One for All, and All for One! (Part 1)

This motto made famous in Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers”, harkens to a collective passion for making a team effort. In a curriculum-design context, the one represents a student’s systemic learning journey, which culminates with a momentous walk across a stage to receive a diploma. The all represents the collective educators who influence the student’s learning journey. This oftentimes includes forty to sixty-five teachers in a K-12 educational system (Jacobs, 2006). Maybe your school is smaller; and therefore, less teachers in a K-12 journey, the point is the same: all need to focus on the one.

A great equalizer to focus on the one is academic standards. While there may be some educational systems not bound to standards, the majority are influenced by them regarding learning, teaching, and assessing.
 
One of my consulting specialties is systemic curriculum design, which asks teachers and administrators to consider the standards for all the grade levels and courses in a school or flow of schools in a larger school system versus focusing on the standards in isolation for one grade level or course, or mini-isolation across two or three grade levels or courses.
 
I do so by asking the teachers and administrators to go on their own learning journey regarding standards literacy. Being literate is often defined as “the ability to read and write,” but can also be defined as “having knowledge or competence”. Accurately interpreting standards with an all for one mindset embraces and encourages collegial dialogues that immediately improve student learning, regardless of whether national, state, local, or self-generated standards are being used.
 
Having conducted standards literacy workshops for over 20 years, I have experienced the joy of observing hundreds of educators looking at their standards with fresh eyes and sharing with me that they now realize that they somehow have been misinterpreting the structure and function of symbols and words used in standards. For example, teachers often share they have been misinterpreting the parenthetical use of (e.g.,    ) as a “must do” regarding what is contained within the parentheses, when this is not the intent.

In my next two posts for this three-part series, I will explain why breaking apart the standards and bullseye prioritizing standards are essential for developing a shared understanding of one’s standards and how this understanding can positively impact your curriculum decision making.

In my next two posts for this three-part series, I will explain why breaking apart the standards and bullseye prioritizing standards are essential for developing a shared understanding of one’s standards and how this understanding can positively impact your curriculum decision making.
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To read Part 2, click here.
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by Janet Hale
 
Jacobs, H. H. (2006). Active literacy across the curriculum: Strategies for reading, writing, speaking, and listening, Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.