So this week I spent alot of time with my site supervisor, going over possible topics and ideas to advance them. After a quite a bit of time, and alot more emails, we cam up with this:

How can I get the U.S. History teachers to become more supportive of the district-mandated curriculum? Is it possible to give more flexibility to the teachers, while still allowing for the large amount of TEKS to be covered in the limited time available?

After discussing the topics of interest for my Action Research plan, my site supervisor and I came to the conclusion that the most pressing issue was the problem teachers were having implementing the district-mandated U.S. History curriculum. With the introduction of the STAAR testing program mandated by the state, our district put in place a curriculum that was intended to cover all of the TEKS by the time students were to take the STAAR test. However, there has been significant resistance, and in some cases hostility, to the plan. Teachers argue the pacing of the curriculum is unrealistic, the sections, or bundles, are disjointed and in some cases not organized chronologically, and that in the district-wide tests used to gather data on students’ progress, questions are not aligned with the TEKS. We decided that we needed to create a plan which would allow the development of a curriculum that not only covered the information needed for successful learning by the student, but took into consideration the concerns of the teachers who would be presenting the information.

 

I am sure I am going to ruffle some feathers with this one, but it is something I take seriously, and, I feel, an idea that has real potential to not only help the students, but the teachers as well.