An “Aha!” Moment in Atlanta
What new could I possibly learn? This was my somewhat skeptical attitude as I made my way to the Core Knowledge Conference in Atlanta last March. After all, I had been immersed for five years in the Core Knowledge curriculum, two of them as Lead Teacher for my Georgia school of over 400 students. Few things about the curriculum had been left unexplored . . . or so I thought.
Like most of my colleagues settling into our rooms at the Marriot, my thoughts were about what kind of mess the kids were making at home, the rewards of a few days away from the classroom, what sessions I should take in, and, of course, the always important decision about where to eat lunch.
And so, as the day wore on, I enjoyed a few sessions, consumed a tasty lunch, and basked in the comfortable aura of being surrounded by crowds of teachers who looked, acted, and sounded just like me. I felt united to them by sharing a curriculum that is broad, rich, powerful, and challenging. We had only to absorb a few more details and master a bit more information. Hmmm, a nice routine but nothing new.
Then, as I innocently sat listening to the keynote speech by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., something happened that took me by surprise! As an avid reader, I was used to thinking about reading as expanding my brain’s database. What I cannot experience directly, I, at least, can experience in books. Snuggled up in my livingroom reading chair, in my in my small South Georgia town, I have explored many cultures and met people the world over.
Listening to Dr. Hirsch, I suddenly realized what Core Knowledge is all about!! It’s about reading. It’s about expanding one’s universe. It’s about what I had been doing all along.
I had been hung up on the complexity of the Core Knowledge curriculum, thinking of it as enormously detailed, full of explicit requirements. The details were lively, of course. Actually, isn’t that what good teachers focus on? Don't we want to make the details come alive for our students? But I understood something different and larger from what Dr. Hirsch was saying. Maybe I had been concentrating so much on the details that the overview had been lost to me. I had never seen the purpose in the same way before, the “big picture” of why the Core Knowledge Sequence sets our students up for learning success!
Research tells us that without prior knowledge the information available to students ends up “floating around the cosmos.” Students need to have the foundation to connect new information to things they have seen and heard. Without this foundation (Core Knowledge) students cannot grasp new information. Once students have a foundation of knowledge, they can access this foundation and add to it at will. For example, knowing generalities about the Middle Ages establishes a foundation of knowledge to build on. The details of daily life and the workings of a castle can be imagined only if students know something about how society was organized in the Middle Ages, and they can keep adding to this knowledge base as they mature.
In the Core Knowledge classroom, a wide variety of topics is introduced to our students, heightening their interest in the world around them. And this larger view is exactly what an education should offer the student! It should offer a fascination with and appreciation for the great variety of ideas, cultures, landscapes, and accomplishments that characterize our world. Instead of being held captive to fads, outrageous music, reality TV, skewed priorities, and rampant consumerism, to name just a few offenses, our students are offered participation in an ever more complex and interesting world.
Illuminating topics for our elementary students can create eager and intrigued students, ready to add to their “database.” Aha, I thought! The big picture is suddenly clear. What reading a variety of literature does for me as an adult is what I am being charged to do for my students. Mining for the deepest learning, pressing through the rich vein that is the Core Knowledge curriculum, getting the details right so that the big picture can be seen — this is what I’ve been doing all along without quite realizing it. To come to Atlanta for this “Aha!” moment was more than routine and it was worth it!
Joan Thurston is the Core Knowledge Lead Teacher at Downtown Elementary Magnet Academy in Columbus, Georgia. She can be contacted at jthurston@mcsdga.net.