"There is no such thing as ‘generic' curriculum," stated Heidi Hayes Jacobs at ASCD's Conference on Teaching and Learning. Great curriculum, Jacobs asserted, is designed—much like great architecture is designed—to serve a specific constituency in a certain time and place.
Calling curriculum guidelines well-intentioned but fictional documents, Jacobs encouraged those listening to think of themselves as curriculum designers for 21st century learners. "What you design is what you get," she pointed out. "If you design passivity, you'll get passivity; if you design action, you'll get action."
Imploring her listeners to ban the phrase, "I am covering the curriculum," Jacobs noted that the word cover also means to pass over quickly. She observed that the expression implies that the teacher's work is appropriate even though the teacher may not know what the students are learning.
With insights gained from having served as an educational consultant to more than 1,000 schools in the United States and internationally, Jacobs invited her audience to "play hardball" with the curriculum by ending the battle between disciplines, implementing career and service learning, studying the 20th century in greater depth, designing essential questions, emphasizing arts literacy, and teaching the new basic of media criticism.
Acknowledging that some areas of study must necessarily be cut from current curriculums to make room for updated content, Jacobs advised educators to proceed by asking themselves, "What is in the best interests of my students? What curriculum elements shall I select to meet their needs?"
In deciding what to include and what to cut, Jacobs recommended that teachers focus their curriculums through the use of essential questions. According to Jacobs, a good essential question, such as Is prejudice inevitable? or What are the different kinds of prejudice? can be used at any grade level as a way to infuse content with current issues and invite interdisciplinary approaches. Jacobs also recommended that every assessment reflect essential questions so that students themselves can evaluate how well they are doing.
Perhaps Jacobs' most emphatic recommendation for playing hardball with the curriculum was her call for schoolwide rubrics in writing—that every teacher share responsibility for teaching reading, writing, speaking, and listening. She pointed out that vocabulary is the best predictor of overall success on any achievement measure.
"If I were to do one thing to raise test scores, even on standardized tests, it would be to build vocabulary," stated Jacobs. To accomplish this, teachers should have students edit and revise papers in every subject, she said. Jacobs suggested that schools might initiate a "Year of the Verb" program wherein teachers of every discipline involve students in using precise verbs appropriate to the discipline. In chemistry, for example, students would write "Dilute the solution with three milliliters of water," rather than simply "Add more water."
Jacobs also insisted that if teachers want to give their students real power, they should have students practice their speaking voices. "Speaking is the first way into a good job," she said, adding that skills in technology are an extension of language.
Her final encouragement to teachers was to model for students their own thirst for growth. "Choose something you want to learn about," Jacobs said, "and tell your students about it." She recalled memories of some of her own most influential teachers, reminding all in attendance of the power of a teacher's example.