Episode 5

Jacqueline Simmons:

Welcome to Curriculum Encounters, a podcast about exploring knowledge, wherever you find it.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

And for thinking about what kind of knowledge matters for teaching and designing curriculum. My name is Sarah Gerth van den Berg.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

And I'm Jackie Simmons. And we are from the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Columbia University's Teachers College, and we like to think of ourselves as curriculum designers. Some might even say experts in the field. I know we've both done a lot of teaching about curriculum and we consult with organizations and schools to create curricula.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

And for years we had been running a curriculum lab here at Teachers College, and this podcast had been an effort to bring some of that really creative, playful thinking about curriculum to more people, to you.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Yeah. And so this is actually the last episode of the season. Now that we've done some of that work with our listeners, it would be really interesting to just go back and define some terms. Usually, we start our classes by defining terms, but now that we have a larger vocabulary, let's start with thinking about this word curriculum that we've been using so much.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

I think an easy way to define curriculum is as this organization of knowledge for learning. Usually, that conjures ideas of a syllabus and textbooks and standards and teaching, and that's part of it. That's what scholars call a formal curriculum, and it is really important socially and politically. But what we've been talking more about here is what scholars and academics typically call the informal curriculum. It's the stuff you learn just by being in a space, and it also has major implications for what kind of knowledge is considered important. We've hoped here through Curriculum Encounters to draw that informal curriculum into the spotlight by thinking about how we interact with knowledge outside of the classroom.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Yeah, I'm going to add to that, that every time we talk to teachers about curriculum, the first thing they say is, "Yeah, the lesson plans, the unit plans." I have a textbook for my curriculum and those are all really important parts of the formal curriculum for sure. I think in this podcast we've been trying to think about the informal curriculum or what scholars might even call the hidden curriculum because it's all of that other kinds of knowledge that's happening in a learning environment, in the selection of what goes into that lesson plan, what's on those standards, what gets named, what doesn't get named.

 

That's also teaching. It's also telling us as students, but also as a society, what is important to know? Why is it important to know it? What do we want learners to do with it? And so those are the textures of curriculum, that informal hidden knowledge that we've been trying to get at in these episodes. And so to broaden that, we've looked at academic spaces. We've looked at hidden spaces and social spaces across the Teachers College campus. So let's get into that.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

So we started in Episode One by actually looking at academic spaces, this really shiny new classroom at Teachers College and a hallowed wooden hallway that felt more traditional. That was a way to really think about the aesthetics of a space, the colors and light and texture that signal something about who a learner is and how learning happens and what kind of knowing is important.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

So when we pay attention to aesthetics as a form of knowledge, we're doing something. What are we doing there? In some ways, we're trying to draw attention to the idea that aesthetics are not just about decoration, but they can have these political and social connections wrapped up into how teachers and learners are just positioned by what the space looks like or what the textures or colors might be, and those aesthetic choices can have power and therefore consequences. There's some level of maybe even privilege to decide.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

Any teacher who's been tasked with bulletin boards gets it. Bulletin boards in schools, at least in schools I taught in, were always political. Who's doing what with their board and what's on the common board?

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Whose work gets exemplified and who doesn't?

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

And sometimes bulletin boards were great spaces for play and a lot of creativity and teachers who went all out decorating them. And we're saying it's not about the decoration, but sometimes it is, and it signals something about the value of play or the value of imagination, silliness or how serious we are. That's where this aesthetic element of spaces converges with how we think about teaching and learning and knowledge.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

And so, one of the things that we talked about as we explored those academic spaces and the aesthetic choices that were made there were some of the embodied responses. How does your body feel there? And then maybe the emotional connections to that body response. That's always something that just happens. You walk into a classroom for the first time in the semester and your body might feel a certain way, and that might be facilitated or emphasized because of the way the room is set up, because of where the teacher's going to be sitting or standing and whether there are groups or single rows, those kinds of things.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

And across these episodes, we tease out and separate aesthetic forms of knowing from how we know through our memories and emotions and how we come to know through social spaces and interactions, but they're really all balled up together. So you were talking Jackie, I was having a memory of walking into a classroom as an undergraduate. 

 

I was volunteering at a middle school and the school was in this old Catholic school building, and the smell of cleaning solution on the hallway floors and the particular light blue of the tiles and shine on the hallway walls sparked such a powerful memory for me of how it felt for me to be in school spaces.

 

And it was that aesthetic and sensory experience, the memory it sparked, and what that produced and how I felt that actually made me want to be a teacher. That was the kind of space I wanted to be in. It felt a certain way in my body. And so these do matter for decisions we make and where we feel comfortable, what we think we know about ourselves or about different sorts of spaces and how we relate to that.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

That really takes us to Episode Two where we took a look at hidden spaces at TC and the emotions and memories that were held there. And I think one of the things that you just revealed in your story and what we found there was that nostalgia can be a really powerful form of knowledge. There is a pull there when memory starts working, and that's a part of curriculum too, and that can be a part of your pedagogical planning. You can actually think about, okay, how might I get a student engaged or a learner engaged in something by actually tapping into a kind of memory work that might be motivating.

 

Or, what do I want to avoid? There's always both sides of the coin. In both of those situations, we're sometimes faced with these different kinds of choices about when we attune to something like aesthetics or emotion or memory. Is there a way in our curriculum design or our planning where we're able to spiral back to how we might employ that in the formal curriculum or how might we pay attention to it?

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

Yeah. How do those affect the decisions we're making in the formal curriculum? I think part of what we've been trying to unpack is how they're always affecting our decisions. We just don't often talk about how that's happening.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

The other thing that we got into in one of the episodes was that these aren't neutral. We're not saying that any of this knowledge that we'd like to introduce, really explore, create opportunities for is somehow better than the kind of knowledge that we're used to paying attention to. They're all engaged in some kind of power or something that we have to really think about. And so I think, in that regard, we really are also drawing attention to the context. So emotions, aesthetics, memory, they're not neutral, and the context in which those create knowledge also requires a little critical analysis.

 

And by that I mean for paying attention to our senses, for example. There are raced or gendered or classed aspects of what senses mean to me, what senses I find appealing. I may wish to heighten or I may wish to avoid. That's about the context and lived experience for many of us. When I say they're not neutral, I'm saying there's still an analysis that's required to understand, what is it going to do in a teaching and learning space?

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

And I think that brings us to Episode Three, where we talked about sensory ways of knowing. There are these social spaces that involved food and the breeze and music, all kinds of different sensory stimuli. What were we doing there?

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Well, I think, in general, we're just trying to create opportunities for more interventions or maybe even a little spontaneity. When we think about spaces and senses at work, we want to say that these choices that have been made do not have to be the only choices moving forward. There's so much more knowledge available to us, and if we can attune by tuning up all of these other ways that our minds and bodies are activated, if we can tune into that, then there's a lot of possibility. And I think our learners, our students want that.

 

I know as a human just walking through the world, I'm more open to asking a question. I'm more open to curiosity. If I am in my body, if my eyes are wide open and I am paying attention to my surroundings, to how I'm feeling in my surroundings, how my body feels, what I smell, what the space feels like, all of those things are a part of how I'm thinking, how I'm learning. We're really just trying to make a case for putting that into our curriculum design.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

And it reminds me of a quote we use all the time in this introductory course on curriculum design that Jackie and I have both taught many times here at Teachers College, and it's about curriculum design as a social creation. And I think this episode in particular, but hopefully these curriculum encounters across this season, help illuminate what that means, that curriculum is the social creation, that together we're making these decisions about what knowledge is important.

 

Sometimes we're doing that explicitly when we craft standards and lesson plans and reading lists, and that's really important. And curriculum is also a social creation that we are always enacting and creating implicitly in these interactions and encounters in the hallway and on the quad and just outside at school pickup, where learning is happening, where we're picking up on what kinds of knowing, what ways of knowing are important, and how we know.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

In one of our episodes, we had a really interesting conversation about permissions and who gets to be a part of these conversations, who gets to participate actually? Who are we really paying attention to? And so we wanted to acknowledge that there is some privilege in this, in what we're doing, that it seems like not everybody really should participate in this re-imagining, and for certain there are not always opportunities or even choices to be made. I think that's really important to highlight as well, that senses can mean different things for people. Places do different things because of one's history, personal history, or cultural history, because of one's particular body and how one's body reacts in a space or reacts to knowledge.

 

History matters, neurodivergence matters, people's experiences matter, senses differ. And I think that's actually a part of what we're arguing for, is that this allows for a wider array of opportunities to engage with this understanding that it also closes at the same time. What are your senses telling you right now, Sarah?

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

We're in this recording studio and I know it's four o'clock in the afternoon, but I feel so far from the sunlight. I have no idea what time of day it is in my body, and there's a different experience of that here where I've lost, maybe this example of how I've lost that knowledge of what time it is. And my body's like, "Wait, is it nighttime? Let's think slower." How I'm producing knowledge with you is affected.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

That's a great example of how knowledge operates so differently, because at nighttime, I think faster. I'm a night owl. In the morning, I am slow and sluggish. So as soon as the sun starts setting, I turn up. And wow, wouldn't it be great if a teacher of mine knew that about me and maybe could have a sense of how to organize learning opportunities for me given that or, at least make a space for that to somehow be vital?

 

At the end of each episode, we try to leave listeners with an activation or an activity idea so that this can all seem a little more practical for those of you who are working with learners somewhere. And I think we just shared an example when I asked Sarah, "What are your senses telling you?" And Sarah, you responded by saying that you had this disconnect with the bodily sense of knowledge and the conversation we were having because of the room we're in. And that was a great cue for me as a teacher. I often regularly give a prompt in my classes where I might just ask people to pay attention to their bodies. We might do a stand and stretch. I think a lot of teachers typically recognize that students sometimes need to give time for our bodies to reset. So the prompt question can be something like, what is your body thinking right now? Rather than what is your mind thinking?

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

I think this shift to what's your body thinking rather than what is your mind thinking is a really important reframe there. I'm thinking back through the curriculum encounters we've had this season and where a particular insight or understanding came about because of that attunement to our bodies and what that afforded us. We were in these different spaces, we were in the library, the campus basement, the cafe, and it's part of saying that the learning that happens in classrooms is a really narrow band of what it means to learn and be human. And we spent this whole season exploring what we can learn outside of that traditional classroom. But I think what we're getting at is, what aren't we paying attention to when we don't ask what is your body thinking right now?

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Our practice in making this podcast is that we were out and about and all of our really wonderful, productive thinking and exciting insights typically happened when we were on location, when we had our mics pinned to our lapels. And then we would get into the studio, and we're in the studio right now, and be kind of like, "Oh, what do we say? Where do we go from here? How do we talk about this?" There was something about our bodies moving that allowed the thinking to flow. And as I think back on these episodes, it really seemed like there was something afforded by the activity, the movement, the ability to see different things and hear different things and be in different spaces to let our minds think.

 

What I like about this conversation also, now that we are back in the studio and we're able to reflect on those things, is that you can hear our thinking. You can actually hear our slow movement to try to make sense of this. And I always find that to be interesting too. And I think actually my students find that to be interesting because they realize that I don't have this all figured out and that I really do enjoy the dialogue and the puzzling through it and potentially being wrong. I think those are really powerful educational lessons too. And rarely, they so rarely get shared in finished education scholarship and working in this medium lets us record all of these drafts and re-record the thinking and thinking out loud and making the thinking out loud a part of the work.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

I'd like to pick up on a word you used that was finished or polished. When we're having these curriculum encounters where it's vulnerable, we're staging these scenes where we don't know what we're going to come to know yet, and we're working that out live. And we might still be trying to articulate what it was we learned and why that's important, but when the only knowledge that gets prioritized or squeezed into the formal curriculum is the polished finished knowledge, we're also missing something, that room to be uncertain, to be curious to explore, to see what emerges and for students to have those experiences or for them to maybe feel like they're only smart if they get to the finished and the polished.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Yeah, it's seeing the value of the rough draft and there's so much learning in being able to see. There are many assessments where you get to see, what am I still working on? What do I need to practice a little bit more? I had a friend today ask me, "Why are you still working on that podcast? It's been forever. Aren't you finished yet?" And I said, "It's the editing." It's like we hear something and then we want to go back and respond to it, and then we re-record something else, and in that second draft, we find another layer that we'd like to explore. And so it's this evolving conversation that I love that it's like drafting a paper. And I think that's a powerful argument for multimodal publications and research.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

And that there's a pleasure in that. There's been a real pleasure to returning to something, to stitching together ideas when they're still in this nascent nebulous stage. The kind of conversation that unfolds in the recording studio or in Jackie's office or over my dining room table connects so much to this idea that space matters. Where we are matters. Who we're with matters. That curriculum is this social and spatial and sensory creation.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Yeah. I wonder if those spaces that you just named–part of it is that we don't anticipate that they're educational spaces, and so the unexpected quality of it is a little more alive. We don't know what might happen, whereas in the classroom it might feel a little predictable. At the very least, we know what's supposed to happen, what we expect learning to look like or teaching to look like. It's harder to suspend belief in the typical space. So when we move it around, there's a little more possibility.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

And a return to historically really rich sites of learning. This notion that learning only happened in a formal classroom or that was the most important kind of learning that could happen is a construction.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Next season, we bring these curriculum encounters outside of Teachers College and we can't wait to explore opportunities we find elsewhere.

 

Sarah Gerth van den Berg:

Thank you so much for listening this season. We have had great feedback from so many of our students and colleagues, and that's made us so excited to continue.

 

Jacqueline Simmons:

Curriculum Encounters is a production of the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College Columbia University. It was edited by Jen Lee and both of us. Our theme music is designed by Noah Teachey. Listen to episodes of this podcast on our website or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have comments, email us at curriculumencounters@tc.edu.