Thursday, February 16, 2012

Planning with the PST

So as I mentioned in my last post the infamous clip board people, aka the walkthrough team, payed my school a visit. Well we received their evaluation back and they had quite a bit to say. One critique they had was that teachers lesson's did not reflect the Philadelphia planning and scheduling timeline. So since their feedback, there has been a large push to get us( core content teachers) in line with with state standards and PST. In my world history class we just left the renaissance and have now ventured into exploration, yet of course, the PST notes that I should be wrapping up industrialism and imperialism by the end of next week. This seems even more impossible considering that we had three half days this week for parent conferences. The next walk through will be on February 27th. So chronologically this would mean skipping over the Enlightenment and the American, French and Latin American revolution's in order to be on track with the PST. I literally cringe at the idea of skipping topics like the enlightenment or even haitian revolution; and my stomach turns to the thought of covering things like the trans-atlantic slave trade and colonization in a 2-3days. Nonetheless, for now this is the way things are. So what do I do? Right now I do not feel as though I have the social and political capital and experience to resist, so I am faced with pushing myself to find creative ways to make it work. These management policies that are supposed to be set in place to support children are not doing right by them. I do not understand how the people who devise these timelines feel that we can adequately teach and asses revolutions in a week. It would almost be better to abstain from covering so many topics  then delivering an inaccurate surface level presentation of a whole lot. I see history a way to understand our current world and as a source of empowerment, a philosophy that the creators of the planning and scheduling timeline obviously do not share.

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