New Metaphor: Curriculum and Mortgage Contracts

At the very beginning of this course, I approached the topic of curriculum with a great deal of hesitancy. I chose the cell phone contract as my metaphor because I saw it as something that I was still trying to make sense of and honestly, I saw it as something quite separate from myself. I bought into my cell phone contract because it was something I felt that I needed, but I didn’t have an emotional or personal connection to it. My perception of curriculum has changed a great deal, and now I see it as something that I am very much intertwined with. I no longer view it as an external document that I need to decipher, pick and choose from, or wrestle with, as if it were separate from myself. Because I’ve realized that I am part of the curriculum I deliver, I feel as though my new metaphor for curriculum would be my mortgage contract.

Again, like the last metaphor, I know it seems like an odd and negative comparison. So many people lament over their mortgages, and there are many ads and commercials that depict people celebrating the end of theirs, as if it were some prison they’ve escaped from. However, I have a very different perspective about mortgages, specifically my own, which I only signed in May of this year.

To me, my mortgage contract is an investment in myself and in the life I am building with my partner, and as such, it really is a source of pride for me. As a student for six years and then a beginning teacher for three, like so many of us, I rented a few different temporary homes over the last nine years, both by myself and then with my partner. At first, there were a couple of very scary student homes which included an absentee landlord, a bullying landlord, pink mold, difficult and highly volatile substance-abusing roommates, small confined environments, and one break-in. Owning my own apartment became a major goal that I was finally able to accomplish this year, and when I signed the papers, I didn’t feel dread; I felt elation. Virginia Woolf’s quote about needing a “room of my own” became a running joke between Mike and I, but there really was sincerity in it.

The reason why I see a connection between this contract and my curriculum is for so many reasons. To begin with, I work very hard for both and seek out help and support from many people during the process. In deciding which home to buy, Mike and I looked for months, carefully budgeted, and reached out to friends and family for advice on how to make the right decision. Our parents in particular helped us navigate the entire process, offering encouragement and reflecting on their own experiences with buying their first homes. Our real estate agent, our expert, was very patient and extraordinarily kind. More than two months after we purchased, he even called me frantically on the first day of the flood in Calgary when we were evacuated and I had to talk him out of coming to get us and taking us in. My financial advisor worked with me for a long time to get all of the papers in order, answering every one of my million questions, and at every step, people kept congratulating us on our first home. As a result, I have so many positive associations with that mortgage contract even though it is a huge, scary responsibility. However, as with curriculum, although it is ultimately my responsibility, many people and texts impact the decisions I make about how to run my classroom and design curriculum.

When I first became a teacher three years ago, many people helped me figure out how to deliver the curriculum, and I still felt like a student teacher those first few months. One ally in particular was (is) my very supportive department head that handed me all sorts of binders, textbooks, and Alberta curriculum documents that he was supposed to. I was grateful to have a starting point, but it was these mountains of scary papers outlining all the objectives (many seemingly ambiguous, as Popham might grumble about) my students were expected to be arriving at by the end of the course that admittedly made me curl up and cry in my bathtub more times than I’d care to admit to. Luckily, he also handed over his external hard drive with every lesson he had ever created and said I could ‘take anything.’ I’ve since learned that there are very few teachers willing to do this, as they see their curriculum as just that; theirs and theirs alone. He also began, I now realize, my education on what curriculum actually is, although I am just realizing it this summer.

As my mentor, and teacher in many ways, he was doing more than what Dewey calls for, by “endowing the educator with sufficient equipment [to] properly perform [my] task” but he was also helping me with my emotions, which were certainly not “tak[ing] care of themselves” (Dewey, 39). He would often come to check on me in my classroom after school and say very helpful things such as “you clearly care about the kids. They talk about you. You’re connecting with them,” “just remember that you can shut your door and teach them what they need,” and “don’t waste your time planning that- just ask them what they want to do and you can build it together.” When he would say these things, I always assumed that he was just trying to make me feel better, but now I understand that curriculum is, or should be, much more holistic and organic. I don’t need to feel guilty, as though I’m straying from a lesson if “in the very process of teaching and discussing, unexpected opportunities emerge for making a valuable point, for demonstrating and interesting idea, and for teaching a significant concept” (Eisner, 111). I am still learning to embrace a more “imaginative curriculum” that is “open-ended” (Eisner, 114), and let go of control and realize that I am not letting go of my professionalism. This is why Apple’s work also really spoke to me, especially where he writes, “professionalization has been important not only to teachers in general but to women in particular” (Apple, 175). I did think that being professional meant that I should unquestioningly accept the “longer hours and intensification of work” (Apple, 175) so that I could establish myself as a teacher in our school. I have one older male colleague who still, three years later, makes comments to me such as “you almost look old enough to work here!” or in some valley-girl voice, “do you like, totally, feel stressed?” and I’ve realized that I don’t need to become busier to combat this.

Honestly, curriculum and mortgages also certainly provide stress, but usually it is ‘good stress;’ motivating stress.  The curriculum, which I now see as ‘my’ curriculum, or ‘our’ curriculum with my students (really, depending on the day, I think. If it’s a quiz day they may argue that it is most certainly ‘my’ curriculum in that moment), needs to be carefully maintained. With my mortgage, for the first couple of payments, I frantically called the bank when I saw that no money was missing from my account. Twice they assured me that it would be taken out at midnight on the due date, and then had to explain that it would be taken out on the first Monday at midnight if the due date is on a weekend day. I was nearly in tears the first time I called, thinking that I had done something wrong and I was worried sick that I would be penalized, and really, just look irresponsible. Although it turned out to be fine, and I was doing everything right, I am still always diligent to check and make sure that everything is running smoothly, and am also making plans for some renovations to the condo so that I can continue to invest.

This ‘good stress’ also certainly applies to curriculum for me. I worry a lot about my students and if they are getting everything they need out from the curriculum and me. Since I’ve been in this program, there have been several moments where I’ve thought about how I really need to get down to work in August and lesson plan for September. However, at the same time, I know that I need to start shifting my practice so that it includes more direct input from my students, so they don’t feel like “the incarcerated adult…a prisoner” (Jackson, 121), and this really isn’t something I can plan and have in place for by September. Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” especially struck a nerve with me, and reminded me why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place. It brought me back to my desire to facilitate really pivotal discussions with my students where they engage in critical thinking, and this can’t always be lesson planned ahead of time.

For instance, if I keep trying to plan out every minute of every lesson, I think the dialogue, as Freire claims, will be “reduced to the act of one person’s “depositing” ideas in another…a simple exchange of ideas to be “consumed” by the discussants” (Freire, 158). Rather, this September, I want to strive for dialogue as “an act of creation” where I work to help establish “a horizontal relationship of…mutual trust” (Freire, 159). I know that I’ve struggled with this in the past few years because I’ve felt the pressure to establish myself as a teacher and be taken seriously as an authority, which can be difficult when most of my students tower over me and so many parents ask me how old I am before they talk to me about their child’s progress. I need to remember to have humility, as Freire reminds me, and focus on our task of “transform[ing]…together…to liberate, and be liberated, with the people-not to win them over” (Freire, 160).

 In summary, my perspective on what curriculum has radically changed this summer. I am grateful to have new understandings in the earlier years of my career and I feel as though my new challenge is to ensure that I don’t fall back into old habits and old stresses. I’m excited to tell my students that I’m a student again, and that we are going to try some new things, with their input, and that I’m excited to learn (and be vulnerable) alongside them.