Personal

Curriculum Platform

Critical Issues in Education

Summer 2013



Amy Frankforter

Introduction

I have been working in the educational field for 20 years. I graduated from the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln in December of 1992 with a Bachelor of Science
degree in Elementary Education (certified K-8), Special Education (certified K-6)
and a minor in Speech Pathology with an emphasis on the Education of the Hearing
Impaired.

I began my teaching career in education as a consultant for the hearing impaired in
Columbus, Nebraska. I then taught two years in a country schoolhouse near David
City. When I started my family, I began working in a childcare center with all ages
from infants to school-age, specializing in teaching kindergarten. After four years I
became a director of a preschool and childcare center her in Lincoln, a job I held for
seven years. I have been teaching in Lincoln Public since 2006.

When I reflect upon my work in education over the last twenty years, I can certainly
say that my philosophy about education has grown, as I have grown professionally
and personally. Fundamentally, it has stayed the same but my experiences have led
to considerable development of the following elements of my educational platform.

The Aims of Education

I believe the top three aims in education in my school are:

1. Preparing students for success in their future, either entering the workforce
after graduation or collegeteaching content.
2. Fostering a love for learningteaching respect for knowledge.
3. Providing the life-skills necessary for right actionteaching responsibility.

Of course, as teachers, our prime directive (if it were an episode of Star Trek) is to
prepare students for the future by teaching them the information they will need to
be successful as they enter the workforce or enter college. If you were to ask
random people on the street what kids are supposed to get out of school, I believe
most people would answer simply, knowledge. To impart knowledge is what we
do in its most basic form. We teach what we are told to teachcurriculumand
how to teach it. However, I also believe that for a teacher to be effective, she has to
go beyond the teachers manual in a way that what she is teaching sticks with the
learner. What good is content if it doesnt connect?

We all have a teacher in our lives that showed us that learning was fun, that it was
something to be cherished and respected. I believe that fostering a love of learning
is an essential building block in success. No matter what my students choose to do
after they graduate, I want them to know, by my example that loving to learn and
learning to love are to be held in highest regard in our lives. Without a respect for
learning new things, we get stuck in what we know, or what we think we know,
without ever questioning or investigating how to improve or grow. Life-long

learners know that success depends on the willingness to change, create and share
your experiences and knowledge with others.

The Nature of the Learner

In a recent report on National Public Radio (NPR), I heard that learning begins
before a child is born. Annie Murphy Paul, author of Origins: How the Nine Months
Before Birth Shape Our Lives (2010, Free Press) spoke on the TED Radio Show that
while people might think that learning begins in preschool or kindergarten, in
toddlerhood, or even at the moment of birth, that studies show that fetuses begin
processing information from inside the womb like sounds, tastes and smells. This
tells us that the nature of the learner is, well, natural.

I believe a learner is dynamic in nature. We are always taking in new information,
causing us to change. We learn through our senses and our experiences. We learn
good things and bad things. We learn habits and ways to break habits. Learning is
involuntary. Our brains process information or stimulus in a way that is as unique
to each of us.

The Image of the Curriculum

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines curriculum as:

1. the courses offered by and educational institution
2. a set of courses constituting an area of specialization

My operational definition of curriculum is a set of grade-level and developmentally
appropriate lessons and learning objectives that are tied to standards at the district,
state and national level. However, couldnt curriculum be very simply defined as
lessons we wish our students to learn? Allow me to be clear in that I think the afore-
mentioned elements are essential. A curriculum adopted by a school district makes
teaching core material universal by grade-level. In our environment of new
standards, state testing and federal law, we must rely on a high-quality curriculum
to offer teachers a foundation to meet the guidelines set before them. However, I
believe curriculum also encompasses culture. Students learn from peers, families,
teachers, community members, and even animals or objects. A student should be
able to make connections to his life and place in our world. This is the key to making
learning meaningful.

The content we teach should be accessible to all learners. Just as it is impossible to
teach a lesson the same way twice, it would be just as impractical to expect that
students interpret the lesson the same as someone else. A curriculum that has value
to our students would be one that incorporates life experience and observation as
well as core content.

The Image of the Teacher

When I consider the image of a teacher, I ask two questions:
1. What is the societal image of a teacher?
2. What is the image of a teacher for the child or the family?

When I entered the word teacher into a google search the words that appeared on
my screen were rich, competent, theory-builder, instruct, profession and
occupation. I am led to believe that these words would be ones that many people in
society would think of when asked to define teacher. Except for the word rich, I
would be inclined to agree (It is not teaching is not rich profession in terms of
intangible rewards, but I dont really think the general public views a teacher as
rich).

I think American society generally accepts that the profession of teaching is
valuable, productive and honorable. There will always be skeptics, but in my
(relatively limited in the big scheme of things) twenty years experience in the field
of education, I come up against far less stereotypes about teachers than I used to. It
seems like it took a while, and it is refreshingeven though there are times when
societys view of educators still has a ways to go.

Arne Duncan, the United States Secretary of Education stated at a Teacher Town
Hall meeting, We need to radically change society's views of teaching from the
factory model of yesterday to the professional model of tomorrow, where teachers
are revered as the thinkers, leaders and nation-builders they truly are No other
profession carries a greater burden for securing America's economic future. No
other profession holds out more promise of opportunity to children and young
people from disadvantaged backgrounds. And no other profession deserves more
respect. (ED.gov, 2012)

As far as the image of the teacher from the perspective of the child and the family, I
will present my personal experience in my family. I have a child who quite simply
doesnt fit in. She is a loving, caring, intelligent, funny girl who suffers from anxiety
and depression. Her relationship with teachers began in preschool. The teachers
there were understanding (for the most part) of her differences in social behavior.
In Kindergarten, we met the teacher that my daughter loved so very much. She was
kind, polite, loving, understanding and patient. My daughter blossomed in her class.
Then came first and second grades. The teachers in those grades became fed up
with my daughters square-peg nature and called her out on it multiple times. She
continued to do well academically but was sad and scared to attend school. By the
time she went to third grade, the bottom dropped out. She refused to go to school,
having such high anxiety that she would literally make herself sick or injure herself
to get out of going (or staying if we got her there). She spend part of that year in a
hospital day program missing nearly a third of the school year, but still staying on
level academically. The teachers in third grade seemed to only care about how odd

she was, not how to help her fit in or feel comfortable, assist her in making and
keeping friendships or reach out to her.

We moved her to another school for fourth and fifth grades. This is the place that
we learned what a teacher could beshould befor our troubled child. The
administration, and three classroom teachers met with us before school started and
it was from that moment on that we were truly a team in raising our daughter. We
will never forget how she had been treated in either school. But, when I think about
the nature of the teacher from the perspective of the child and family, I think of the
teachers and administrators that took the time to learn about our child and cherish
her for who she was and her amazing special gifts. I hope my students and their
families see those qualities in me.

The Preferred Pedagogy

My preferred method of teaching is one where the teacher is an instructor and a
facilitator of learning. In kindergarten, lets face it, there are times (especially at the
beginning of the year) when a teacher must be the instructor, having most of the
control over the learning environment. However, one thing that I adore about
teaching this grade level is how much growth the students make as learners. I like
to watch my students become more responsible and respectful with peers, adults,
and school items as the school year progresses. It is a magical event when the
students become interested in monitoring their own learning and even begin
helping others. It is at this point that I can make the switch to facilitating their
learning instead of controlling it. Granted, not all students make it to this exciting
point in their development in kindergartensometimes it happens in first or
second grade, sometimes, even later than that. But, observing them make the jump
into motivated, engaged and accountable learners is like letting them take the
drivers seat for the first timeexhilarating and terrifying all at once.

The Preferred School

An effective school is a safe place for all who enter it. This school holds its students,
staff and parents to high standards for academics and behavior. The school should
be a beacon in the neighborhood or community, welcoming diversity and providing
programs and support for the families in order to strengthen it. Involving families
and community members in school activities makes a school more effective because
there is a vested interest in seeing the school succeed. An effective school will have
compassionate but strong leadership and a dedicated staff that works together to
develop and share a school mission with the community. I prefer working in a
school where the educational community has a high sense of hope for the future.

Reflection

A statement that I heard this week has stuck with me. It was, Equality is not always
equitable. Equality is defined as the state being equal especially in status, rights
and opportunities. In contrast, equitable is characterized by equity or fairness, just
and right, fair; reasonable. I think the issues that we have been learning about in
this class this week all point to the idea of equal versus equitable. We have
discussed and reflected about equality through cultural proficiency, state and
national funding for education, educational law, the isms, and reaching exceptional
learners.

We learned from Dr. Christy that separate but equal was anything but equal. An
entire peoples rights, status and opportunities have been stolen from them. That is
anything but equitable. Our research on the No Child Left Behind Act and shows that
federal law, although written with good intentions in mind, is also not equitable
because it attempts equality in terms of opportunities but misses the mark in
equitable funding and reasonable benchmarks that qualify schools for those dollars.

Although possibly less obvious, through mass media, all consumers are given
messages of how to look, feel, and behave in order to be successful and happy in our
society. This is not honest or fair considering the fact that there is only a very small
percentage of our population that can meet those impossible standards of beauty
and power. Suddenly, opportunities for happiness and fulfillment are not equal.

In education, it is our charge to bring about equal and equitable practices in our
schools. The knowledge that there are schools that are beating the odds and
producing high levels of proficiency gives me hope. I feel motivated to become more
involved in solving issues that affect education at all levels.






Bibliography

Paul, Annie Murphy (2010); Origins: How The Nine Months Before Birth Shape the
Rest of Our Lives, Free Press, New York, NY

TED Radio Show, National Public Radio, June 21, 2013, www.npr.org

Duncan, Arne (2012); Teachers Get R-E-S-P-E-C-T, www.ED.gov, U.S. Department of
Education