Okay, no link on this one.
I have to confess that I went into writing blog posts with a sense that someone would latch on from the greater OCSS community and fire away with a comment or two...and that hasn't happened.
And I think part of the reason is how the community views OCSS. As a Department Chair at a Portland-area high school, I seem to get bombarded by requests for membership to a vast number of organizations -- World Affairs Council, AHA, NCSS, etc, and there are times when my mind is pretty fried in trying to consider what each offers to me and what each can do for me. So, when it comes to OCSS, I'm sure there are plenty of people who thus see us as Conference planners, and not much else.
If that's what Oregon wants, then that's what Oregon should get then, and we will meet their needs.
Curiously though, and I'll leave this as a post until we get some reaction, is this really what Oregon wants from the Oregon Council for the Social Studies? Or, do you want us to be doing more with our time working for you?
Should we solely be an advocacy organization, attempting to get greater press directed toward Social Studies statewide?
Should we be a professional development organization, looking only toward conferences and making them as well considered as possible to get you some good content training?
Should we specialize in summer workshops, trying to get scholars and professors to offer intensive training on topics pertinent to Oregon teachers?
In all due seriousness, we want to know, because if we aren't doing what you think we should, we need to get crackin' so we don't waste your time, or ours...
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With many schools moving to proficiency based grading it would be nice to see OCSS create unit proficiencies that match the Oregon standards. Then to follow up the proficiencies with rubrics for assessing them would be terrific. I am a past member and haven't renewed or visited the website because I am looking for tools that I can implement right now without a lot of modification or links to other websites etc. We all teach the same basic units in US Hist, American Government etc. so it should be fairly straight forward. Especially with the skills standards, where are the rubrics?
ReplyDeleteSorry I didn't see this earlier :-)
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, although I'm not sure that considering that "many" is accurate. We're still seeing less than 10% of the state doing proficiency, although by the same token, you're right that we should have unit plans that are up, which is something that we are trying to do in the coming year.
I don't know if I agree on that we all teach the same basic units. In traveling about the state, there are some wide ranging ideas about what goes into a government class. However, that's the purpose of the ongoing curriculum standards revision happening in Salem. Now, once those are settled, we may get some traction.
I do think that assessments and rubrics should be the creation of the teacher and school, however. That's a moot point because we do have to wait and see what happens with the standards revision.
Thanks for posting, even though 5 months have passed...