A thought re: taxon vs. locale memory

Posted on by Dale

Here’s a thought I had while writing about taxon and locale memory but didn’t include: the popular computer game The Sims is nothing more than humans without locale memory. You have to teach them everything, and the only way they can learn it is through constant repetition. Even the worst blockhead who ever walked through the doors of the media center doesn’t have to be shown the way out, but that’s the way we’d be without locale memory.

And we want to teach using taxon memory? What is wrong with us?

Start small

Posted on by Dale

I did a complete grid with all our suspects (Revere through Chavez), along with all the standards and bits and pieces, and that was overwhelming, so I’m going to start out by focusing on just one of these people and see where it gets me.

I’ll start with Frederick Douglass.

So, for Douglass, we have to

  • discuss his life, examining (I suppose) how he expanded people’s rights and freedoms in our democracy [SS3H2.a]
  • explain social barriers, restrictions, and obstacles he had to overcome, and how he overcame them [SS3H2.b]
  • identify locations significant to his life and times, on a political map [SS3G2.a]
  • describe how place (physical and human characteristics) impacted his life [SS3G2.b]
  • describe how he adapted to and was influenced by his environment [SS3G2.c]
  • traces examples of his travel, and his ideas across time [SS3G2.d]
  • describe how the region in which he lived affected his life and impacted his cultural identification [SS3G2.e]
  • describe how he displayed positive character traits: cooperation, diligence, liberty, justice, tolerance, freedom of conscience and expression, and respect for and acceptance of authority [SS3CG2]

Easier to handle? Perhaps.

So how would the media center fit into a curriculum that asks third grade students to accomplish the above?

Definition by example

Posted on by Dale

One of the classic writing strategies I’m sure we’re teaching the kids is definition by example. Even if you can’t define a concept in so many words, you can always give examples of the concept, and that way your reader gets the idea.

I think we can tackle our problem at hand (What is the role of the media center/specialist in the GPS curriculum?) in a kind of reverse order definition by example, an inductive reasoning process where we go from a particular performance standard to a set of generalized principles which we can apply to the entire curriculum.

Where to begin? Let’s take the 3rd grade social studies standards, a small cluster of them. If you don’t already have your own copy, download it at http://www.georgiastandards.org/socialstudies.asp. (In checking the link just now, I find that there’s now a side-by-side comparison of the social studies QCCs and GPSs, but soc studs are the only ones to have that at the moment. Good work, DOE!)

Here’s the second of the history standards (the first is the infamous ancient Greece one, not as bad as everyone fears):

SS3H2 The student will discuss the lives of Americans who expanded people’s rights and freedoms in a democracy.

a. Paul Revere (independence), Frederick Douglass (civil rights), Susan B. Anthony (women’s rights), Mary McLeod Bethune (education), Franklin D. Roosevelt (New Deal & World War II), Eleanor Roosevelt (United Nations & human rights),Thurgood Marshall (civil rights), Lyndon B. Johnson (Great Society & voting rights), and Cesar Chavez (worker’s rights)
b. explain social barriers, restrictions, and obstacles that thes overcome [sic], and describe how they overcame them

Here’s a geography standard:

SS3G2 The student will describe the cultural and geographic systems associated with the historical figures in SS3H2a.

a. identify specific locations significant to the life and times of these historic figures on a political map
b. describe how place (physical and human characteristics) impacted the lives of these historic figures
c. describe how each of these historic figures adapted to and was influenced by their environment
d. trace examples of travel and movement of these historic figures and their ideas across time
e. describe how the region in which these historic figures lived affected their lives and impacted their cultural identification

Here’s a civics/government standard:

SS3CG2 The student will describe how these historic figures display positive character traits of cooperation, diligence, liberty, justice, tolerance, freedom of conscience and expression, and respect for and acceptance of authority.

Leaving aside for the moment how we’re going to demonstrate respect for and acceptance of authority with the lives of Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt and César Chavez, let’s talk about what the media center could do for a third grade team that is facing this new set of standards.

Ideas, anyone?

Media & curriculum

Posted on by Dale

So what is our role in the curriculum, new or otherwise, if we aren’t implementing the ALA’s Information Literacy Standards, mainly because if we try, we’ll be ignored?

Certainly, the good people who wrote the Georgia Performance Standards do not seem to have given it any thought. I find no hint in the GPSs* of standards that recognize even the existence of a trained media professional on the premises, much less of the collaborative planning he is prepared to do with the teachers.

Nor do media specialists seem to have been involved in the fiction-writing process at any level. Surely, if we had been, there would be embedded in this active curriculum some hint that students need to be trained in how to find and use information.

::sigh:: Oh, well.

So what is our role in the curriculum?

*[Incidentally, I’ve been torqued about the term ‘GPS.’ The term itself is plural, but it seemed natural, though idiotic, to add an s to it, I’ve given up on apostrophes, just like we do with the QCCs. In yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, William Safire had the same torquation with WMDs, and his conclusion was that the initials focus on the item, not the number, so adding an s to the term, though syntactically foolish, is OK. Just don’t insist on periods and an apostrophe, like the Times.]

About that T-shirt

Posted on by Dale

If you were brave enough to click on the t-shirt link in Thursday’s post, you already know this: there’s a Curriculum Liberation Front store, and you can own your own CLF coffee mug, or t-shirt, or tote-bag. What can I say? What started as a small joke turned into a great way to waste a Friday night.

But seriously, as I was letting my imagination run riot with all the gear, I began to think that one could use CLF as a humorous way to insert oneself into the curriculum revision process. Imagine, sending a postcard to a grade level chair/dept. chair, that has the logo, the motto (“When knowing stuff is not enough”) and a simple little “The media center invites your cooperation.” And the notecard opens simply to say, “Cooperate.”

You’ve read this a million times, and you should especially read it in your very own copy of Curriculum Partner: redefining the role of the media specialist, by Carol A. Kearney: you must promote yourself as a curriculum partner, relentlessly. As you already know, we’re trained to plan with teachers, but they are not trained to plan with us, so we have to market our services and skills without ceasing. I’m going to use the Curriculum Liberation Front as one tool to get their attention. That, and cookies.

I’ve also decided that if I work real hard in December, I can put my QCC/GPS analysis into book form, and then you can buy your very own copy along with your mug and your boxer shorts. What better way to show the teachers you know what you’re doing and that you mean business? My teachers have already used the charts I’ve done as they’ve been planning units, so I know yours will jump at the chance to work with you and your little “GPS book.” As soon as I’ve gotten them written…

Information Literacy Standards

Posted on by Dale

This just in: Judy Serritella, the very fine Coordinator of Library Media Services, up at the DOE in Educational Technology…and Media [ellipsis added], sent us a link to the ALA’s Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning. It’s downloadable as a PDF file from ALA at http://www.ala.org/aasl/ip_nine.html.

Very complete, very nice, and absolutely necessary document.

And completely irrelevant. Admirable as these standards are, they are completely unaddressed in our GPS curriculum and therefore unassessed. (Hey, that’s good: “What’s unaddressed is unassessed.” I want a t-shirt.) And as we all know, if it ain’t assessed, it ain’t taught. Or as the t-shirt might have it, “What’s unaddressed is unassessed, and vice versa.” Y’all want that in a beefy T or baby doll?

The GPS as structure

Posted on by Dale

I am just beginning to get a sense of the Georgia Performance Standards as a structure that we think will cause learning. Over the past few days, I’ve completed the comparison between the QCCs and GPSs for science and socials studies, K-5, and yesterday I started on the language arts curriculum.

My original intention was simply to find out where the “stuff” went, how much content had actually been changed. I knew already, I thought, that the thrust of the curriculum had changed, that it was somehow designed to permit the teachers and the learners to go more deeply into the topics than the QCCs did. There’s less to cover and more to discover, so to speak.

Here is what I’ve found so far. The GPS curriculum is far more than simply rearranging the stuff we have to teach. It is more than simply throwing out half the QCC objectives. What we have here is a true structure within which learning can occur.

The QCC was simply a laundry list of objectives. The GPS is an organized structure of standards. The GPS is more specific about what we want students to be able to do with the knowledge we think they should have, while at the same time being a lot more spare with that knowledge.

For example, in social studies, history is now supreme, and economics, geography, and civics (although listed separately) are embedded in the study of U.S. history. In 3rd grade, students will discuss the lives of Americans who expanded people’s rights and freedoms in a democracy [SS3H2]. The following are listed: Paul Revere (independence), Frederick Douglass (civil rights), Susan B. Anthony (women’s rights), Mary McLeod Bethune (education), Franklin D. Roosevelt (New Deal & World War II), Eleanor Roosevelt (United Nations & human rights),Thurgood Marshall (civil rights), Lyndon B. Johnson (Great Society & voting rights), and Cesar Chavez (worker’s rights).

Here’s what I think is true about this curriculum: it will not be sufficient to assign this list of people to your class to do “reports,” including a “visual aid.” That short list of people has embedded in it an entire study of the time periods and social forces with which they contended. Viz., SS3H2.b, which states that the student will “explain social barriers, restrictions, and obstacles that these historical figures had to overcome, and describe how they overcame them.”

Before we even get to talking about how the media center fits into all this, I’d like to see if anyone else is curious as to how we assess (i.e., get a grade for the computer) that standard, “students will discuss…” And what will the CRCT look like? Because if the CRCT is nothing more than identifying Mary McLeod Bethune, the whole purpose of the GPS will be undercut.

“Uses the media center…”

Posted on by Dale

Remember the QCC objective, somewhere in Language Arts, Reference/Study, that says, “Uses media center and available technology as sources of information and pleasure”?

That is no longer in the GPS curriculum in any way, shape, or form.

Yes!! Sweet freedom! We can lock the doors, read our magazines, and eat bon-bons! All we have to do now is convince the teachers that the 1,000,000-word reading goal can be met from their combined textbook selections.

Integrating the media center into the new curriculum may be harder than we have hitherto supposed.

Reviewing the QCCs

Posted on by Dale

Oh my stars! I’ve embarked on a huge project, about which I’ll write lots later on, of comparing the QCCs to the GPSs. I’ve finished science and am starting on the social studies curriculum, and I just want to state for the record that the QCCs were an unbelievable mess! Not that we didn’t already know that, but when you have to go over it with a fine-tooth comb to see how the topics were distributed anew, you can really see how incoherent it all was.


Here’s the 5th grade physical science curriculum, with the old QCCs on the left and the new GPSs on the right. One huge chunk, motion and force, has been moved to 4th grade; and electricity/magnetism has been moved up. In both, several old QCC objectives have been dropped.

Curriculum and the two views

Posted on by Dale

If we’ve agreed that curriculum is that structure we think will cause learning, and I guess we have, since no one has left any comments to the contrary on my previous posts, then it should be pretty clear where our two views of learning, our two systems of memory, fit into the picture.

If we think that learning is a basic set of facts to memorize, then the structure of our learning will be long compilations of all the things we need to know. Actually, let’s call it the things we think children need to know. Quick, what’s the valence of carbon? What, you don’t know that? I bet you learned it. Why don’t you know it?

If we think that learning is a construction process, then our curriculum ought to be a set of knowledge goals centered around providing opportunities to construct that knowledge.

Clearly, of course, our curriculum must be a combination of these two views. There are some things we just have to know: the alphabet, addition facts, the names of the states, etc., etc. Where it breaks down is when we have to agree on the limits of that knowledge. This breakdown is what leads to all kinds of compromise and to 23-year curricula like the QCC. I mean, if we don’t teach them the causes and effects of the Alien and Sedition Acts (or, as my son refers to them, “Patriot Act 1.0”), then how will they know it? I can feel the panic rising even as we think about it.

One of the goals of the GPS was to simplify, to reduce the sheer number of things we had to make sure the children memorized, to try get the curriculum down to the thirteen years we actually have the children captive.

Another of its goals, if I understand it correctly, is to provide a structure for students to begin to construct actual knowledge that is deep, meaningful, accurate, and longlasting.

So… does it do that? And if it does, what does that mean for media specialists?