On Answer Keys

It doesn't happen often, but it happens. Somebody--usually a zealous parent or a tutor of one of my students--asks me for an answer key. Or (and I don't know if this is worse) a teacher's manual (yes, probably it's worse).

I try to be nice about it, but here's the thing.

<rant>
I rarely use anyone else's curriculum when I teach.

Or, to be more accurate, I do a great deal of research and reading, and then I create my own curriculum based on that research and reading, drawing on the best ideas from a wide array of sources and combining them with my own ideas.

The very few times in my teaching career that I've followed someone else's curriculum for any length of time--say, for more than two or three days--I've regretted it. And, if we're going to be honest here, I really feel that if you can't create your own curriculum and materials for a class, then perhaps you shouldn't be teaching that class.

It's sadly ironic to me that we make such a fuss in education about teaching students to read widely and synthesize what they read, yet so many teachers copy-and-paste from pre-fabricated curriculum guides. To give you what I hope is an extreme example: I know of at least one English teacher who actually copied his (or her) quiz questions from SparkNotes. I'm not even kidding.

So please, parents and tutors, stop asking. What I teach is based on more than a decade of personal effort, and while I won't make any claim that it's the best curriculum in the world, I will say this: I don't copy it out of a lousy book.
</rant>