Very often I notice that when our districts adopt new curriculum series, teachers are taught to buy into these plans because they go along with the standards that we are teaching. Are we doing what is best for our students when we adopt these new plans? Are these curriculum series developmentally appropriate for the students we teach? Or is it a convienent and more easy way to get the material out there? "Are we doing what is best for our students, or are we doing what is most convienent?" Policymakers continuously try to make instructional reforms and raise standards that too often negatively effect our students. Districts rush to find new and innovative ways to teach the standards, but they don't look at the appropriateness of the material.
I bring up the curriculum series because companies like Harcourt and Pearson try to make textbooks that are convenient for our ways of teaching. I think many teachers use these series as a "crutch" for teaching the material and fail to utilize outside resources. These series are the not the "do all, tell all" and are simply provided as guides for teachers to build upon. Teachers are too often scolded for maintaining the conventional styles of teaching inconsistent to that of the new curriculum series. So to this I strongly believe we are most comfortable with convenience and do often fail to do what is best for our students.
Conventional styles of teaching are going to have to change in order for our students to keep up with the ever-changing world of technology. Students will have to display media literacy and finding ways to incoporate this into our teaching is not always easy. Many educators don't have access to many resources that others might, but that doesn't mean we, the teacher, are not responsible to teach it. Finding new ways to integrate technology into our teaching is what is best for our students, but not necessarily convenient for us.
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