The Beauty of Bureaucracy

October 6, 2007

I remember accepting my job at the LAUSD headquarters on Beaudry St. in downtown Los Angeles. Every one had an opinion. Welcome to biggest bureaucracy, they said. You’ll be hearing from them . . . often, they warned. I laughed, shrugged my shoulders, and signed the dotted line. I then had an unpleasant reminder of what it meant to work for LAUSD: I missed the entire second week of school for scripted curriculum training. I am reminded of that week now as I go back for another day of training.

Despite being repetitious and lacking in imagination, the scripted curriculum for 12^th grade English has a few bright spots – bright enough to employ in the classroom. Initially, I was afraid to criticize LAUSD curriculum. After all, I am a first year teacher without years of experience to guide my opinions as to what works and what fails in a classroom. Nevertheless, it’s remarkable how quickly a first year teacher develops opinions.

The 12^th grade curriculum is entirely expository. This trend by the district to go more expo and less literary is evident in the readings and writings. Divided into twelve modules, the curriculum covers engaging topics (from the fast food epidemic and hiring practices based on beauty to juvenile justice) that are relevant to the students. While I support the idea that 12^th graders need to learn how to critically analyze non-fiction texts, the readings do not require the students to become invested in the process of reading. The articles are informative but not complex. They can read an article in twenty minutes (rereading is, of course, encouraged) while a novel requires persistence and buy-in.

I taught the first module about fast food to my classes. They found the topic interesting, but I couldn’t stay on the module for longer than three days. My students were becoming impatient with a two-page article that did not require much in-depth analysis. It is not the length that matters – imagine the weeks you can spend on one Shakespeare monologue – but the content. I can’t imagine my students being interested when the LAUSD representatives couldn’t get us high school teachers interested during the training conference. If dozens of high school English teachers can’t get excited about reading and writing, there must be something wrong. Moreover, the curriculum does not provide any help for how to adapt the assignments and activities for EL (English Language) students or SpEd students. I feel like I could have received the reading materials in the mail and still been as prepared to teach it as I am after having missed the second week of school. I can complain now because I know that come second semester, when I’ve exhausted my luck with teaching novels, I’m going to turn towards the 12^th grade expo modules and suddenly appreciate the brevity and relevance of a two page newspaper article.