Chapter 1: Backward design

Our current educational system is so awfully grounded that I could understand perfectly what the author meant by the sarcastic sentence: "Throw some content and activities against the wall and hope some of it sticks". This analogy evidences so graphically what happens in schools and in the minds of teachers, that the immediate response one thinks of is almost that the author proposal for planning is a gift from heaven and the most coherent and fruitful basis we all knew but never really understood.

This is why the very question that invades my mind is why did not we have this kind of readings before. The proposal of having the focus on learning instead of teaching changes entirely the perspective from where we contemplate our career, since we are surrounded by teachers who never ever consider learning but just assume it happens at some point of the superficial covered units at school. Therefore, we always knew that something was wrong, but never truly understand what exactly that was, and once we had the power inside the classroom we could not solve the puzzle together. That is what happens in a system where everything is built upon the same principles, and there seems to be no way out of it.

This is why I consider that the three stages of backward design Wiggins proposes us, are so enlightening to our future or current practices. I strongly believe that the rest of the book will have powerful influence in my paradigm for education, for backward design not only challenges you to change the way you plan your classes, but also helps you to think assessment differently in order to foster your students' learning. That is in fact the goal: to learn and to be able to produce learning continuously.