I heard someone say that these long, often multi-day inserves are just “efforts at micromanaging the staff and a knee-jerk reaction to the low standardized test scores and the fact that most kids are poor readers”.
It needs to be said here that everything we do in terms of non-targeted input and the general approach that infuses comprehension based instruction is in direct conflict with a curriculum map.
I worked on one for three years in Jefferson County before coming to DPS four years ago, and it was just a joke. We mapped out a curriculum that was in 100% direct, nose to nose, conflict with Krashen’s Natural Order of Acquisition hypothesis.
There is also this:
https://benslavic.com/thoughts-on-pacing-guides.html
Jennifer in NJ did you write that?
The thing about my own experience was this: at the inservices, which were district wide (Jeffco), each school divided up in departments (thus defeating the purpose of working together at the district level inservice) and started writing their maps by copying down the table of contents of their respective books, which they had brought with them to the meetings.
Perhaps in the spirit of throwing the barking dog a bone, we need to find, consult, create together, invent some kind of common map ourselves that would respect what we do with CI. Is that a stupid idea?
I just can’t see us having to concern ourselves with this. Is it not enough that we are grinding our teeth at night trying heroically to move foreign language instruction in just the opposite direction required by the curriculum mapping process?