Collaborative Reflection Tools
My partner for this component currently holds a position similar to mine. We both deal with observing and evaluating teachers. For this exercise we selected three tools of reflection: interviews, storytelling, and letter writing.
The tools helped me to ask questions that I had been contemplating of someone else. From the connections that I was making in the Connelly and Clandinin (1988) text, I created three questions. Similarly, my partner asked me three questions and provided a topic for discussion.
Initially I thought that my partner would answer my questions in the same way that I would, but instead her answers to the first and third questions came as a surprise because she answered them differently than I would have. Her glass wall was based on the academic versus whole curriculum. My glass wall has been, as reflected through my journal, the lack of understanding and attention given to the social studies. So for this first question I asked, there were different responses. More notable was her response to the third question. She stated that teachers at her school were expected to create everything themselves. This is very different from how teachers in my district are expected to interact with curriculum. In my district we run the gamut from day by day lesson plans to follow to free interpretation of the content standard goals. Her school is a charter school, which I interpret as being a school that has found a way to deal with a deficiency in education in their own unique and personalize way. My traditional public school system does not allow for that freedom and with periodic monitoring by the Department of Education, my district must be able to produce evidence of following curriculum guidelines and federal law. As a follow up question, I should have asked about pressure (or lack of pressure) from state and federal entities in prescribing and monitoring curriculum implementation.
The questions asked of me were very specific to my responsibilities as a curriculum planner. Here again, I feel that the pressures from state and federal departments of education are constantly present. Because my district is the largest in the state, as well being perceived as being one of the richest, there is a constant threat of lawsuits by parents and other individuals and organizations. One of the enacted (not explicit) responsibilities of my position is to fend off potential conflict from external stakeholders. Some of the external concerns that I have dealt with are cultural/diversity issues. In all the interviews provided me an opportunity to listen, rather than to problem solve. It was a nice change. I also learned how someone in a differently structured school with a completely different approach processed curriculum issues and teacher concerns.
The story writing was liberating. I chose to write a stories that reflect my education career over time and highlighted my non-use of textbooks, the people I now call my heroes, and my present position where I feel my intended role is to support teachers as if I am helping them to build resumes and someday be my replacement. I would like to see how, in combination with journal entries, how my views on curriculum and implementation of curriculum would develop over time with reflection on the causes of consistency or change.
The letter writing tool that my partner and I used were very supportive in nature. Rather than writing traditional letters, we sent each other emails. My partner stated that I had helped her see the “light at the end of the tunnel” for developing and producing this product and I had questions about specific language in our text that she clarified for me. I see the letter writing as being professionally supportive of both our curriculum positions and also that of fellow students in this cohort program.
Lacking in the partner activities was an opportunity to observe an instructional setting together. I have found that my own growth as a curriculum administrator occurs when I am able to observe a teacher with another administrator and by using a rubric we then calibrate our observations. Often one of us will see something the other didn’t and more often one will interpret the actions of teachers or the students differently. Those conversations have been a valuable part of growth for me and have enabled me to ask different questions of teachers in post observation interviews. These activities as outlined in Connelly and Clandinin have a potential for helping others to make informed decisions about improving curriculum.