Task 2: Enacting Curriculum
What is the purpose of curriculum and what role do we have as teachers in this purpose?
The main purpose of curriculum is to organize student learning. As a teacher it is my job to teach the curriculum in a way that provides optimal student achievement. I have to show the students how the content is connected to real-life scenarios and answer that question of, “why do I have to learn this?” Schwartz wrote, “Curriculum consists of a checklist of short term and long term goals and objectives that can be measured. This defines that path that the students must take.” As teachers we have to make learning engaging, constructive and appropriate for all students all the while staying on this path and organization that may not be suitable for out classrooms/students.
How much control do we have in the designing of curriculum? How much should we have?
I really enjoyed Schwartz article. The way he describes the relationship between the curriculum writers and the teachers is to me very accurate. It is to my understanding that the ones, who were curriculum writers were once in the education field, therefore should have some knowledge of what a classroom is typically like. However he states “curriculum writers are focused on the organization of the material and their written instruction. They envision the learning experience as a closeted environment while in reality it is anything but.” It is with this idea that teachers have to do their best to interoperate the curriculum and then relay the content to our students in a creative, engaging way. This then leads us into a path that is not coinciding with the curriculum. I believe his “novel idea” is genius. Developing a curriculum that engages, challenges and excites the teacher will in turn lead to the same feeling for students. I feel that curriculum should not be written for students; it should be written for teachers. The make up of our classrooms change several times and we are never really faced with the same situations. That is why curriculum cannot be written for students, however one thing that is the same is the teacher. If we can focus on our teaching and delivery of instruction student achievement, I feel, will increase.
How does the curriculum that you have looked like in your classrooms in a day to day environment?
I teach special education. This is my 4th year teaching and I have yet to understand everything I need to know about curriculum, pacing guides, etc. One thing that I do know is if I have a 5th grader who is a non-reader, my full attention is to get that kid to read. If that means I hold off teaching synonyms, antonyms etc. I am willing to do so. I run my resource classroom on a student need basis. I really try my best to make sure our curriculum guide is involved in our instruction however if they are not getting the skills necessary for life beyond school, I make time and we practice until they get it. It is also difficult to totally follow curriculum in my classroom because even though they are in lets say the 4th grade, their instructional level is 2nd grade. At times it is difficult to teach those 4th grade concepts on a lower level and making it age appropriate. I am consistently using various strategies and instructional methods to improve my students understanding of content so I guess you can say that curriculum in my classroom looks like “organized chaos”.
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I also really enjoyed the Schwartz article. My favorite part was when he talked about curriculum developers becoming frustrated at teachers for not following the program and teachers becoming frustrated because the developers are not practical and the cycle continuing on and on. I like your statement about teachers being the only thing that stays the same year to year...this is so very true and another great reason that a curriculum should be written for teachers and not students.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both you and Stephanie- I especially like that part where you say that curriuclum should be written for the teachers not the students. I like when you say that curriculum should engage us- because if we are not engaged then it is really hard to get the kids to be engaged. I know that there have been things that I have had to work really hard at to become engaged (like teaching Phonics) so I knew that I had to really spend time learning to be excited to teach the content- I know that everyone has those feelings of needing to teach things they don't love. How do you get excited when there is not anything engaging in the curriculum?
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