UbD: A Means to an End?

        Education is a business. Though it may not be a business that provides millions of dollars of income through sales, it is a business none-the-less. Education is the business of helping people; it is the business of challenging the intellectual development of individuals and entire communities. The school system is meant to provide its customers (the students) with a unique learning experience that will forever have impacted their lives for the better. So the burning question is, if we are a business of helping people and meeting individual needs, why do we rely so heavily on things like standardized tests and mounds of mindless textbook reading? Surely those things weren’t created with the individual student in mind. When did we become a system that programmed robots to regurgitate information back to us without actually thinking about how the answers impact them directly? When did we stop caring about the individuals that sit before us, and start viewing them as a statistic that will affect our pay? Though it may appear that our business of service (school systems) has taken a turn for the worst, there is hope. Customer service, the service to our students, can be restored once again, through the implementation of UbD, or Understanding by Design.

            Through reading Modules A and F of The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units, I have come to learn how I can reach my individual students directly rather than having everyone mindlessly respond back with answers. Module A discussed the importance of planning ahead, and ensuring that class-time is well spent. In-depth learning rather than skimming the surface can be done by allowing students to connect what is being discussed to events that may be taking place in their own lives. Too often we teach a myriad of new material without ever looking back and connecting to what students may already know. We should get to know our students, and plan lessons based on their unique identities. By linking new material with things they may already know, we can create a knowledge base that is well rounded and long lasting. Though sometimes beneficial for assessment purposes, things like quizzes and tests can be boring and seem like pointless work to students. As the article points out, “many assessments measure only recently taught knowledge and never ask for authentic performance.” If the point of our lesson is to provide students with the skills necessary to succeed, why not provide them with opportunities to display their overall knowledge in a diverse way? In other words, my student may not know the answer to 2+2, but maybe she knows the answer to 6+6. If my test doesn’t ask for 6+6, my student is not provided the opportunity to display what she knows; only what she doesn’t. By giving students open opportunities to display knowledge and connect it to the real world, we are truly opening their minds and engaging them. Why read about Ecosystems and answer a few questions on a test, when you can create your own ecosystem through the creation of a terrarium? UbD allows teachers to do just this, and thus expand the student’s understanding of key concepts.

            Another important idea that I connected with was the importance of varied exposure to material. In this day and age we acknowledge that there are multiple ways that learning can take place. Howard Gardner came up with eight, yet so many educators continue to repeat rehearsed material from a single textbook. Hands-on engagement is a primary focus of UbD. We must present students material in a variety of ways to ensure that they internalize information in a way that is important and useful to them. Why simply take turns having our best readers spew the words of Shakespeare to the rest of the class when we can have them do so much more? Yes, let’s read Shakespeare, but then let’s use it! Read a scene and act it out as we go along, because I can guarantee that half the students won’t understand what his words mean until they see it displayed to them in person. One of the days of the unit can be spent reviewing and discussing clips from Shakespeare’s plays that were turned into movies. By creating a diverse learning environment that offers unique engagements, we can appeal to our student’s individual learning needs.

            My favorite quote from the articles is on page eleven of Module A. The quote reads, “ . . . they understand by design, not by good luck.” How we design our lessons is what impacts the progression of our students. If we create an environment that is truly engaging to all students, we are allowing everyone to progress, not just the students in AP classes. One important aspect of designing lessons is how we pose questions to our students. If students understand what is expected of them, they will become more engaged in the learning process. I liked the idea of presenting the main focus of each unit with a few underlying questions or “Big Ideas”. By having a Big Idea or a theme for a unit, students will be able to refocus on the important concepts by going back to “home base” and reminding themselves what is expected or being asked.

            While on the topic of “asking,” it is important to note that provocative questions will lead to engagement. Rather than asking questions that have a definite yes or no answer, we should ask thought-provoking questions that require insight. A great example of this was on page seventy-six of Module F when the author explained that instead of asking “Why does grammar matter,” we can deepen the question by asking “How well and where can you succeed in life speaking ungrammatically?” I liked this idea of “deepening” the question because it directed students to think about how their lives truly would be negatively impacted by poor grammar. This question leads them to the kind of insight the educator might be looking for without explicitly saying to them “you might not succeed with poor grammatical skills.”

            After reading the articles about UbD, I have realized that hope has not been lost. I chose the education profession so that I can have my student’s voices heard, so that I can excite students about what they are learning, and most importantly to provide them with an experience that they will not forget after leaving my classroom in June. I want my inner-city students to feel empowered by my lessons, and to understand how they can use what I teach in the real world; UbD will allow me to do just that. Is UbD the means to an end for all of the education systems problems? No. It is however, an important step in the right direction; a step that is sure to bring us back to the business we used to be, the business of helping people succeed.