Many of the details from my early days of teaching have become hazy over the past two decades, but I have a very clear memory, in one of those first days navigating all of the induction activities I was required to complete, of my Department Chair handing me a fat green Glencoe Literature textbook to guide me through teaching my ninth grade English classes; it was, I think, the same (or similar) textbook I had used when I was in ninth grade at that very school.
That textbook, along with the state’s Standard Course of Study, was my curriculum. In those days (and, I’m sure, in some schools and departments still), teaching was a solitary practice. I was not the only ninth grade English teacher, but my grade-level colleagues and I rarely met as a team to collaborate. Department meetings consisted mainly of complaints and bureaucratic tasks such as book counting and analysing end of course test results. This is not a criticism; I’m sure ours was not unlike the majority of American public school academic departments in the early naughties. But the sad reality was that I felt I had very little agency as a new teacher.
Fast forward twenty years and I am very fortunate to work within a curriculum framework (the IB) that is flexible and allows schools the freedom to adapt the content to suit their individual contexts. (It helps that my school is independent and does not have to align with the National Curriculum.) Of course no teacher has complete autonomy; even with that freedom comes some compromise. My department is a collaborative, open-minded team, but we are 9 individuals with our own strengths, preferences and opinions.
This is where Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction comes in… if only I had know about the CBCI framework as a rookie teacher. Because even if I didn’t have control over what I taught, I could have at least used the CBCI model to define why I was teaching it. If I had had control of my ‘why’, I would have felt more motivated, more engaged… and I know that my motivation and engagement would have had an impact on my students’ motivation and engagement.
Over the years since I discovered the CBCI framework and completed the Erickson and Lanning Trainer Certification Institute, I have uncovered layer upon layer of possibilities that the framework provides. Lesson planning is no longer a chore; it's an intellectual challenge: how can I ensure that I am not just planning for what students will do with our time, but considering why they will do it... and how am I making that explicit to them? Designing for understanding should take work, but not guess work; it should be intentional, deliberate. (Not to scare anyone off: that work should be smart work, not busy work. It's all about reframing thinking.) Once I developed a conceptual mindset, it was impossible to go back to the way I used to plan.