The following was written by Meeting Street Schools Chief Academic Officer Nisha Vasavada.
Meeting Street Schools is a network where educators grow, not stagnate.
Take Emily Godwin. She’s a seasoned educator who’s driven meaningful results for her students. And she can point to improvements in her fourth-grade classroom this year.
She described her lesson structure as more consistent and predictable, and she said that’s helping her students think more deeply and better grasp the day’s lessons.
This progress is one example of a significant shift in the way we approach instruction at Meeting Street Schools.
I’d like to share more about what we’re doing and why we believe it is – and will – make a difference in students’ learning.
A NEW DEFINITION OF INSTRUCTION
At Meeting Street Schools, we believe instruction is made of three components that often get lumped together. But this distinction is important in how we support teachers. The parts are:
- Curriculum, which are the materials students use to learn
- Content, which is the information, standards and concepts students are expected to master
- Teacher practice, which is how learning is facilitated in the classroom.
WHY CURRICULUM IS IMPORTANT
These days, the buzzword in education is executing the curriculum with fidelity, or doing it exactly as is. This focus is well intentioned; it’s to ensure teachers leverage the high-quality instructional materials in front of them. Curriculum sets the rigor bar for students, but we cannot lose our content within it.
Without curriculum, teachers scramble to create lessons, using materials from Pinterest or paying other teachers, and this can create real inconsistency in rigor and inequity for students, particularly for kids of color. The Opportunity Myth study speaks to the deep need for high-quality instructional materials in schools nationwide and that far too many students do not get grade-level curriculum.
Somewhere along the line, we’ve gotten so focused on implementing the materials as is that we may have inadvertently stifled critical thinking of teachers, which thus stifles critical thinking of students.
At Meeting Street Schools, we want our teachers to think deeply about their instruction. If we want students to productively struggle with the content, our teachers and leaders have to do so first.
HOW WE APPROACH CURRICULUM
Many high-quality curricula on the market are akin to all-you-can-eat buffets. There’s a lot of choice and variety within lessons, and some choices are healthier for student learning than others.
As we all know, buffets can be overwhelming and overcomplicated. You may fill your plate with food you don’t need or even want because you got distracted by all the attractive options.
The same goes for curricula. Some experts have argued that many curricula rated “green” on Ed Reports are actually not created equally. There is massive variance in the way student tasks build on each other meaningfully, and the ease with which a teacher can pick it up and understand it. Any teacher who has driven gap-closing results for students at the margins can attest to this variance in curricular design.
Now imagine if you could support teachers in making the healthy choices within that buffet, so students get the vegetables fruits, and protein in the lesson.
Not only do we want them to get to the healthiest part of the lesson, we are teaching teachers how to facilitate that healthy part of the lesson so students have to actually grapple and “chew” on it. This is hard and a whole new way of teaching for many of us. Good teaching means we plan for students to get confused at the most important parts then use that confusion to get to clarity.
This is one example of how Meeting Street Schools is taking a different instructional approach to our use of curriculum.
We do that both by 1) training teachers on how to identify the healthiest choices no matter what materials are in front of them and also 2) actually trimming down the choices we present, by simplifying the existing curricular materials and increasing the predictability of their daily lesson structures. Doing this empowers both teachers and students, and both achieve their goals.
SIGNS OF PROGRESS
It’s early in the school year but we believe our efforts are taking root in our classrooms.
Zooming back to Emily’s classroom, she highlighted one particular student’s growth as a result of these instructional shifts.
The student started the school year by reacting with frustration and anger each time they discussed his mistakes. Just one month later, his reaction to a mistake was to ask whether they could meet at lunch to talk about it.
“It feels like students are more willing to take risks and make mistakes,” she said. “They know our class structure and focus completely on the content – what we’re doing and why. And that’s been so powerful.”
By helping teachers navigate the buffet of curriculum with intentionality, we hope to empower them to make strategic choices and serve up the best possible learning experiences—every single day.
