Task 2: Enacting Curriculum

What is the purpose of curriculum and what role do we have as teachers in this purpose?

Curriculum is a blueprint to what you want your students to know but more and importnantly what teachers need to know, present, and understanding so all students can become learners beyond high school. With this blueprint, it is up to all teachers to break down the learning process into a blend learning strategies to meet all students needs.

The most imporant aspect to teaching is keep your teaching strageties fresh and relevent to our students. Also as teachers get older continue to learn new strageties to add to your teaching tool box. As a teacher of students with disabilities, this is exetremely important for me. I have students with a lot of different disabilities and learning styles. I have to have a blended teaching style to each all my students.

How much control do we have in the designing of curriculum? How much should we have?

Within our school, our priniple and curriculum commitee determine classes which make up our curriculum. What is interesting and I complete agree with is how we go about the lay out of the curriculum and the plan of implementation. After the curriculum is developed, we meet as departments to decide what and how the classes are going to be taught, for example, Alegbra 1 teaches develop their sylabi which should look exactly the same. The materials should be taught at the same pace and examines look similar, according to KY teaching standards. Tests are developed in the same format of our CATS tests, so our students are use to seeing this type of testing materials. All departments go though the same process. The control we have over the implementation is extremely important to our school. I believe this holds all teachers and students accountable for our learning environment.

What does the curriculum that you have look like in your classroom in a day to day environment?

This particular question is exetremly hard for me to answer because within my classroom I wear a lot of different hats. As a teacher of students with multi-disablilites, my job is to develop life skills so they can go out and be production citizens within our society. All of my students are on a non-diploma track, lack of better wording, their classes and grades don't matter. With that being said, all my students are main streamed into the regular classes but my ultimate goal is for them to receive the knowledge and skills from every possible source. My class is structure in 3 phrases; the reteaching of regular classes, fuctional courses (math/reading at a basic level), and community base instructional (practical living skills, job coaching, social skills training). At any giving day, my students can be in regular classes, working on basuc living skills, or out in the community learning social and job skills. It's my job to figure out the basic instructions, so my students can learn, retain, and apply inforamtion. Hopefully this will allow them to be production life-long workers within our communities.