Introduction

Have you ever had a chance meeting with someone who ended up dramatically influencing your life? This was the case with us. Janet was hired to aid a district in its curriculum mapping initiative. Mike was working for a local educational service center and had been asked to attend the district training day as a technology specialist for the district's mapping software.

Janet: During lunch, a few teachers and administrators, Mike, and I sat around a table and discussed everything from educational issues and current events to favorite movies and childhood experiences. I found Mike knowledgeable regardless of the topic, but most of all, I found him funny. He told a childhood story that literally made me laugh out loud.

Mike: When I first met Janet on the training day, I had been involved in curriculum mapping initiatives, but I primarily focused on the technology. Honestly, I felt intimidated by her knowledge of mapping. I had no idea at the time that she felt intimidated by my knowledge of technology and web-based tools.

About two weeks after the training day, I (Janet) read an online cartoon that reminded me of Mike's humorous childhood memoir. I e-mailed the cartoon to Mike, and our friendship began. We started e-mailing each other frequently for educational purposes. We discussed curriculum mapping, standards-based learning, instructional practices, and educational news. We began to co-present at various conferences, including ASCD's Annual Conference and the Curriculum Mapping Institute sponsored by Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Curriculum 21.

We discovered over time that we enjoyed similar television shows and movies. When Disney released the movie Up, we quickly identified with two of the main characters: Carl and Dug. Carl, an elderly gentleman who can be a bit of a curmudgeon, is set in his ways and likes his routines. Dug is a dog who is valuable when accomplishing a task but often "squirrels," or gets off track easily. We decided that Janet is Carl and Mike is Dug. We can joke in this manner because over time we have become aware of our respective strengths and weaknesses and have used this knowledge to create a healthy partnership.

Our movie character metaphor reminds us that a healthy working relationship is built on mutual trust and respect and the ability to be vulnerable and depend on each other. Our collaboration in writing this book has further solidified our friendship and made us stronger as professionals.

We are sharing this information with you because collaboration is crucial in the 21st century. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) clearly lay out the expectation that students must become proficient collaborators during their educational journeys, from their formative years to college and the workplace (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA Center] & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010a). It follows that everyone involved in creating modern-learning environments for our current and future generations must participate in collaborative efforts.

In this book, we explain how teachers and administrators can upgrade their schools' current curriculum and recalibrate instructional practices to embrace modern learning. In modern-learning environments, students participate collaboratively in higher-order thinking tasks that often make local and global connections (and glocal impacts—more on these later) and include appropriate technology and web-based tools. We provide descriptions of the collaborative transformational process and in-the-field classroom experiences as well as specific strategies that emphasize student engagement and ownership of learning.

The seeds of Upgrade Your Curriculum are rooted deeply in Heidi Hayes Jacobs's Curriculum 21 (2010). Jacobs explains:

New essential curriculum will need revision—actual replacements of dated content, skills, and assessments with more timely choices. The steps and strategies presented here can focus a faculty on upgrading specific elements of the existing curriculum with more engaging and powerful selections. It is a nonthreatening approach that can be worked into the school culture gradually. Rather than a change model, it is a growth model. (pp. 12–13, italics added)

The upgrade concepts shared throughout Curriculum 21 caused us to expand our personal and collaborative work to empower and enable teachers to successfully upgrade, or transform, units of study. We articulate specifics related to Jacobs's upgrading concepts throughout Part 1. In Chapter 3, we share the 21st Century Pledge that Jacobs created with teachers who were embarking on their upgrading journey.

We based Upgrade Your Curriculum on the premise that moving from me to we is an ongoing and essential process. Slow-and-steady upgrades or transformations, in which teachers (and students) work collaboratively to make strategic and specific modifications to current curricular elements, lead to modern, meaningful, and engaging experiences. We have found that once a collaborative culture is in place, participating in curriculum transformation continues to have positive effects on both teachers and students.

Book Overview

Part 1 of this book addresses the foundational concepts involved in transforming current curriculum for modern-learning environments. These four chapters explain the transformational matrix and its four zones, the five transformational lenses educators should use to focus on curriculum design, ways to purposefully and authentically incorporate technology and web-based tools into the curriculum, and the four phases of the transformational process.

Part 2 shows how various practitioners have used the transformational process to upgrade their curriculum and instructional practices. The nine narratives in these chapters include a range of grade levels and subject areas. The following list classifies each narrative, or snapshot, by school level:

Elementary School

Chapter 5: Ten-Frame Mathematics

Chapter 6: Flat Stanley Podcast

Chapter 7: Talk Pals

Middle School

Chapter 8: Microloans: A Glocal Impact

Chapter 9: Film Festival

Chapter 10: Social Justice Live!

High School

Chapter 11: Science in the Cloud

Chapter 12: Pinterest Art Critiques

Administration

Chapter 13: Common Core State Standards Professional Development

Whichever your own subject area or grade level, we recommend reading all nine snapshots to get a full picture of the collaborative transformation of units of study. Each transformational snapshot includes three discussion questions to spark conversation among you and your colleagues.

The two short chapters in Part 3 consist of our own reflections—Janet's in Chapter 14 and Mike's in Chapter 15.

Finally, the Appendix includes 12 TECHformational matrices, or visual aids to be used as conversation starters by teachers and administrators as they consider potential technology-based transformations. Whereas the transformational matrix described in Chapter 1 focuses on overall student learning and engagement, the TECHformational matrices focus specifically on technology and web-based tools' potential to increase student engagement and ownership of learning. We have divided the TECHformational matrices into three categories: digital devices, web-based tools, and curations.