Curriculum: What Would I Change?

While I was teaching science, my district adopted new textbooks that were specifically made to meet South Carolina's Science Standards.  It was a good book, but the district strongly encouraged us to use it as our curriculum guide.  The school also started putting heavy emphasis on testing and looking at student scores and comparing teachers' class scores.  Previous to these textbooks I used more outside resources and didn't feel as pressured to use our previous textbooks as a guiding force in what I taught.

This was a valuable lesson for me.  It was obvious that I was getting bored with the textbook and more importantly, the students were getting bored with the textbook.  Every year I made an interactive notebook with my students.  The notebook contained notes, lab write-ups, interactive charts and diagrams, and other fun features that allowed students to be creative in their work.  When looking back at my notebooks over the years, that year when the new textbooks were brought in, was a very boring interactive notebook.  It still upsets me and I wish I could go back and change how I taught that year.  I would try to ignore the pressures of sticking to the new textbook and forget about test scores and comparing teacher class scores.  Instead I would just use the textbook when needed and just let my creativity and student interest drive the curriculum.