Pre-Teaching Reflection:

With this creation of this unit coming to an end, I find myself thinking how utterly

impossible curriculum design would be without backwards design. When I initially learned about

backwards design, I assumed it was a strategy that should sometimes be consulted when one is

having trouble planning a unit. However, I now understand that this design process is critical to

ensuring that activities and assessments align with objectives and standards. By following

backwards design, I was able to create a unit that measures students’ ability to meet unit

objectives and answer unit questions. Although this design process has allowed me to feel

confident with unit I created, there are plenty of things I would alter if I could do it over again.

While I believe that this unit allows students to develop many aspects of historical

understanding, I regret not including more content regarding multiple perspectives. Perhaps it

was my analysis of Marxist philosophy during the design process that made me simplify

perspectives into the oppressors and the oppressed. In hindsight, there are plenty of interesting

perspectives to explore and compare. Instead, this unit focuses on the perspective of the working

class and their trials in tenements, factories, and strikes. None of the activities explicitly explore

the perspectives of women and minorities throughout the Industrial Revolution even though I am

sure there is engaging material on the subject out there. The viewing of Harlan Country, USA is

the only activity where students are tasked with looking at the perspective of mine workers,

women, unions, and businessmen. The incorporation of multiple perspectives through activities

such as perspective shadows or perspective simulations could have been a powerful teaching tool

that would have engaged students and fleshed out the complexities of the Industrial Revolution.

When I initially sat down to plan this unit, I was extremely overwhelmed by the idea of

teaching a single topic over the course of two or more weeks. I knew little about the Industrial
Revolution and had no idea how I could possibly come up with enough lessons to cover two

weeks. Once I started planning the unit, I found myself wishing I had more and more time. Two

of my days quickly filled up with the viewing of a film. Three days were taken up by working on

a performance assessment. The unit that I had once thought was too big to plan for suddenly

seemed too small. There was no way I could possibly cover everything I wanted to in this small

time period! I had initially wanted to create an entire project where students analyzed the

Information Revolution we are experiencing currently and evaluated the similarities and

differences between our era and the Industrial Revolution. This idea had to be scrapped due to

time limitations and was instead broken up into a series past and present connections through

initiation and closure activities. This design process quickly taught me that two weeks is really

not that much time. Some units simply cannot be adequately covered in two week’s time. I will

be struggling to figure out the balance between breadth and depth as I enter student teaching and

look at the curriculum I will be responsible for covering.

Designing this unit has also shown me just how much time educators have to dedicate to

crafting good units. The process of creating a simple two-week unit has taken several weeks.

Before I could even begin to plan the unit, I had to thoroughly educate myself on the unit’s topic.

In order to create an activity surrounding tenements, I had to virtually explore the Lower East

Side Tenement Museum. To create quality activities revolving around the unit’s film, I had to

watch Harlan County, USA twice. Managing my time proved extremely vital throughout this

rigorous process. The creation of worksheets and PowerPoints ended up taking hours longer than

expected. Dejection, doubt, and lack of creativity ended entire workdays early and created

incredible feelings of anxiety. In the end, using backwards design and giving myself weeks to

work through the design process allowed me to create a quality product I am confident to teach.