Moving slowly

In my post on what things would be like if I were in charge, I mentioned a three-year plan that would be my ideal progression. A reader commented What kind of supports do you think you would need in order to actually make this three year plan a reality?

Well, the first -- and most obvious — change would be having a three year history requirement. That change would require a lot of rethinking the entire curriculum and graduation requirements, changing more than merely the history department’s configuration but also other departments that would have to rethink their offerings in light of an additional required year of history.

Beyond that? One of the things that me and my librarian colleagues continually complain about is that independent schools are often really, really independent. We don’t adhere to state testing or curricular standards (although many do have to follow the College Board’s AP requirements, which just feels wrong… and a rant for later). Even within a grade or course group, individual teachers frequently do their own thing, so the 10 page paper in one class isn’t exactly like the 10 page paper in another, or English teachers may use different texts within the same course structure. It makes things interesting, if by “interesting” you mean “challenging to manage”, from many different standpoints.

So that’s one thing that we would need: the administration would have to mandate that information skills are integrated into the curriculum and that they should be taught by the librarians to ensure continuity and uniformity of skills and teaching. Could this happen? Perhaps within one or two mandatory classes, but without the courses required, my dream would only be partially realized.

Having said that… as part of the work I’ve done for the Scope and Sequence group I’m part of, I created a very rough guide to what could happen in Class IV (aka ninth grade):

Now I have to share this with a few teachers involved with Class IV history, including background information on why these skills should be taught by us and how they will help our students as they go into Class III courses (not just history!). Stay tuned for how this progresses.