Final post

Take this opportunity to summarize what you consider are the key ideas in Chapters 1-4 (see above) and how they could be applied to your classroom, school, or district. (And remember, HH Jacobs' ideas about small steps! You don't have to change the system all at once.)

I think some of the key ideas in the first four chapters of the Curriculum readings occur in the first chapter.  I touched on some of this in my previous blog post.  Heidi Jacobs makes a point to bring attention to the fact that students learning isn't up to the current times.  We are in the 21-century, and she says that some of the practices today were used in the 19th-century.  That's not where we want to be.  She points out that schooling should be changed as well, because being so far behind in learning puts our students at a disadvantage.  Schooling for young children was often business based.  It wasn't built for young children at all.  Jacobs says that "New essential curriculum will need revision--actual replacements of dated content, skills, and assessments with more timely choices."  I believe these are some of her ideas of small steps towards helping the curriculum.

She talks about different ways of "updating," the curriculum.  One small step she suggested was updating the resources you have in the classroom.  For example, we are now using computers instead of typewriters.  A smart and simple way of figuring out how to use these resources is to start with the teachers.  She states, "Rather than introducing the wonders and possibilities of hardware and software, it might be more effective if we started with what teachers are familiar with..."  We want these new resources for education, but we first must make sure that educators know how to use them.

These are the couple of things that really stood out to me in the first few chapters.  As we discussed this over the semester, we all seem to acknowledge that we need to update the curriculum.  The problem for me is that I'm not sure how to do it easily.  It will take a lot of work.  It's not only the students who need to put in the work, but now it's the teachers who need to be taught how to use these resources.