Backward

Watching these videos was torture. Better to turn off the video and just listen...

Hmmm...I wonder if we teachers should think of ourselves more as coaches of the Game of Life. Maybe this will help us incorporate or diversify our differentiation techniques. Never having been part of a sports team, because I suck at sports, I never thought of coaches as being great differentiators. Thinking about it though, it does seem natural because you can't have half your team sitting out because they are not getting the point of the game.

The point I remember most from all of this is backward design. I've been in a class now for one and a half weeks with the same amount of time to go. The teacher (very thoughtfully) carefully laid out three week's worth of lesson plans for me. What I was unable to find, was the ultimate goal for the students during my three weeks' time with them and the lessons were not making sense to me. They were out of context. She also might not have considered the fact that, even with a guest teacher the students are familiar with, there will be (are!) management issues that sometimes hold the kids back and lessons will have to be reinforced (read: re-taught). Is this where the coaching comes in? Couple this with the fact that I can't see a connection between the lessons I'm giving and the independent math work stations the students are doing. Also, these math lessons are very scripted giving the teacher little wiggle room for presentation and with such a strict schedule that the writers (and

Math

people who advocated for the purchase of this program) must think all teachers are either geniuses and can get the points across with the written script, or so stupid that the only thing that will come across is a scripted math lesson!

So, what to do? I look to the end of the unit, figure out where I'm going and try to teach to that (whew! Alliteration!). When I figured out where the goal was, I had a better idea of how to get there (though I still don't see the connection between lessons and stations...).

With this in mind, I really connected to McTighe's idea of What is the ultimate goal of school? To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, if children are uneducated, it will cost us in the long run. He hit the nail on the head. Bear with me... I think in terms of backward design when educating my boys. When I say educating, I mean more than subjects taught in school. I teach them everything from monetary responsibility to the consequences of kindness without cause. My ultimate goal, of course, is to mold them into awesome men that are productive and contribute to their society - hopefully the goal of all parents and teachers for all the children they come in contact with. And we bring this goal all the way down through school to kindergarten in teaching them cooperation and not to yell or hit each other: The ultimate backward design.
backward designing all the way up from high school or beyond.

And where does this leave one who is a coach of the Game of Life? Always looking forward and thinking ahead, of course! What I want my students to know tomorrow, I must scaffold on today and what next year's teacher wants them to know will have to grow on what they can learn from me this year. Funny, when you think about it, how a successful adult may partly owe her success to her kindergarten teacher (and her parents!!).