Standards

Early on when I first arrived at my assistantship people were talking about a green charter school that we would be working with. 'Oh yea eventually... you're all going to do something with the school' was about the extent of the conversation. Until we were in the car going to a meeting with our new work partners did we fully understand what we were getting ourselves into. Our supervisor was driving and basically said 'What were you all thinking? We should probably have some sort of plan before we walk in there, the big boss man wants us to do some sort of research that's on going, so lets think'

So we walked in and my supervisor, our fearless leader, and the young teachers supervisor (his fearless leader) sat back and said 'well... this is for you all for you all to work out far as we're concerned'. So here we were, three doe- eyed young professionals being told to do something. Having been in the Peace Corps, and working as an outdoor educator I can pretty much pull it together and a brave give a fake-it-'til-you-make-it face until something does happen. However, this time, I was a little stunned. I'm not a teacher, I'm an educator and working with a school to develop curriculum is something I've never done. The fake-it-'til-you-make-it strategy didn't seem appropriate because these were children. What type of program could we do?

The idea was they would come here every month and do some sort of outdoor programming. It would be a full day every time. In order for these kids to come it had to be not only worth while for students but also worth while for the school. If either one of both of those parties didn't feel they were getting enough out of the programming it could be a disaster. If the kids didn't like it, the program wasn't going to work, if the school didn't feel it was worth it to come, they wouldn't. We have to make it not only ongoing, but also engaging and educational.

We came up with an idea, giving each student a 'plot' or place and get it know it by learning about it. There was also a prescribed burn going on and we were looking to study the effects of that. This project was looking at not only seasonal changes but also changes made from the fire. They were going to take their data and compile it together within a project. They were also going to get to choose one thing to study, a question they would like answered. From our study they would take the methods of data collection that we taught them to answer their question.

The teacher loved the idea. So we've taken it and ran. But having to wade through educational standards to make sure that the students are getting the most out of the program is mostly the problem. Standards and criteria are great. They help define expectations of teaching. However, I can also see where they are cripplingly confining. A creative teacher who sees educational value in nontraditional topics is stuck trying to check boxes. I can't imagine having to work through every single curriculum standard. You would get through most in a year, but definitely not all.

My goals this week were to check the curriculum standards and make sure that we're hitting on quite a few in environmental education and science. Not the most exciting thing I've ever done, but enlightening. It is also interesting to see how much work gets put into a class or program when starting from scratch. I want this program to have more weight, and linking it to the curriculum standards will only make it stronger.