Published Curriculum Is Almost Always Better — So Why Are We Avoiding It?

Curriculum is the elephant in the room when it comes to discussions of things like turning in lesson plans and teachers pay teachers.

And yet strangely, curriculum is something that we don't talk about a lot.

District level provided curriculum doesn't come up very much, which is weird because a lot of us have master's degrees in curriculum and instruction.

Of course, we hear a lot about instruction, but I did not hear much discussion of curriculum these days.

I think that's a big missed opportunity and a big solution to a lot of the trouble that we have with asking teachers to turn in lesson plans and things like that.

All of that should be specified in the district's curriculum.

And I'm getting the sense that a lot of districts just don't have curriculum for a lot of subjects.

So teachers are often on their own to come up with things from day to day.

And of course, that means often people are relying on websites like Teachers Pay Teachers, which I was reading a review of some materials from different sites, including that one earlier today.

There is just a huge variation in the level of quality in those materials, and especially in the ability of those materials to meet the needs of diverse learners and to have good representation in those materials.

Frankly, the curriculum publishers do a better job of that stuff.

And I think often people have critiques of published curriculum that are based on maybe very old curriculum, not based on curriculum that is maybe of the current generation.

And I was a teacher...

starting over 20 years ago, and I had very, very good curriculum, not from the very beginning, but starting later in my first year of teaching, I had very, very good curriculum to work with.

And I don't really believe that there are not good published curricular materials out there that can meet the needs of almost every subject and every teacher.

And I think it's so strange that we're hiring teachers to teach classes without buying a curriculum for them and asking them to kind of come up with everything and then prove that they've come up with a good plan for every single day by turning in lesson plans.

Why are we reinventing the wheel when so much work has gone into creating good curriculum?

An example, at the elementary level.

I don't know of any school that makes up their own math curriculum.

Almost every elementary school buys a math curriculum.

And that curriculum should be the basis of most of the professional development.

I think there's a great book out there by Stephanie Hirsch on the importance of curriculum-based professional development.

I'll try to have her on the podcast to talk about this.

But I just think this idea that we're doing so much that is just generic and for everybody in professional development and not that is specific for people who teach a particular curriculum.

When I think about the curriculum that I, the professional development that I went through as a teacher in Seattle, it was almost entirely curriculum based.

And I'm curious if that's the case for you or if you're getting a lot of professional development that is just for everybody and doesn't have anything to do with your curriculum because I think that would explain a lot and that creates a big opportunity for us if we're not taking advantage of those possibilities.

Let me know what you think.