Now that we have worked as a consortium, it is hard to envision working in isolation.
During the 2011-2012 school year, Burrillville teachers worked in a K-12 curriculum consortium. Teachers had the
opportunity to join teachers from 10 other districts (Block Island,
Foster-Glocester, Chariho, Coventry, East Greenwich, Jamestown, Narragansett,
Westerly, North Kingstown, Exeter-West Greenwich) to create our
consortium K-12 English Language Arts curriculum aligned to the
CCSS. This partnership continued over the following two years. This
year, nine of the 11 districts continue to plan together, survey teachers on
the curriculum construct, and meet late in the year to make changes to
curriculum.
In the same year (2011-2012) and
again working under a RTT grant, 5 districts (Burrillville, Coventry,
Foster-Glocester, North Providence, Smithfield) collaboratively created our
consortium K-12 math curriculum aligned to the CCSS. We met this summer to review the curriculum and add
common assessments to the existing curriculum.
What we found surprising about our involvement in Race to the Top...
The most exciting
by-product of the collaboration is our fidelity to the principle that curriculum
should be a living document. By asking teachers to review the
product annually, make adjustments to sequence or pacing, and then share the
changes with the full staff, it remains clear that instruction is driven by the
curriculum.
Race to the Top impacted our district by...
The greatest impact
is that curriculum not math textbooks or reading book titles define what is
taught and in what sequence student understanding is built. All of our
districts are struggling with this shift because we are trying to provision for
teachers who no longer have the anchor of a math textbook in elementary school
as an example. This will take time and patience.
However, having the other districts as a sounding board has helped keep us
moving in the right direction.
In the future, we plan to keep this going through...
We look forward to
several years of collaboration. Now that we have worked as a consortium,
it is hard to envision working in isolation.
Questions?
Contact Lois Short, Director of Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Professional Development for Burrillville,at Shortl@bsd-ri.net or at 401-568-1301.