Curriculum Continued...

I know we never really ended our discussion about curriculum and student empowerment today, so I wanted to touch on it a bit more, especially for James' sake.

James, I know you were super shocked by my description of my teaching experience in the private school in NYC where the kids called teachers by their first name, and where curriculum was a very student-centered ideal (meaning the students take part in creating and defining their own curriculum). I totally know what you mean that this would not work in your school system. Having students call you by your first name probably would not go over well with the school board and the powers that be.

However, you can try to take different approaches to the curriculum, or even just setting the rules and tone of your classroom differently in the beginning of the year. I think the reason why the whole setup worked in this private school was because of the tone set at the beginning of the year. For instance, instead of giving your kids a catalogue of rules for the year, come up with a contract among all of you, and what you would like to see happen and what you wouldn't like to see... kids are smart, they will tell you that loud and profane language shouldn't be used. If you don't hear what you are looking for, suggest it and see how they feel about it. I think if the students feel more empowered about learning, they will truly committ to the learning experience and take charge. From this point you could still follow your strict music curriculum in MANY different ways, but tweak it a bit, as the kids might even propose to do certain things and projects revolving around the curriculum topics. If something like this works, you're happy, the kids are happy, the parents and the school board are happy. Now I don't know everyone's school dynamic and such, and that this is very idealistic in a society that does not think this way, but it just some ways to think outside that pesky box called curriculum that many of us do not agree with but teach anyway because we have people breathing down our backs.

Okay, so now that I've said that, I hope that makes more sense about the whole situation I was in teaching. This entry was not totally dedicated to James, but I just used his name because he was the one who raised the questions about it in class. :-)