A Rainbow - Colored Curriculum

Who am I and what are my core values and beliefs? If John Gardners saying, we teach
who we are is true, then this question is worth some serious consideration. If I were to write an
equation for myself it would look something like this: mom, wife, sister, daughter, family
member, friend, religious, learner, human rights supporter and occasional activist, teacher,
reader, writer, musician, world traveler, adventurer, anthropologist, archaeologist, artist,
depression/anxiety survivor, perfectionist =

Emily Rae Echols Tomkins the Eternal Optimist.

I am a rainbow of beliefs and experiences. These facets of my existence provide the multicolored happy lenses through which I tend to view the world. As a result, these aspects of who I
am cannot be sieved out before I enter the classroom nor would I want them to be. The human
experience (my human experience) provides a depth to the learning that occurs in my classroom
because consciously and unconsciously, it colors every educational choice that I make, from how
I relate to others to decisions regarding curriculum.
My long-term vision for my students sees them interacting in their communities as
fulfilled, thoughtful, caring, empathetic adults who tend to make the world around them a better
place. On some level, I realize that this is purely selfish. I didnt really care about the selffulfillment of others until I became a mom. I cared about people and valued kindness, but my
own development and happiness was priority number one. Having a child fractured the insulation
of my selfishness; it was only then that I realized the world needed to be a better place and that I
had a moral obligation to help move it in that direction. At the time, I was a retail manager
leading an unfulfilled existence, unable to change the world in any meaningful way. As a mother,
this became unacceptable. I had to make the world better for my child and live my own life as an
example of a life worth living I chose to become a teacher.

My role as a teacher allows me to help children develop their individual, unique

potentials and hopefully become self-fulfilled as a result. I believe human development and
fulfillment occur through a variety of learning processes. Self-reflection, creative expression,
problem-solving, playing, and communicating are just some of the learning paths that foster
growth, development, and self-fulfillment. On a day-to-day basis I try to implement curriculum
choices to promote the kinds of learning experiences that lead to the realization of these goals
while also meeting individual learning needs.
Creative expression can take many forms and often allows students to work
collaboratively. When I first moved to third grade, a more experienced friend and colleague
shared her strategies for teaching reading. She showed me the composition notebooks her
students filled out as they responded to books during independent reading. At the front of each
students notebook was a format for how to respond to books. Her students responded to
literature, following this format, every day to keep them accountable for their reading while she
worked with guided reading groups. I took the examples she offered me and thanked her for her
willingness to share.
I knew immediately, however, that I would not be adopting some of her ideas. My
own guiding philosophy for reading is that I want the kids to love it when you love something
you tend to spend more time doing it. I felt my colleagues approach would kill a love of reading
for some students and stifle its development in others (especially those kids for whom writing is
absolute torture). In my mind it was inherently boring, uncreative, and antithetical to what
learning is all about.
I started the year having my students respond to guided reading books by answering
questions. They had all week to get their responses done and could choose from a variety of

questions to answer. I felt I was moving in the right direction because my students werent
limited to a specific format, they didnt have to respond in writing to everything they read, and
they had more choice in the types of questions to which they responded. But as time went on this
routine began to feel static and uninspired. My own love for reading is such that I cant imagine a
life without books. Was I really developing that same kind of love for my students? The answer
was no. I started thinking about ways that I could increase the level of student engagement and
make reading more dynamic. I realized that my approach was limited to written responses so
I decided to experiment. I asked the students in one of my guided reading groups
if they would like to do something different. We were reading a book about foods that had been
created by accident and I asked the kids if they would like to accidentally create their own new
foods as a kind of response. Their levels of engagement went through the roof! They were
talking about their book outside of guided reading times, discussing their ideas for food
creations, and thinking through problems encountered during the process. I could see many other
students in the class peeking at this group surreptitiously while trying to maintain the illusion of
independent reading. Many students came up to me later and asked if their group could do that,
too. The answer, of course, was YES!
We moved on and never looked back. One group responded to a How To
book about drawing by drawing pictures and explaining the strategies they had learned from the
book. Another group worked together to write and perform a play based on a book theyd read
together. One group created a video summary of The Whipping Boy. Yet another group designed
and created new forms of transportation using toys and diagrams. I was also changed as a teacher
in that I had to rely more heavily on those rich conversations as a method for assessing student
understanding. It forced me to hone my listening skills as students spoke because I couldnt

simply go back and read their responses later.

In our conversation with Peter Johnston, he mentioned that no matter what the grade
level, he felt the key to reading was the engagement factor for students (personal communication,
July 17, 2013). Based on my own experiences in the classroom, I have to agree with his
assertion. When students are engaged in the learning process, you can feel it; you can see it on
their faces and in their body language its a wonderful experience. This is the ideal toward
which we strive. It is easier to believe in these ideas during the summer, removed from the daily
grind and the unholy pace of the school year.
During the school year, it is too easy to get caught up in the assessment/accountability
factor. Am I going to have enough grades for infinite campus and report cards? Do my grades
actually reflect what my students know and can do? Do I have student examples for conferences?
Can I show growth for this student over the course of the year? Are my kids prepared for the
Dakota Step? Im not saying that teachers should stop assessing students. Assessment, whether
diagnostic, formative, or summative has a valuable role to play in providing an education tailored
to meet individual needs in a timely manner. But perhaps we need to be more thoughtful in how
our students are assessed and how those assessments are reported. Darling-Hammond (2009)
notes that,
According to the FNBE, [Finnish National Board of Education] the main purpose of
assessing students is to guide and encourage students own reection and selfassessment. Consequently, ongoing feedback from the teacher is very important.
Teachers give students formative and summative reports both through verbal and
narrative feedback. (p. 21)

In a sense, as I try to design a language arts curriculum that truly engages my students and opens
their minds to growth and possibility, it is equally important that I open my own mind to what
constitutes assessment and shows growth.
I need to give myself the freedom to move away from a heavy reliance on written
assessments that test each student individually. In focusing on the number of grades, as opposed
to the quality of thinking required by those graded assignments, I may have unwittingly
narrowed my curriculum to concepts and facts that are easily assessable facts as opposed to
critical thinking. Peter Johnston (2012) points out that,
most conversations about schooling work from the assumption that a curriculum is a
bunch of certain facts to be efficiently delivered to the students, and that a teachers
problem is to deliver the true facts so that they stick, are well organized, and can be
assessed. (p.59)
I feel as though Ive been mired in the world of black-and-white test taking for so long, first as a
student and then as a teacher, that my own comfort level with assessment and giving grades now
resides firmly in the land of easily assessable answers.
While I have little control over the high-stakes testing imposed upon my students by the
state, my own assessments and graded materials can, and should strive to promote self-reflection,
critical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving. As I approach the new school year, this is one
aspect of the curriculum that I want to constantly evaluate. I believe using the backward design
approach will help ensure that my assessments promote higher levels of thinking rather than
supporting a regurgitation of the facts. This type of design demands, that we think about a unit or
course in terms of the collected assessment evidence needed to document and validate that the desired
learning has been achieved, (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p.18).

My own personal experiences provide a colorful background for how and what I teach. My love
of reading, and a desire to instill that love in my students, leads me to constantly strive for meaningful
student engagement with literature. I want my students to question, think, defend their ideas, and be
willing to change their opinions when presented with new information. These desires stem directly from
my training as an anthropologist. And yet, as is evident, these same experiences have led me to view
assessment in a very narrow manner. Yes, we teach who we are, but as self-reflective practitioners, we
also strive to understand how our own experiences color our choices, for better or for worse, and work
constantly to improve the very personal art of teaching.

References
Darling-Hammond, L. (2009). Steady work: How Finland is building a strong teaching and
learning system. Retrieved July 21, 2013, from http://pasisahlberg.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/12/Steady-Work-Darling-Hammond.pdf
Johnston, P. H. (2012). Opening minds: Using language to change lives. Portland, Me:
Stenhouse Publishers.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Alexandria, Va:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.