Curricular Innovation--Numa Markee and the Writing Program

In thinking about making changes to our Writing Program by layering in new types of writing to our existing curriculum, I've also been kicking around some memories of one of my favorite graduate school classes. The central text for the class was Numa Markee's book called Managing Curricular Innovation . Even better, though, the instructor of the course was Numa Markee himself. In our small class of four or five (LOVE graduate school!), we did an intense review of the programming of a local intensive language program. It required that we look at the program at every level--from the personnel to the curriculum to the students' perceptions of the program, and we then made recommendations for innovation. And it revealed to us all just how complicated curricular innovation can be.

That being said, this morning had me thinking about some specific steps we'll need to go through in order to be effective in this coming change to add analysis writing into the curriculum:

1. "the what"
I wrote this in an email to another member of the leadership team this morning: "Our first step together is to define "the what" of analysis writing. While APLAC does put an emphasis on rhetorical analysis of nonfiction pieces, we can also teach our kids rhetorical analysis of fiction and teach them literary analysis, as well. The question for us is to what end we would like the kids to unpack a text. Perhaps most important here is that we develop precision in our language with each other and around what kind of analysis they are doing--this will help them to know what to look for. We can't make the assumption that the department has any sort of common understanding at this point of what it means to analyze a text and write that analysis, so we need some common resources from which to work to understand the what (APLAC docs, sample analytical essays/paragraphs, HOs from Ts who have taught the skills...) before we can figure out the how and the when." 


One thing, in particular, that I'm thinking about is how we develop our own "teacher language" around analysis. It's messy work, but if we can get the language consistent across levels, students will have clear branches to hang their thinking hats on as they work their way from 9th-12th grade. 

The last time we rolled out a "type of writing" in the form of the Writing Program, we had to spend quite some time getting faculty to calibrate expectations and understandings about what we were doing. Unfortunately, we were doing that calibration as we were teaching students. It made for some really difficult conversations because faculty were often walking into conversations after having done something with their students and then were realizing they may have poorly directed their students. I'm hoping we've learned from that experience that there are important foundational conversations that need to happen before we can roll out instruction to students. 

2. "the how"
I remember learning in Numa's class about early, middle, and late adopters. I'm still interested in that idea when bringing a change to the curriculum. How can we roll out a change to help everyone understand it and buy into it? Given the particular context of our department as it stands right now, there's definitely not a one-size-fits-all rollout model. For me, it's important that the CTL (curriculum team leader) gets to support the individual level in determining the path that works best for the personnel and curriculum of the level. If we can clearly determine that end target for each level, then allowing the people at the level to figure out the path will be most helpful.

3. "the when"
I was actually hoping to have the first conversation at the 10th grade about this in June Week (a week of meetings at the end of a school year) of this past month, but we needed to do some clarifying at the department level first. Those conversations are going on now. And so when I'm thinking about "the when" of curricular innovation, I'm thinking about which conversations have to happen behind the scenes before the conversation happens with the level. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to pull together the necessary materials to get this information out to my level in August of this year. We certainly need to get our kids doing this kind of writing this year because we need our kids to be prepared for the eleventh grade. The thing about "the when" is that nothing happens quickly in curricular change (unless you are the only person delivering on the curriculum).