remote with brand new students, and now a few iterations of hybrid synchronous lessons. It has been exhausting, to say the least. But I think a lot of the reason why it has been exhausting is that it takes more energy, effort, and time to try to have the same kinds of community, personal relationships, and in-depth conversations that come more naturally in the classroom. Last spring was about survival and giving students “grace over grades,” prioritizing their well-being, which I fully supported. I used that opportunity to revise some of my grading policies regarding late work and plagiarism to give students more opportunities, explain themselves, and reflect on their actions instead of just punishing them. These are policies I’ve continued and built on this year. As Dar...

  In reflecting on all of the various texts for this cycle, I kept returning to the idea of human beings putting up barriers between ourselves and nature. These barriers exist both in the physical world, in our societal structures like curriculum, and in our minds and, as Richard Louv says, “reduce the richness of the human experience.” I was struck by Jill Lepore’s exploration of breastfeeding and the commercialization of pumping both in its literal implications and how it can operate as a metaphor for the larger societal disconnect from nature. Lepore questions whether it is the mother or the milk that is really valued and explores how milk and breastfeeding have been commodified through the wide use of breast pumps. The pump itself is an artifice that separates mother and child, but in many cases pumping is used as a way to continue providing breast milk while returning to work because of the U.S. labor laws that only allow for three months of (unpaid) leave (Lepore). These laws...

      In exploring the readings for Cycle 1, I found that they not only resonated with my personal experiences and philosophy of teaching, but with my core motivation for becoming an educator in the first place. I did not choose to pursue teaching because of a love of curriculum or state standards, objectives or assessments; I wanted to help my students become the best versions of themselves. So much of my teacher preparation was focused on the how of teaching within the current system, essentially how to get the most out of the status quo, but the questions of what and why were not explored much at all. Kieran Egan raises this issue in his work, and comes to the conclusion that “we turn our attention increasingly to what questions and present strong arguments for or against specific curriculum content” (Egan 16).  But this questioning, as Nel Noddings points out, needs to be asked along with the question of why. How can one have discussions of what should be taught ...

Hello, All! My name is Tom Collins. I am in my seventh year teaching English in suburban New Jersey. I have taught all ability levels, and I currently teach tenth grade honors English, SAT Prep and AP Literature. I will begin Creative Writing in a few weeks when the new semester starts. I am also the advisor to our school's literary magazine. My school has been going back and forth between virtual and hybrid teaching all year (which has been pretty exhausting) and we will go back to hybrid on the 19th. Most students will still be at home and we teach in person students simultaneously, so I am not looking forward that dynamic again. I tend to feel that I am not able to give either group of students my full attention and it is logistically difficult to have whole class conversation, which is typically a big part of my classes. I have been interested in pursuing my degree in Curriculum and Instruction for some time, and I am excited to be on this journey with all of you.  Outside of t...