Gary Markovich
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What if you work in an "inquiry-based" school, but you teach a "skills-based" curriculum?
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About the Author
Hello. It’s me. I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet.
I’m Gary Markovich. For the last 26 years, I have been teaching at Silverado Middle School in Napa, California. I’ve taught a little bit of seventh grade World History, a smattering of eighth grade Language Arts, some “Skills For Adolescence,” a soupçon of video production, but probably ninety-five per cent of my time has been teaching seventh grade Language Arts. In my introductory video, I make reference to a number of teaching methods and educational strategies that I have seen been introduced during my career.
For more than a decade or so, our Language Arts (and Math) departments have focused on targeting the standards. That focus and drive to cover “essential” standards increased with the implementation of NCLB, and the ensuing continual pressure to improve our school’s standardized test scores. That, then, was the “driving question” of the time.
In 2010, California adopted Common Core Standards.
A short time after, our District Administration chose to transform the schools of our district to PBL schools (unless they chose to become International Baccalaureate schools). Folks from the District offices who were tasked with the facilitation of this ceased making any reference to “covering the language arts standards.” I was puzzled. An expectation was placed on us that we would no longer approach teaching through “Explicit Direct Instruction”--another of those methods and strategies from PD days.
Yet, those standardized tests return in the spring, just like Capistrano’s swallows. And those test scores for language arts and math return to the front pages of the newspaper like an algal bloom. I confessed to my vice-principal that I felt like I was serving two masters: I was expected to create back-to-back PBL projects (or “just one” or “three per year” depending if the answer came from the Director of Secondary Ed, or the Project Manager, or the District Instructional Coach), but I also had to make sure our students were ready for the CASSPP tests.
District coaches provided “exemplar projects” to the sixth and seventh grade Language Arts teachers. After a year, the term was changed to “anchor projects.” This change perhaps due to a closer reading of the definition of “exemplar.” Reports of “good seventh grade PBL projects for language arts” are not uncommon, yet my experience leads me to describe them as apocryphal.
Unicorn-like.
The resolution to this conundrum--using technology-infused instruction in an inquiry-based structure to cover skills-based standards motivates my work at Touro.
I’m Gary Markovich. For the last 26 years, I have been teaching at Silverado Middle School in Napa, California. I’ve taught a little bit of seventh grade World History, a smattering of eighth grade Language Arts, some “Skills For Adolescence,” a soupçon of video production, but probably ninety-five per cent of my time has been teaching seventh grade Language Arts. In my introductory video, I make reference to a number of teaching methods and educational strategies that I have seen been introduced during my career.
For more than a decade or so, our Language Arts (and Math) departments have focused on targeting the standards. That focus and drive to cover “essential” standards increased with the implementation of NCLB, and the ensuing continual pressure to improve our school’s standardized test scores. That, then, was the “driving question” of the time.
In 2010, California adopted Common Core Standards.
A short time after, our District Administration chose to transform the schools of our district to PBL schools (unless they chose to become International Baccalaureate schools). Folks from the District offices who were tasked with the facilitation of this ceased making any reference to “covering the language arts standards.” I was puzzled. An expectation was placed on us that we would no longer approach teaching through “Explicit Direct Instruction”--another of those methods and strategies from PD days.
Yet, those standardized tests return in the spring, just like Capistrano’s swallows. And those test scores for language arts and math return to the front pages of the newspaper like an algal bloom. I confessed to my vice-principal that I felt like I was serving two masters: I was expected to create back-to-back PBL projects (or “just one” or “three per year” depending if the answer came from the Director of Secondary Ed, or the Project Manager, or the District Instructional Coach), but I also had to make sure our students were ready for the CASSPP tests.
District coaches provided “exemplar projects” to the sixth and seventh grade Language Arts teachers. After a year, the term was changed to “anchor projects.” This change perhaps due to a closer reading of the definition of “exemplar.” Reports of “good seventh grade PBL projects for language arts” are not uncommon, yet my experience leads me to describe them as apocryphal.
Unicorn-like.
The resolution to this conundrum--using technology-infused instruction in an inquiry-based structure to cover skills-based standards motivates my work at Touro.
Journey Journal
A journal of my year-long journey in the form of a blog ("travelblog," if you will)--with fellow travelers' comments--is the cleverly titled "Touro Blog" waiting to be discovered at that link.
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