Last school year, I delved deep into personalized learning with self-paced Canvas sets and standard driven maps for students. It was a glorious time in my creative, educational pedagogy, because I found great success with intentional, meaningful, and engaging units of study.
Then came ARC.
The trainings I received this summer were all about the personalized component of ARC; getting kids to read on their level, making personalized goals for each student, a valid assessment that could actually tell me something about my students' reading levels. All of which sounded reasonable and needed, and I was behind this. We received little information about the specific content of the day by day elements and did not see any manual/lesson plans until less than a week before school started.
And I am here to tell you; the "Dark Side"....... is pretty dark.
The structure of each lesson follows strict direct instruction with modeling from a grade level text. Now, I'm all about using a mentor text to teach and model, but these texts they give us are lacking in quality and rigor. The informational space texts were an embarrassment to use with my Advanced Learners as most of them could have actually written the books themselves. Not to mention the fact that I despise direct instruction and only use it on the rare occasion that nothing else with suffice. I have tried the structure of these daily lessons to the best of my ability and my conclusion is that they are extremely boring to me and to my students. Now, in case you didn't know, a bored teacher is an ineffective teacher. And I find myself forcibly travelling down this dangerous path.
My students need more than this program has to offer; more challenge, more rigor, more creative elements, more thought provoking organizers and rubrics, more creative writing, more complex texts, more self-paced assignments, more struggle through assignments, more choice, more responsibility for their own learning, more analytical questions and discussion. They just need MORE.
And so do I; more freedom to teach they way I know works, more flexibility to explore current events, trends, and culturally relevant topics, more freedom to pursue and perfect self-paced units, more flexibility to design my instruction according to student need, more freedom to choose mentor texts that are engaging and challenging, more flexibility to experiment with current trends and strategies, more freedom to focus on inspiring student ownership, more freedom to let my creative teacher mind go wild with possibility.
ARC may fit some schools and some needs of some students. I can see the benefit for struggling readers; isn't that the foundation for this program anyway. But this is NOT and never will be a one size fits all program.
I am suffocating in the ARC and want to jump off.
I need my freedom back to do what's best for my students.
Then came ARC.
The trainings I received this summer were all about the personalized component of ARC; getting kids to read on their level, making personalized goals for each student, a valid assessment that could actually tell me something about my students' reading levels. All of which sounded reasonable and needed, and I was behind this. We received little information about the specific content of the day by day elements and did not see any manual/lesson plans until less than a week before school started.
And I am here to tell you; the "Dark Side"....... is pretty dark.
The structure of each lesson follows strict direct instruction with modeling from a grade level text. Now, I'm all about using a mentor text to teach and model, but these texts they give us are lacking in quality and rigor. The informational space texts were an embarrassment to use with my Advanced Learners as most of them could have actually written the books themselves. Not to mention the fact that I despise direct instruction and only use it on the rare occasion that nothing else with suffice. I have tried the structure of these daily lessons to the best of my ability and my conclusion is that they are extremely boring to me and to my students. Now, in case you didn't know, a bored teacher is an ineffective teacher. And I find myself forcibly travelling down this dangerous path.
My students need more than this program has to offer; more challenge, more rigor, more creative elements, more thought provoking organizers and rubrics, more creative writing, more complex texts, more self-paced assignments, more struggle through assignments, more choice, more responsibility for their own learning, more analytical questions and discussion. They just need MORE.
And so do I; more freedom to teach they way I know works, more flexibility to explore current events, trends, and culturally relevant topics, more freedom to pursue and perfect self-paced units, more flexibility to design my instruction according to student need, more freedom to choose mentor texts that are engaging and challenging, more flexibility to experiment with current trends and strategies, more freedom to focus on inspiring student ownership, more freedom to let my creative teacher mind go wild with possibility.
ARC may fit some schools and some needs of some students. I can see the benefit for struggling readers; isn't that the foundation for this program anyway. But this is NOT and never will be a one size fits all program.
I am suffocating in the ARC and want to jump off.
I need my freedom back to do what's best for my students.
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