Christensen Chapter 3

Does anybody else wonder how Christensen worked all of social awareness plans into her curriculum when we as teachers have to teach mostly to standardized testing? I actually know precious little about curriculum planning for teachers. How does it work? When you get hired as a new teacher do they just give you the state guidelines and say "Here ya go! Learn those kids good now!"(Because clearly everyone who works for the school system has appalling grammar...haha) Or is the curriculum pretty much established and you just have to think of a creative way to teach it?
Regardless, I am starting to see that a good teacher is an extraordinarily creative problem solver. Seriously, this new way of thinking is starting to re-shape my brain. I studied literature for the past four years and I used to have to think critically about everything. I used the information that I had absorbed concerning whatever novel I was analyzing and then after weeks of hard deliberating it was my job to come up with an interpretation based on the story's implications that no one else has thought of.
Now I spend my time thinking of creative ways of teaching someone what I know- not the interpretation. I also have to think about how I can teach someone to be able to think critically so that they may one day be able to draw their own applications.
There is something else I have to get down with...and its sort of like a homecoming. I have find the balance of guiding someone ethically. (careful! Before you all jump down my throats! I am not talking about gabbin about God) but that all people are worth self respect, dignity, equality. Its not that I don't believe in these things, I guess that its the idealism that I don't trust. I am a disciple of deconstruction! I automatically mistrust anyone that thinks there one way of living is the right way-even if its my own! For the past four years I have strayed away from believing in feelings, the area was too gray, too self involved. Yet, this was not how I was raised! As I mentioned in my 'about me' section, my primary interests include "recovering my optimism."