Challenging Curriculum

AMLE says:

Curriculum is challenging, exploratory, integrative, and relevant.
Curriculum embraces every planned aspect of a school's educational program. An effective middle level curriculum is distinguished by learning activities that appeal to young adolescents, is exploratory and challenging, and incorporates student-generated questions and concerns.

It means:

Curriculum, at best, embodies every planned aspect of a school's educational program, from formal classes to guidance, clubs, interest groups, music and drama productions, student government, sports, and service learning experiences.  Activities appeal to young adolescents and let them generate and answer questions important to them.  Curriculum should be planned into longer units, rather than day-to-day lessons.  Essential questions and complex tasks are thoughtfully integrated into backwards design (skills, assessment, activities).  Students are exposed to "hidden curriculum" when they learn indirectly from interpersonal relationships and the school environment.  Educators should strive to integrate both the explicit and hidden curricula, ensuring interactions are positive and that students are valued and treated equitably.  This can be difficult, especially as state/federal guidelines such as CCLS, can butt heads with developmentally appropriate educational experiences.

Example:

Debra Pinto of Hopkinton Middle School (article here) won a Physical Education Teacher of the Year award for the middle school age group in Massachusetts by way of the MA Association for Health Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.  She created a unit on 5K running that focuses not just on physical fitness, but also on wellness and knowledge of the body.  As Ms. Pinto said, “There’s the art behind teaching physical education, but there’s that science behind teaching physical education, too.”  She notes that movement has its place amidst high-stakes learning.  The unit is for eighth grade students, who prepare for a 5K.  They learn to take their heart rate, to assess cardiovascular fitness, and then follow a training plan.  Students then continue to record data, re-assess, and self-evaluate why their cardiovascular fitness improved and how they feel.  Ms. Pinto also pursues fitness outside of the classroom, in the form of an Ironman triathlon and triathlon coaching, so that she practices what she teaches and can infuse these healthy activities into her work.  The assistant principal said that Ms. Pinto is somebody the students gravitate to.

Why it works: 

I love this example, because physical education is not usually thought of when planning curriculum.  It is clear that Ms. Pinto thought of a unit, rather than day-to-day plans, and thoughtfully used backwards design to determine a goal (training for a 5K/improving cardiovascular fitness), assessments, and activities.  Students could begin from where they were at, work towards a common goal, and self-reflect at the end.  Although there was no mention of student-generated questions, the article did mention that students answered upon completion of the training plan why their cardiovascular fitness improved and how they felt.  So, they answered questions and self-assessed.  This, to me, is a stellar example of integrating backwards design and educational theory into a realm that is not usually included in the academic sphere.  The data-driven unit is probably aligned with CCLS and academics.  Ms. Pinto obviously succeeded at integrating the explicit curriculum with the hidden, and based on the comments of her assistant principal, her interactions with students are positive.  I think by nature of the unit, they are valued, and by nature of the baseline data taken, that they are treated equitably: working toward a common goal but with differentiated content (e.g. different levels of cardiovascular fitness).

My classroom/school:

This past summer, the high school unit's theme was the Summer Olympics: Working Together and Going for the Gold.  This was great, in that it allowed for plenty of collaboration between classroom and cluster teachers, specifically the physical education teachers, as well as for a lot of flexibility.  We chose and developed activities that allowed students to target not only physical needs, such as getting energy out for one student or hand-eye coordination and balance for another, but also social skills.  This is especially important with my class, as skills relevant to peer-to-peer interactions are very emergent.  These desired skills became a six week-long unit spanning the summer, culminating in a site-wide Summer Olympics.  In this way, students were exposed to both hidden and planned curricula, positive interactions, teamwork and cooperation, and were valued and treated equitably.  In the future, I will further seek opportunities for collaboration with cluster teachers, to provide students with opportunities to gain functional skills or address physical needs, while still hitting CCLS.  Within my classroom, I will continue exposing my students to student-driven learning.  We have tried methods, such as KWL charts, to prompt students to generate questions, but with very limited success.  In the coming year, I will work to decrease the levels of support my students receive and proactively seek help from other teachers through observation and collaboration, as well as from curriculum support.