So how's it going?

♪ ♫ You be doobie dooo...♫

We've plunged into Understanding by Design (UbD), yet another teaching program that takes good teaching, frames it with invented vocabulary and expensive consultants, led by a messianic figure or two.

This particular messianic figure, Grant Wiggins, has wed with Pearson to carve himself a nice little cubby hole in the habitat of edutestation. New Jersey has invested more than a few dollars in his program. We'll be doing the ♪ ♫ You be doobie dooo...♫ for years.

But here's the good news.

It's not bad once you squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube. Good teachers have always worked backwards from essential questions. Heck, Socrates thrived with Wiggins' program, and look where it got him.

So long as the thrust is on essential questions, on understanding, on grappling with how the world works, and as long as UbD looms larger in the administration world than the NJ Biology Competency Test, it's a win-win situation.

For the cost of squeezing lesson plans into a format that makes solving the Seven Bridges of Königsberg look easy, I get to teach the way the good ones have all along.

Madeline Hunter, Socrates, or even Mr. Hand--it all comes down to the same thing. Save the evangelism for Sundays....

The photo of Grant Wiggins is from his UbD site.
The photo of Mr. Hand is from Flixster.

My UbD essential question of the day

The 150th anniversary of Darwin's On the Origin of Species is coming up November 29.

Do you believe in evolution?
Nope.

Are you a Bible-thumpin', gun-totin' wingnut?
On most days, nope.

Do you think descent with modification goes a long, long way towards explaining the unity and diversity of life on Earth?
Yep.

Are you a tree-huggin', granola totin' wingnut?
On most days, nope.

According to Darwin (or today's biologists) did humans come from chimpanzees?
Nope, no rational scientist in her right mind said this.

Am I related to the toe fungus growing on my Aunt Millie's foot?
Yep, I accept that we're (very) distant cousins.

So far no real controversy--I can hold on to a very strong theory that explains just about all we know in biology, I can dabble in the Gospels (and you might best run away if you see me walking around mumbling about Mark reasonably ending at 16:8), and anyone who spends time outside knows life is weird enough that everything that respires just might all be cousins.

Here's the big one, though, and one that cuts across the boundaries.

Were humans inevitable?

This is where hubris takes a hit.
This is part of why Darwin spent a lifetime trying to find cracks in his own work.
This is why teaching biology can change a student's world.

Any thoughts?