Syllabus Makeover Edition
Note to readers: For those pressed for time, key takeaways and action items are provided at the end. And a quick reminder to all—if you enjoy the piece, please share with others. We’re trying to start a movement here.
Were it not for the price tag ($530,320 for two kids for four years), and the fact that my kids likely wouldn’t be accepted, and the reality that—despite my occasional threats to the contrary—I actually don’t want to ship my kids off to boarding school, I would love to send my kids to Phillips Andover Academy.
Andover, as you may know, is one of the top secondary schools in the nation, if not the world. It would undoubtedly be a learning Shangri-La for my kids, providing a dramatically better education and likely having an outsized impact on their mental and intellectual development.
Plus, their reunions would be more fun, as they are when you go back and all your former classmates have either become presidents (both Bushes), or royalty (King of Bhutan), or model-actor-directors (Olivia Wilde), or the inventors of high-tech things like the original texting (Samuel Morse of Morse Code fame).
Alas, no matter how many times I re-work the family budget, I can’t find that spare half million. We could get partway there. I could swing tuition for the first three or four days at Andover, but after that the Ueland budget is tapped out and the kids would have to hitchhike home from New Hampshire. Four days of Andover doesn’t seem worth it.
Educations of radically disparate quality do exist, often varying according to where we are on the economic spectrum. There is thus a Sliding Doors-esque reality that we parents confront, assuming that we are not at the very top: anything less than the best represents an increased likelihood that the version of our kids that develops in this parallel world is not all that it could be.
And yet in this time of unlimited access to information and content, there is absolutely reason to hope. Misgivings about our children’s opportunities can and should fuel our quest for educational enhancements and supplementations, which is the theme of so many of the posts on this site; today’s is arguably one of the most powerful for leveling the educational playing field.
Credit for the idea could go to my celebrity friends Chip and Joanna Gaines, who have taken the familiar concept of the televised home makeover and raised it to an art form—were it not for the fact I am not “currently” actually friends with the telegenic couple (the photo of Joanna and me has, it turns out, been faked, as close observers have already suspected).
This post is about makeovers, though, and the simple steps you can take to make over your children’s classes and thus their education.
It starts with the syllabus, a cursory review of which continues to be a rite of passage for our kids on the first day of their new classes, as it was back in our day. While the syllabus is the blueprint for a given class and what will be covered, it doesn’t typically occur to students that these documents, as blueprints, represent only one version of what could be covered on the topic.
It is only as adults that we understand that for any given course the potential syllabi that could exist vary greatly, from the Andover version to the freshman year of college version to the version created by the middle school teacher at a city school who is being asked to do too much with too little and has no option but to map out a modest plan.
And just because your kid starts with a lesser version, that doesn’t mean they need to be stuck with it. It really doesn’t. There are today too many readily available resources that could be added to any syllabus, any initial blueprint. This was the conclusion I reached recently after sensing my son was not as engaged in one of his classes as I thought he could be.
The class in question is an elective that focuses on urban design, with the kids eventually designing a city of the future. The fact that he can even take such a course is an educational victory. The topic is different, and it seems likely to engage the kids in thinking and learning about more contemporary topics that may be of more relevance to their future selves.
But as the first weeks were going by, and I would ask about the class, the spark I hoped to see wasn’t there. He mentioned learning something about taxes, then something about plumbing, then trailed off. Because I know that a 14-year-old boy is not the ultimate source of transparency regarding what is transpiring in a class, I asked to see the syllabus.
It is not that I am an urban planning expert, or an accomplished futurist, or have ever taken a class in these topics that would help me to judge the syllabus. But I am an adult human who is relatively curious and has been consuming a wide range of content for a number of decades. With that experience alone, I could recall a handful of fascinating brushes with the topic.
Looking at the syllabus, it mostly focused on the project they would be working on, designing their own future city for the purposes of competing with other schools, which is all great and sign of progress, our school embracing project-based learning and learning about working in teams.
But I could also see what wasn’t there. Based on my primitive knowledge of the topic, I could imagine what the Andover version might look like, much in the same way that a home make-over expert can just see the after version of a house. And, like that, I decided to act. It felt a bit taboo, like I might ended up in parent detention, but I went ahead and revised that syllabus.
I won’t go through the full recap, but the following gives you a sense for the new and improved version of my son’s eighth-grade urban planning class, with additions that include:
The amazing story of America’s most powerful planner, Robert Moses, and how he nearly destroyed New York City, as described in the great documentary, New York City.
It also covers Jane Jacobs, the woman credited with sparking the movement to stop Moses with her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Additionally, Dan Beuttner is featured for his work consulting with cities to incorporate his Blue Zone principles into planning and design in order to nudge people to live in ways that improve population health and happiness.
It includes links to some amazing on-demand video lectures on the future of cities from a Danish college, which I found through searching on edX.org.
And finally, the syllabus points to resources for learning about an urban design issue close to home, one in which our city (Minneapolis) is seeking input from the public on plans to undo a past design mishap.
In the course of updating the syllabus, I didn’t suggest my son do any additional writing or take tests related to this additional work. I just provided dates for consuming the other content. The goal of the makeover is to elevate the volume, quality, and interest level of the class’s content, which in turn will increase the chances that he gains some authentic interest and has a light-bulb moment or two on the topic that sticks with him.
Glass-half-empty readers may point out that this is still not the same as having a world-class teacher deliver this additional information and perhaps they will also suggest that if he isn’t writing papers about it and being tested, the learning gains won’t be all they could be, or suggest any number of shortcomings of this approach.
But that all misses the point. The new version is a radical improvement—one that was easy and free (a savings of $500k). Updating the syllabus was, for me as a parent, a glorious revelation—the fact that my son’s learning in the class doesn’t need to be held hostage to whatever forces resulted in the less ambitious version of the class than he would otherwise experience.
It is enough to bring on made-for-tv emotion of a true make-over show experience: oh my gosh—the new syllabus is so beautiful! I don’t even recognize it!
Take-aways, caveats, details, fine print
What teachers outline as learning for a given class is just the foundation
Work with your kids to supplement the syllabus, even it if is just adding just a single, but great additional resource
Doing so can make the class more interesting and more challenging
Enlisting your kids in finding the additional resources is an appealing step
Add dates for consuming the additional content to their school schedule
To see a copy of the version I created, send me an email and I will provide it.
Want some assistance doing this for your kids? Send me a syllabus and I am happy to take a pass at it, and you can see if the enhancement seems worth trying.
As always, thanks for reading and please click on one of the share option below, should you have the inclination.