Cycle 1: What is curriculum and what is its purpose?
Curriculum
directors, new curriculum, curriculum development plans, curriculum
enhancement, curriculum changes, and many other phrases are heard on a daily
basis in the educational world. As
educators we follow the orders of the curriculum and teach what is expected of
us. Do any of us really sit back and
think about what exactly curriculum is?
More importantly do we ever ponder our main purpose of teaching the
curriculum to our students? By definition
curriculum is the course of study. Okay so we have a definition, but what does
that really mean? Does every child
receive the same curriculum, is the curriculum providing each student success,
and why are we teaching it? I’ve been
teaching for three years now and have only just began my journey into the world
of curriculum but have some ideas as to what teachers need to think about.
Everything
in life should have a purpose. So what
is the purpose of curriculum you ask? To
me it is to prepare students to function as successful members in society. They are the future and it is our job to
ensure the future has people who can think and act within their best
abilities. We are preparing future
career persons for jobs that may or may not be created already. When I teach an objective I make it a point
to my students when in the “real world” they are going to use it. For example, when teaching measurement in
fourth grade, the students need to be able to decide on the proper tool of
measurement. Whether they are building
something in their home, or creating the next tallest building in the world,
they must be able to do this. Not only
is that important to their success in later life but also the basic components
such as multiplication and division for converting units with the measurements
they make are imperative. What they
learn is vital in their success when finding their careers.
Teaching
every student everything they need to know for the future sounds amazing, but
is it even possible? Each subject area
is loaded with objectives that may or may not even be used in the future which
then poses the dilemma of what is important to teach and what isn’t? Well this depends on whom you ask. To me there should be a balance. Today my students created a timeline of major
Michigan events between 1920 and 1980.
Will knowing this information help them become successful members of
society? I think so. If they know how we got into the Great
Depression then they will know how to alleviate this from happening in the
future. I don’t , however, believe that students need to learn as many
objectives of history that is required of them now. When I taught 6th grade last year,
the students were expected to know too many objectives regarding European
history. There were not enough hours in
the day or days of the year to cover all of it.
Quality is more important than quality and we need to find out what will
help them in the future. Another issue
arises as well when ideally teaching every child the same content. How can we teach students like Donovan? I have not personally had a student with
severe enough disabilities that their IEP goals couldn’t be met. He hadn’t met them in years and was 20 years
old, a senior making very little progress, which depended on the aid and teacher
he had. His mom had a valid point of
teaching him the basic life skills and his principal had a good point that the academia is important. I feel Donovan may not be able to reach the high goals demanded but any progress is good progress in his case. He needs balance. Not just life skills and not only academia. Wouldn’t Donovan benefit more from a good balance of academia and life skills
that could help him in a better way? I think each student is capable of different things and his IEP should be tailored to fit his needs and interests. We have to accept that not every student is going to retain what is
being taught because they have home lives, influences, physical disabilities,
emotional disabilities, and many other obstacles in their way. Individualizing goals can still each each student but not benefit others while others fail the system. This brings me to my next point of what do we
do about it?
Complaining
about the system may make us feel better but it won’t fix the issues at
hand. There are many people who say a
lot but again what is being done? We are
competing with countries like China who defeat us in schools. One idea is a nationwide curriculum. I have a
student who moved from Texas this year.
He is two years behind when it comes to what our students are expected
to learn. One reason is because Texas
has completely different curriculum guidelines than Michigan and the other
reason is because our school has different curriculum guidelines than schools
in the area. A nationwide curriculum
would help this issue. For students like
Donovan and students who may not be of the math mind or literature expertise, I
think the idea of going in between the liberal education concept and the idea
of having schools grouped with students based on their talents and skills would
the very beneficial to our students.
Students need to learn the basics no matter what their career
pathway. We need to decide on what core
concepts must be learned and then those concepts would be taught in K-8. Then in high school students could go to
schools based on their talents and skills.
This would serve the best needs of each child and every child would
still be receiving an excellent education, but it would be based on them and
what they can do. This idea is grand
and I know there are complications but again nothing great in life is ever
easy.
Resources
http://www.nasponline.org/resources/principals/Transition%20Planning%20WEB.pdf
This article written by Edward M Levinson and Edward J. Palmer supports my theory of obtaining students skills and interest and then providing them with vocational trading. This article is geared towards students with disabilities. Not students as severe as Dobovan, although a case could be made that providing him with some skills training on very minimal work could give him enough skills for a job. The article explains that when students with disabilities enter high school, many of them drop out. The other portion is likely to be unemployed after high school and often does not go to college. As of right now colleges do not offer a lot of support for the disabled so students without disabilities are trained in high school for academic success in college and leaving their disabled others behind. The system referred to in the article would help those students have successful futures after high school.
http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/encyclopedia/en/article/114/
This article made a valid point regarding creating curriculum that is relevant to the needs and interest of the students. It coincided with my emphasis on life skills for the severely disabled and did argued that using a curriculum that is more individualized to tailor students needs which agrees with my concept of making the learning meaningful to the students to prepare them for real world scenarios. I also enjoyed that it made a valid point by stating that students with severe disabilities can rise to the occasion when it comes to teaching them academia.
http://coffeetheory.com/2011/12/22/on-the-importance-of-a-liberal-education/
Coffeetheory is a blog where books and other components of intellectual culture are presented. The author is giving his feedback on a book about Liberal Education. I wanted to read proponents of Liberal Education to get a better idea of it's importance to some. This blog helped me have a better understanding of liberal education which is why I do believe teaching trades and grouping based on interest and talent should wait until high school.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat192.shtml
Education world is a wonderful website that offers lessons, professional development, and school topics. I found an article that discussed a teachers methods in teaching students "critically" which means having them question and reflect daily in order to relate content to daily lives. This theory supports my ideas of preparing students for the real world and providing relevance to education.
http://educationnorthwest.org/projects
This site supports my theories of a nationwide curriculum. One of the projects on the site is known as common core standards. These are standards that any state in the United States is welcome to use. It is voluntary but would serve as a great method until all schools are required to follow a national curriculum.
http://coffeetheory.com/2011/12/22/on-the-importance-of-a-liberal-education/
Coffeetheory is a blog where books and other components of intellectual culture are presented. The author is giving his feedback on a book about Liberal Education. I wanted to read proponents of Liberal Education to get a better idea of it's importance to some. This blog helped me have a better understanding of liberal education which is why I do believe teaching trades and grouping based on interest and talent should wait until high school.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat192.shtml
Education world is a wonderful website that offers lessons, professional development, and school topics. I found an article that discussed a teachers methods in teaching students "critically" which means having them question and reflect daily in order to relate content to daily lives. This theory supports my ideas of preparing students for the real world and providing relevance to education.
http://educationnorthwest.org/projects
This site supports my theories of a nationwide curriculum. One of the projects on the site is known as common core standards. These are standards that any state in the United States is welcome to use. It is voluntary but would serve as a great method until all schools are required to follow a national curriculum.
Dear Jessica,
ReplyDeleteWhile reading your blog I noticed that we share some similar views on curriculum- what it is and the purpose of it. I completely agree with you when you state that the purpose of curriculum “is to prepare students to function as successful members in society”. Along those same lines, I feel that in order to prepare our students to function as successful members in society, we need to also recognize the definition of successful. To so many people the definition of educational success is found in a college diploma. It needs to be understood that a college degree is not the only indicator of success and value.
I appreciate when you said “We have to accept that not every student is going to retain what is being taught because they have home lives, influences, physical disabilities, emotional disabilities, and many other obstacles in their way.” But I feel that this view may be a bit small. Sure there are students who have difficult lives, physical disabilities, emotional disabilities etc, but it’s not a question of accepting that they are unable to retain. It is a question of are we as educators going to step up to the challenge and figure out how that student learns best, and to educate them in that way. Some students simply do not learn the same way the rest of classroom does. Does that really make them disabled? Perhaps we need to broaden our skills and capabilities. You did address this issue when discussing IEPs. After reading the assigned readings and your blog I began to think- maybe each and every student should have an IEP? I know this is a HUGE order, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? Developing a curriculum with the student’s best interest at heart is a very daunting task. In my own blog I mentioned that this task may be bigger than we are- but it is necessary. As you noted in your blog- As Americans we are behind in the education game. Clearly we are missing something and doing something wrong.
I also liked what you had to say about a national curriculum. That would seem to level the playing field, but does it generalize education too much? I am an elementary art teacher and I am fortunate enough to follow a curriculum that is very broad and allows me to pick and choose what I would like to teach as long as I follow the curriculum which is mostly based on developing fine and gross motor skills as well as the basic concepts of visual art (color, line, shape etc). I could imagine a nationalized curriculum that has teachers teach basic and necessary concepts, but also affords the teachers the ability to tailor each concept to ideas that are relevant in their community.
On that similar note, I appreciate how you share with your students how a concept can be related to their everyday life. Relevancy is very important and may be a driving force in grasping a student’s interest and ambition to learn.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas!
Sincerely,
Becky Treblin
Thank you for your thoughts. The beauty of this process is that there are always different aspects to each dilemma and questions that can go either way. When I mentioned accepting students not being able to retain everything being taught, I later mentioned grouping them based on interests and skills. This grouping would hopefully help those students because it is reaching them on a different level. I am a firm believer in every child can learn. My goal is that each child reaches his/her personal best. You made a great point about how do we measure success. Many students graduate with degrees in college and are unemployed. We have to teach to the changing world. Thank you for your response.
ReplyDeleteHi Jessica,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post!
You cover a lot of ground and raise a lot of good points here. I can't comment on all of them, but let me raise a few more points for you to think about.
First of all, on the broad points, you are right on base. The curriculum we provide shouldn't worry about raising test scores per se--it should worry about contributing to the growth and success of each individual. Curriculum questions, as you imply, are always values questions--what knowledge is of most worth, for both society and for a particular individual.
I agree with the notion of balance. But to me, that does not mean teaching some liberal arts here, some vocational training there, some moral lessons back over here. Rather, it means we need to keep the entire life of the child in view, and remember that knowledge itself is holistic. Multiple objectives can be reached through a single experience. We can teach kids required knowledge and basic skills, we can teach them to cooperate with others, and we can teach them to solve problems--all through planning activities that really grab kids where they are at, and push them to bring everything they have to a situation. Right now, we settle for less than that, because we tend to compartmentalize everything, and break up curriculum into easily digestible (we hope) bites!
I find very fascinating the tension in your writing between recognizing the needs of individuals in classrooms, and your interest in a national curriculum. Somehow the child and the curriculum need to be brought together, and that will require a degree of flexibility afforded to bright and smart teachers. I would encourage you to keep thinking through that paradox. How do we reconcile standardization and individualization?
I look forward to reading more!
Kyle