Curriculum and Community

Abstract

When I first began my career as a professor, I was disenchanted. So much of the work we did was isolated. As I walked down the hallway to my office, I would pass many closed doors. Professors had different teaching schedules, worked at home or at coffee shops, or labored over their books, computers, and student grading with their doors tightly closed. I had moved to academia from a career first in urban public school teaching, and then in urban community work. Urban education demands collaboration. Everyone is working toward the same, shared goal: educating children with the limited resources that are available. Yet in higher education, everyone is working toward their individual goals: publishing their research and standing out as a good teacher, all for the prizes of tenure, promotion, and prestige. This past year, my English department implemented a new curriculum, including a new capstone class, changing the class from one in critical theory to one in which the students reflect on their learning as English majors and craft a nearly 40-page senior thesis. English majors take courses in literature, linguistics, and, if they plan to be teachers, English teaching methods. In their English capstone class, they craft a final thesis paper exploring any topic in English that is both an outgrowth of the major and a reflection of their particular interests in the wide and varied field of English. Students write their theses in any one of the three emphasis areas: literature, linguistics, or English education. I was one of four professors who taught the class for the first time it was offered, teaching a section alongside three literature professors. As it was a new class, we were creating assignment descriptions, handouts to scaffold the thesis, and our teaching plans for the first time, and because our areas of expertise did not necessarily match our students' areas of interest, we collaborated in our efforts to create a supportive curriculum for and with our students to engage in independent research. When I had a student propose his thesis to write about the book of Esther in the bible, I turned to a colleague whose expertise is in biblical literature to help inform his thesis. Conversely, when my colleagues had students propose a topic in the high poverty rates in urban schools or progressive education in the reading curriculum, they turned to me. We had to work in community in order to learn how to best guide our students disparate topics. Furthermore, when it came time to craft their essays, my literature colleagues and I worked together to learn the difference between literary writing and writing in education. Together we created curriculum for us to teach them the two genres. While I work with my colleagues regularly on departmental committees, this work in the enacted curriculum has been the most rewarding work I have done since becoming a professor. We didn't work in isolation; we crafted curriculum in community. Because the work was not done in advance, as curriculum making often is, we were genuinely in communion with each other about the challenges of the enacted curriculum. We created documents together, we critiqued each other's ideas, and we listened and dialogued about our particular challenges with students and content. This was not an esoteric exercise; it was practical and even urgent, as we were in the midst of teaching the course. Therefore, the curriculum work was deep and meaningful. …