My experience with curriculum has ranged from my first classroom out of college, to aiding our RSU's alignment with the learning results, to homeschooling my daughters through Middle School, and now helping guide my current school with curriculum questions. Of all these experience creating a home school curriculum was the most challenging, informative and rewarding endeavor, it made me realize how little I really knew about curriculum development. My past experiences with curriculum had been driven by outside forces, homeschooling allowed me to step out of the box and experiment with new ideas.
Having the freedom to choose content and not have time constraints allowed my children to delve deeply into subject areas they found interesting. I also did not have to worry about state testing which made my job much more enjoyable. To be very honest I did keep a lot of traditional curriculum components mostly out of concern that my daughters might not be prepared for a traditional High School and I did not want to be a home school teacher flunky.
I am very excited to learn about the new trends in curriculum as my school does not have a set documented curriculum. I know that for public school teacher this must sound crazy, however, in the prep school world it is common. Teachers have a lot of freedom and because they do not have to teach to common core or other tests they can do as they please, to a degree. Our school is defining itself though strategic planning so this is the perfect time for us to implement a new and innovative curriculum into our school.
You have the perfect curriculum background. Home shchooling where you were free to experiment without a lot of mandates or direction by someone else. I'm guessing but I bet that a guiding question for the curriculum you did select was something like..."what should my daughters know and be able to do?" Am I right.
ReplyDeleteI think a piece on "What I learned about curriculum development by home schooling my daughters" would be a great article...or maybe use in lieu of one of our assignments (Persistent Curr Issues, maybe).