During the summer of 2014 I took a graduate course at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont as part of my work to bring mindfulness to my teaching practice. At the end of the course, we designed, and walked a labyrinth together. For those who have not walked a labyrinth, it is like a maze but there is only one path leading to the center. While walking I made note of the fact that we were all on the same path, but we were all in different places on our journey. At the end, I likened this to the practice of teaching, as teachers we have a goal for our students to reach, yet they are all in different places, and it is our job to help them get as close to the end of the journey as possible. Our KUDs help us to articulate the goals that are the end of the journey we will take with our students.
The KUDs for a unit center us before we begin our journey to new learning with our students. Thinking about what we want them to know, understand and be able to do by the end, gives us time to reflect on what is truly important. To me it helps us go beyond the content, like vocabulary and formulas, to get to the enduring understandings we would like to teach. As we develop more and more units within our courses we can use our KUDS to weave these understandings throughout all of the units. By connecting our units to larger, enduring understandings we help to create a story for our students. As James Zull tells us in The Art of Changing the Brain, “Stories engage all of the parts of the brain. They come from our experiences, our memories, our ideas, our actions, and our feelings. They allow us to package events and knowledge in complex neuronal nets, any part of which can trigger all the others.” By developing KUDs we not only can create a story, we also create a purpose for our learning community. A clear purpose is important to the survival of organisms and organizations. Once a flower has put forth its seed to the world it will wither away, it no longer has a reason to persist. To impart enduring knowledge to our students we must have story and a clear purpose embedded in our curriculum, and KUDs can help ensure they are present.
The KUDs for a unit center us before we begin our journey to new learning with our students. Thinking about what we want them to know, understand and be able to do by the end, gives us time to reflect on what is truly important. To me it helps us go beyond the content, like vocabulary and formulas, to get to the enduring understandings we would like to teach. As we develop more and more units within our courses we can use our KUDS to weave these understandings throughout all of the units. By connecting our units to larger, enduring understandings we help to create a story for our students. As James Zull tells us in The Art of Changing the Brain, “Stories engage all of the parts of the brain. They come from our experiences, our memories, our ideas, our actions, and our feelings. They allow us to package events and knowledge in complex neuronal nets, any part of which can trigger all the others.” By developing KUDs we not only can create a story, we also create a purpose for our learning community. A clear purpose is important to the survival of organisms and organizations. Once a flower has put forth its seed to the world it will wither away, it no longer has a reason to persist. To impart enduring knowledge to our students we must have story and a clear purpose embedded in our curriculum, and KUDs can help ensure they are present.