I'm a Teacher. My Position on Curriculum Transparency Might Surprise You.
There’s a debate raging in America: Should teachers be required to post their curriculum online? Critics say it’s a burden for already overworked educators, but parents desperately want to know what’s being taught in the classroom.
Where I stand on the issue might surprise you.
I’m a young public school teacher who supports curriculum transparency bills such as the one in my home state of Arizona, Senate Bill 1211, and others like it across the country. I know that the last thing an educator needs on their plate is another task. We already do so much: meeting the diverse educational needs of hundreds of children; playing nurse amid a pandemic; planning rigorous, engaging, and collaborative work; adapting to unpredictable and prolonged absences; filling ever-growing learning gaps; covering for colleagues unable to find substitutes; and meeting the increasingly critical socio-emotional needs of our students.
But there’s an additional responsibility that ought to be on the list: posting curriculum online. Here’s why that’s so important.
Classrooms are places where we have tough discussions with our students. Educators are much more interested in teaching students to think than in teaching them the “right” answer — so it is necessary to have controversial conversations, show both sides of every issue, and help developing minds think through fairly presented ideas in a critical and discerning way. Only in this way will our classrooms form insightful, fair-minded individuals who can take what they see on social media or sensationalized news with a grain of salt.
But in the face of increasingly polarizing curriculum, and in the face of parents — often rightfully — becoming more alarmed at the content in classrooms across the country, it behooves us to place some sort of safeguard upon these discussions. Parents deserve to know what their children are hearing, discussing, and learning at school — where they spend half of their day and often more.
It is parents, not teachers, who are and ought to be the arbiters of their children’s educations. Education is a collaborative effort, not unilateral on the part of the teacher. Creating and maintaining a transparent academic environment will foster this spirit of collaboration, as well as provide parents with an opportunity to extend in-class discussions at home and enrich their child’s learning. In addition, a fully transparent curriculum protects teachers from the ire of parents who feel blindsided by materials with inappropriate themes. It only makes sense to take steps to prevent as much friction between parents and teachers as possible.
The opportunity for collaboration extends beyond the parent-teacher relationship into fostering cooperation among highly qualified, creative, and skilled educators who might not interact under other circumstances. Making learning materials publicly accessible has the potential to make time-tested, creative, and rigorous materials available from colleagues at other schools and in other districts. And this kind of collaboration would greatly benefit both teachers and students.
For overworked teachers, all the philosophical arguments in the world have less power than simple practical considerations — and most teachers deflate at the prospect of yet another task to manage. But the provisions of SB 1211 and similar bills do not add undue burden to teachers beyond what they already do. Most districts already have an online system in place for managing and posting instructional materials, a necessity to cope with extended absences and the unpredictable loss of precious instructional time. Many schools also require teachers to submit weekly lesson plans. Documenting and curating instructional materials is a task that teachers engage in regularly and with excellence. Making these records available to parents in an accessible corner of the internet is not much beyond these existing procedures, but the benefits of increased transparency, better collaboration among teachers, and better collaboration with parents are incalculable.
If collaboration is a virtue, and if we value real engagement with complex, multifaceted issues in the formation of our students, then we ought to take steps to expedite and protect our ability to engage in both. Curriculum transparency legislation presents a simple, commonsense solution to one of the more serious problems that we as educators face in today’s unfortunately contentious environment. If bills like SB 1211 pass in states around the country, our professional communities, and ultimately our students, will undoubtedly be better for it.
Jessica McDermitt is an Arizona public school teacher.
