Make way for the future. C-Scope offers a whole new curriculum that’s designed to give every class a specific day by day lesson so that everyone is on the same page and is prepared for the TEKS and TAKS tests. Some teachers welcome the change, others not so much.
Rumors about C-Scope were spread across the district, from students to faculty, rumors such as C-Scope telling teachers exactly what to do and not allowing room for teachers to improvise methods or have any fun with their classes.
“At first, teachers were hesitant about the unknown of C-Scope,” math teacher Paul Loskot said. “They were full of fear and trepidation on how they’d tell us what to teach, but that’s ridiculous.”
Head of the Rider math department Stephanie Mullens agrees, that it seemed to require more work for teachers than the method they used before, but now was relatively “pain free”.
“I think C-Scope has potential. It is designed for a longer class period, but with good planning it will work.” Mullens said.
Compared to the old free-formed method, C-Scope provides one curriculum for all teachers in the district of each subject in order to make sure every student is on the same page and learning everything required for the TEKS and TAKS tests.
“C-Scope is not only a great product with everything for every grade level, but it’s also developed by Texas educators based on Texas requirements, and it’s designed by a non-profit company,” math curriculum coordinator for WFISD Ward Roberts said.
WFISD is part of region 9 out of 20 total in Texas. So far, 18 out of those 20 have chosen to follow the C-Scope adoption wave. As a result, all the students will receive the knowledge required from each course.
“Because we are all teaching the same lessons, if a student jumps from class to class they get all the same stuff,” Loskot said.
Not everything about C-scope is completely perfect, though. Every curriculum has its ups and downs.
“There are some bugs in the system, some flaws in its sequencing, but in general it’s not that difficult to get past the flaws because teacher’s have the ability to supplement the material,” Loskot said. “It doesn’t tell you what to teach, it just gives you a guideline, and you’re encouraged to supplement.”
Teachers who were hired before the switch already have personal experience on what should be added to help their students understand each concept. This fills in the holes on the guideline.
The secondary curriculum is more inclusive for teachers, even though it provides activities for each six weeks,” Roberts said. “If a teacher has a great way of teaching a topic, they should be allowed to use it, in fact, please use it.”
The hard part for most teachers is accepting the difference and the new that C-Scope offers.
“It requires change, and the teachers who try it in their classes have got success and they love it, but the ones who don’t want to take the time to look into it are the biggest critics.” Roberts said.
First-year teachers come in to C-Scope with a different viewpoint than experienced ones.
“New teachers are a lot more receptive to it because they’re more needy,” Roberts said. “They see it as something to use that is all ready to go. It’s a gold mine for a first-year.”
Math is the first subject to go fully into C-scope curriculum.
“It’s a big adjustment that you have to make,” Mullens said. “Teachers need to realize that they cannot do everything they have always done before plus C-Scope. They need to replace the old lessons with a better C-Scope lesson.”
There’s some big differences between the previous curriculum and C-Scope.
“The old curriculum was like a syllabus, a topic outline, telling you just to teach these topics in a certain amount of time, but C-Scope is more in detail,” Roberts said. “It provides activities and assessments for each topic, so teachers don’t have to figure it all out on their own.”
The largest hurdle to overcome is the expectations that C-Scope has for such a short amount of time, but teachers have the leisure to depend their time management on their student’s needs as long as they finish the requirements before the end of the semester.
“It’s all easy now, even though it’s so fast-paced,” Loskot said.