Sunday, August 19, 2012

Challenging Curriculum

Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

It's not boring. . . 



"I find that my students are not engaged enough or care about what I teach" said one of my colleagues one day.  This is an issue that happens quite often when our students do not have a stake or interest in what are teaching.  The curriculum in its basic form can be very boring to a mind that does not connect what they are learning to their own experiences or prior knowledge.

A "Challenging Curriculum" means to me that our students are engaged enough to understand how it fits in creating some connections to real life application.  It means it that students get to apply what they learn and have the opportunity acquire knowledge that they might not otherwise get from a standard curriculum.

Ethnic diversity has long been a missing piece of the curriculum in our educational system.  Our country has changed dramatically since the 1950s and some curriculum still have not caught up to the changes that reflect the diversity of our population's country of today.

In order for students to participate in learning and take control of their own learning, they need to be able to connect the dots and sometimes that does not happen for students of a very diverse public school system.

Differentiation and high expectations are other pieces of the puzzle for a challenging curriculum that makes it all fit together.  Not only must we ensure that our students can connect to the material, but also that they must be able to be successful in accomplishing the tasks set before then.  We also need to ensure that we create a higher bar for them to reach, but not so high that we set them up for failure.  These are the things that make effective challenging curriculum.

One school, Quest Early College High School in Humble, Texas is doing just that.  They are the winner of the 2011 Vision in Action and have implemented a challenging curriculum with the strategy of "Learning by Doing".  Their students earn college credit in high school by participating in service learning, internships and social action.  This gives their students the knowledge and skills to be competitive in the real world, but also take control of their own learning. Not only do they acquire these new skills, but they get to apply them in real life application and through the social action content, diversity is balanced within the curriculum. Their school curriculum not only is challenging, it is career centric and considered a democratic education.

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