Mr. Thelen found no substantive curriculum materials. There was a
one-page list of spelling words for each of the eight semesters of English.
There were no textbook lists for each course. Teachers taught the same
book regardless of what semester’s course they were teaching. Finally,
there was a general feeling that, as one guidance counselor told Mr.
Thelen, “English is English—it makes no difference in what order stu-
dents take their courses, does it?”
An even more immediate problem was a sense of dread at the opening
of the semester. Back in 1981, methods of programming students had not
changed since the days of the one-room schoolhouse. Unfortunately, they
didn’t work in this school of 2,400 students. During the first four weeks
of every semester, there were massive program changes, such that half of
a teacher’s class register might change before it stabilized. After their first
semester, students realized that with such massive register changes, there
could be no sequential instruction, so many decided to do nothing for the
first four weeks.
In the proverbial vicious cycle, teachers, knowing their classes would
change every day for several weeks, reverted to nonsequential instruction
and gave few, if any, assignments, justifying the attitude of the students.
This organizational problem also had existed in Mr. Thelen’s old
school, but over several years, “uniform lesson plans” were developed for
each course so that on a given day, each teacher of a course taught the
same material and gave the same assignment. For example, if there were
four teachers of eleventh-year English, each would teach the same topic
on Monday and have the same assignment due for Tuesday. The uniform
plans provided a suggested lesson plan, but teachers were free to adjust or
alter it to their own styles as long as they covered the specified material.
When classes were equalized and students in eleventh-year English
were shifted, little instruction was lost. If, seven days into the semester,
they were moved from an eleventh-year English class during period 2
with Ms. A to the same level class in period 8 with Mr. B, the topics
covered and assignments given in both classes would have been the
same. Because of late-arriving summer school results and human errors in
programming, some students moved from one level class to another (say
from sophomore to junior English). The uniform plans did not address the
needs of these students. Fortunately, this accounted for a low percentage
of the changes.
2 Chapter 1