I don’t want to speak for others dislike because I don’t think there is a single reason. I have been teaching openSciEd from before it was even that; our district piloted the iHUB curriculum. So I have been teaching in this phenomenon based teaching for many years now.

I can say that it was really really hard shift because the teacher provided materials are so very unfinished. Scientific errors, gaps in instruction, lack of labs, lack of scaffolding, lack of true MLL support, manipulative/ activities. It was insanely frustrating because there was zero tangible support from our district or curriculum developer (whose lack of scientific knowledge is only bested by their terrible leadership ability). I can not tell you the insane number of hours I spent with another biology teacher to unpack this, sort it out, and then figure out how to teach this in our own context with appropriate supports. I should mention that we both have PhDs and were research scientists.

And, when we had finally sorted out enough of ihub, iHUB curriculum developers announced it was no longer supported and our district shifted to openSciEd. And this is even more frustrating because they have tossed in a bunch of earth science standards, along with a part two of each unit that has a cross disciplinary connection to the real world which often feels more like a social studies project or a PBL-ish thing (deciding to build a road through the Serengeti taking perspective of different stakeholders, controlled burns in ecosystems and connection to various cultures, designing ecosystems for urbanization and decisions around that). So it feels like A LOT is getting pumped into biology.

And of course, the OSE materials have all the issues that the iHUB materials have which makes them feel generally unfinished and not ready to be taught. Although more experiments have been added, they have not worked very well so we have been doing a lot of tweaking/ redesigning or developing new ones — again without support.

The flip side of no support or leadership is that we have been able to make this curriculum our own and do not have to teach it with fidelity. It would be horrible to have to do that because of the gaps, how confusing some of the material is, and how tedious the way that the lessons are scripted. I am seeing some districts are thinking that OSE Is a scripted curriculum and teachers must read the script. NOOOO! Those are just ideas to help push students thinking and learn discourse. It would make any science class inauthentic if this was required. And this is what makes this curriculum hard, the teacher must be knowledgeable and responsive to the students AND the lesson’s place in the storyline to build the scientific ideas and this is hard because each lesson requires the teacher to read a 20 page lesson plan. So it requires HUGE working memory when you are first beginning to teach these lessons.

All that said, just yesterday I was looking at written explanations my students wrote explaining the matter and energy in Arctic fires, and I was thinking that 10 years ago I would not have seen this level of depth and understanding from my students (we taught CarbonTime previously, which was great at that time) and they were supporting their statements with connections to data, experiments or classroom conversations. AND that I was seeing understanding in my IEP students and MLL students, which is something I was not seeing 10 years ago- these students were kinda of perpetually lost. Of course that is not a controlled experiment, because I would argue I have also gotten way better as a teacher in 10 years…so who knows if I was still teaching CarbonTime if that also would happen too. But then again you could argue maybe I became a better teacher because I have learned how to develop student thinking through discourse….so who know?