Curriculum in action
Scenario 1
Introductory statement
The school has designed the curriculum in such a way that it can meet the mission and the vision of the school. The design of the curriculum forms the basis for the determination of whether the students will achieve success, in their endeavor or not. This arises because the curriculum contains the entire course and the contents offered to the students (Parkay et al, 2010). Proper designation of the curriculum will mean that the students will be receiving the required type of orientation required in the education field. As a Building Level Curriculum Specialist, I considered the success of the students in mind before the process. Consequently, the curriculum incorporates elements of the student’s needs in being success. Your children should expect a change in their behaviors, in the school since the content of course also differs to that they experienced in their initial schools or colleges. This is the result of changing learning experience as the students advance above, that is, from high school to college to their career.
Expected experience in high school
Your child should except some change in their curriculum with the change arising from the change in the level of education. A transition to high school will especially involve many changes since the child has just graduated from the primary schools where they used to rely more on the teachers. In high school, students should expect little from the teachers because of the need to prepare students for their college life. It is in high school where the students will learn to read to grab insight on their own. This is indifferent to the primary school system where the teacher used to do everything for their students leaving them with only the homework as part of their practices. High school forms a transition between the primary school and the colleges thereby it is from this point that the students will have to learn to be dependable (Parkay et al, 2010). Here, in high school, your children should only expect the teachers to highlight about the topic of study while leaving them with most part of the work. This is a step towards allowing students to prepare for their life in the future, which will need them to analyze things on their own. The school will also subject the students into establishing group works because it is the only way to achieve a good learning experience in high schools. The colleagues in the groups will act like their teachers, whom they used to see in primary school. They will learn to nurture each other towards achieving success in their education. This serves as a process of preparing students to adopt leadership skills, which will help them in their future careers.
Expected experience in colleges
The students should also prepare themselves adequately for experience in the colleges. The curriculum in these colleges may seem to be more complicated because it acts as the last step towards the career experience. The students would have to prepare for a curriculum, which they would be more of independent from their lecturers. The college curriculum incorporates vigorous cooperate learning work experience, civic activities and independent study (Parkay et al, 2010). The dominant content of the course in high school is the independent study. the students would need to do a wider research on a given topic given by the teacher. This is different to high school curriculum where the students would only need to do slight research since the topics are narrower. The topics taught in here forms the basis for study in the colleges whereby the student would have to read more about the topic from different articles, books and journals. The students would need to do extensive research on their own with the lecturers providing direction on where to do the research. Without the independent study, the student should expect failure because the lecturers do not always give direction on where they would set the exams. Independent study will involve the students seeking for the different literatures in the school library or even in the internet. Further, cooperate learning also forms a significant element in the college curriculum because of the workload that the students have (Parkay et al, 2010). The corporate learning involves studying the given topics, by the lecturer, in groups. This will help the students in reducing the load of work since each member of the group will be contributing during the group learning process. The students would also need to join the groups because they help in reducing time of study if they were to do this on their own. Another element of the college curriculum involves integrating work experience during the learning process. The students should be ready for a variety of field trips, which they would use in developing their work experience. The field trips to the various institutions, related to their careers would help them in gaining insight of the expectation in their future careers.
Expected experience in career
The student should also expect a slight change in the learning experience associated to their careers. The slight different between the colleges and careers occur because the students would be in a free world where they should be controlling their own actions. Some of the learning experience that students should expect includes work ethics, responsibility and corporate learning process. The work ethics involves those codes of behaviors that are accepted in the work environment. In order to incorporate the work ethics, the student should be ready to possess various principles like respect for one another, good relation to the clients of the institution and respect for their employees. The high productivity of the students, in their careers, will depend on these factors. The factors also form the basis for the promotion of the students. The students should also be ready to be responsible for their action since there is no individual who will care on their production rate. Low production rate will lead to failure and the subsequent loss of confidence by the employers. In order to ensure that they complement on their production rate, the students should also involve in the group process, which will serve in reducing their workloads.
Scenario 2
I assembled a group of teacher leaders to facilitate the process of developing a new curriculum (grade level and subject of your choice). The following is my narrative outline of your proposed, initial training with the team of teachers. The outline included setting up standards, facilitating teaching and learning for all students, inclusion of educational technology in the new curriculum, and including a variety of authentic assessment practices in the new curriculum.
Setting up standards
We would have to consider standards in developing the curriculum because it serves significantly in ensuring that all students have the chance of being successful in their endeavors. The setting up of standards will involve the determination of the different capabilities of the students. We would have to incorporate the capabilities of each of the teachers in order to help in determining their standards in delivering the required to the students. This will help in ensuring that the teachers are able to serve within their own work standards, otherwise higher or lower standards will lead to sluggishness of failure of the teachers in delivering to their students (Parkay et al, 2010). The setting up standards will help in keeping the teachers within their scope of their work thereby ensuring that they all contribute towards the achievement of the school mission. The standard also makes the teachers increase in their production because of the feeling that there would be an assessment at the end of every semester. Consequently, the teachers will work within all their efforts to ensure that they have achieved the set standards. Further, the standards will help in determining the teachers who are sluggish in their job. The standards would help in forming the basis for awarding the teachers as it provides an easy and fair way of determining the productivity of the teachers.
Facilitating teaching and learning for all students
The achievement of the schools’ mission and vision always involves the students as the main participants. The success of the school have a direct proportinality to the success of the students; consequently, the curriculum will incorporate the proper ways of ensuring that each of the students has access to the learning process. This will involve ensuring that teaching and learning is available for all students. The teachers would have to establish a close relationship with their students ensuring that the latter access everything they may need for their learning process. The teacher-to-student relationship helps in providing students with the chance to seek assistance wherever they do not understand (Parkay et al, 2010). Further, the teachers would need to involve the students during the learning process ensuring that they contribute towards the topic of study. This will help in ensuring that the teachers do not leave any student behind in their teaching process.
Inclusion of educational technology in the new curriculum
The changing technology has enhanced the quality of every process in the world including making efficient the educational process. Consequently, the curriculum would have to introduce educational technology to ensure that the learning process has been made efficient. The inclusion of educational technology would involve the use of databases in storing various data about the students. Some of the important data stored in the databases include the students’ name, course, performance per subject and their performance in the co-curricular activities. This will facilitate the efficient retrieval of this information wherever there is a need for their use. The databases also act as safe storage for this information thereby avoiding the loss. These data are crucial for the students’ life in the school since they are the determinants of their presence and performance in the school (Parkay et al, 2010). Further, the use of the databases will also helps towards ensuring that there is a reduction in time wastage when storing the information in the office files.
Including a variety authentic assessment practices in the curriculum
There will be a need to include assessment practices in the curriculum to ensure that every student is doing his or her part in achieving the laid down goals. The assessment activities are useful in determining the efforts put by the students thereby helping teachers to apply effective actions. The teachers would use the results from the assessments to help in modeling the students towards achieving success. Some of the assessment practices would involve administration of assignment at the end of every class; administration of CATs (continuous assessment test) at the end of every unit; administration of end term exams (Parkay et al, 2010). This would serve in determining the efforts of the students.
Reference
Parkay, F. W., Anctil, E. J., & Hass, G. (2010). Curriculum leadership: Readings for developing quality educational programs. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
