After taking care of family needs and students needs, I finally finished reading the articles and attempted to decipher the language and develop answers to the questions related to "task one". While reading I continued asking myself, "What is curriculum?" and "Why is curriculum important?", and kept returning to my experience. I consider curriculum is my teaching guide to developing the essential questions and objectives in the subject. In Wraga's article, "subject centered curriculum" is what high school curriculum tends to be designed to follow, as a high school special education teacher we focus on the core content and program of studies for content area and teach to high stakes tests. It has been my experience that subject centered curriculum is not conducive to student learning and application across all subject areas.
In the article, The Futility of Trying to Teach Everything of Importance." the modern curriculum seems to be ideal for students that are struggling. Modern curriculum gives teacher the flexiblibity and creativity to develop lessons based on core content that is essential to students futures, as we all know that each person learns differently and at various paces.
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Chandra,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I really think that teachers need to be part of creating curriculum. The three Voyager teachers, including myself, at my school are going to design an English Class for students that struggle with reading and cannot do Voyager anymore. I know that we will have to make sure our curriculum is O.K. by staff developers but we are doing this ourselve and are excited about it.
I agree with you Mindy that teachers should be a part of the process. This is so important as it gives us ownership. Just like we know that when students have buy in or ownership into their own learning they are more motivated. That is the same with us- I think we often forget what made learning important to us as actual learners. Chandra- you started to say that as you read you reflected on your own experiences as a high school special educator but then you did not elaborate upon what these experiences are? Do you feel that you have ownership into the curriculum conversations at your school? As a special educator do you feel included? How is your input considered in curriculum design?
ReplyDeleteChandra-
ReplyDeleteTo also follow up with Dr. Clarke- After talking more highly of the modern curriculum, Would you say that you adhere more towards this theory of curriculum design and teaching? Or would there be another that would better describe the ways in which you teach?
Your comment about the curriculum allowing for teachers to be creative and flexible, is how it should be, but is it always that way? When I taught 4th grade, I found that I would allow the natural flow of class guide my instruction, and much learning occured, however, when I reviewed what was taught, I found that certain key elements needed to be taught that I completely missed! I think teachers are afraid to go away from the traditional methods that come with traditional curriculum that a modern approach cannot truly happen. As teachers, I hope we can one day embrace this more modern approach. As a regular classroom teacher, I often get most of my most creative and flexible ideas from wonderful special education teachers like you, thanks for helping to boost our curriculums!!
ReplyDeleteAnswering questions:
ReplyDeleteDo I feel that you have ownership into the curriculum conversations at your school? As a special educator do you feel included?
I do set in the meetings and give my opinion regarding Special education, however, I do not feel ownership toward the curriculum. During recent meetings regarding common planning, it was explained that all teachers of a specific content area are expected to be teaching the exact same information at the exact same time, this includes special education. So picture this, (Mrs. H and Mrs. R are Geometry teachers and Mrs. W. is a special education Geometry teacher~all 3 are to on Tuesday all 3 teachers are to be teaching Surface Area and Volume of Cylinders, Wed. surface area and volume of spheres, Th. all three are to give the exact same quiz)
There are issues with this concept.
~No teacher has ownership
~Teacher do not have individuality
~What happens if reteaching is needed
~What is the purpose of the special education resource class, because if the students are on the "same page" then they should not be in resource class.
After discussing these issues/concerns with a curriculum coach and district employees it was agreed that I could be behind the regular education teachers. This gives me the flexiblity to teach curriculum and reteach when needed.
It is my understanding that Special Education teachers are not the experts in the core content area (Geometry, Algebra II, English, etc. However, they are expects of understanding students learning disabilities and developing accommodations for students to become successful.