8th Grade Math Curriculum

During week three I discussed the 8th grade math curriculum. All eight graders in the state of North Carolina are expected to follow the same standard course of study in the same order. My district adopted a new middle school math program. Some schools in the district continued to follow the curriculum as required by the state and embed practices and activities from this new math program within the lessons. Other schools, like my middle school, elected to followed the math program as it was written which is not in the order of the state’s math curriculum guide. The teachers at my school had no input regarding the decision to implement the program, it was a decision made by the principal. The principal, who had an English background, made the decision without asking for input from any math teachers. Each year our district does have a week of curriculum writing. During this time teacher leaders from various schools come together to plan and discuss the curriculum. Several teachers from my school, including myself took part in the curriculum writing. The math teachers spent three days embedding the content from the math program into the curriculum only to be told the week before school starts that our school will be doing
The math program the school was expected to use was cooperative learning and nondirective teaching based, thrusting 8th graders into this type of learning without mastery or theory into practice teaching was quickly leading to frustration and disengagement. The teachers worked to make the math content meaningful to the students by implementing some of inquiry based activities into the curriculum but not to the point to overwhelm the