Curriculum: A Deliverable or A Set of Challenges?

Summer is briskly passing by. July is coming to an end. Soon administrators and teachers will be returning from their various adventures to begin the new school year. As we prepare for the August rituals of administrative leadership training, new teachers' week, and institute days, we look at the time available and ponder what learning opportunities can fit within. 

One would think in year four, their would be a formula for this. Here is what we do for this group and this is what we do for that group. Call this person to work with this team and that person to work with that team. However, each year our leaders are different. They may be the same individuals, but as we continue the journey, they change, they grow, their needs and their desires change. As such, providing the same learning opportunities in year one as year four would be insufficient. Our new teachers are different each year. Yes, they teach different subjects, but also hopefully we are hiring them with different skills and attributes to help our district move forward. Finally, our teaching staff changes. Each year our baseline understanding of the roles, obligations, and goals of the organization is hopefully more advanced than the year prior. Simply pulling out the same formulaic opening learning experience would be insufficient to meet the needs of our team.

If it's true that the adults in our organization change and advance both individually and collectively within the organization, is it possible that the students do also? Could it be that the 8th grade class of 2016 has significantly different needs than the 8th grade class of 2012 had or the 8th grade class of 2020 will have? Our 8th grade class of 2016 will be the first to have spent the last 3 years with a 1:1 device. Their resource utilization and problem solving capacity is very different than prior generations. How we support them, challenge them, and engage them is hopefully more personalized and more challenging than that of prior years. Hopefully as the learn with us, they also will help us grow.

Once we understand that students and adults are different each year, it requires us to question the very essence of our curriculum. Is our curriculum, whether it is staff professional development or student learning experiences, something we deliver to the learner or challenges that we engage the learner with to help them move forward? Curriculum that is delivered, a geometry course, local history topic, CRISS training, implies that all individuals will benefit from learning the same set of skills and concepts. Curriculum that is challenges such as investigate this phenomena, design a solution to this problem, research this concept, develop a lesson to meet the needs of these students, implies that our teams need tools but are independent and collaborative problem solvers. Curriculum that is delivered can be consistently applied and measured. Curriculum that is challenges promotes growth and cultivates capacity. In a delivered curriculum, the learner may or may not leave with new skills and capacities. In a challenge curriculum the learner builds upon skills they have, learning new capacities based on the challenges before them.

Is it time we rethink what we mean by curriculum? As we approach this year, whether we are working with adults or children, should our baseline skills and competencies be at the front of mind? Or should we be looking to develop more, should we be looking to help each member of our organization reach to infinity and beyond?

Not Always Does the Teacher Want To Train the Student