A Table of Contents is not a Curriculum In 1983, I was the new Social Studies, English and French teacher in a small Christian school in Chatham Ontario, which seemed like a universe away from my experiences in Edmonton at the big public schools and the big public university. It was August 1, my first year of teaching, and my principal was asking me to submit “year plans” for every course I was supposed to teach in the coming year by the end of August. Yikes? Where to start? How do you know what you don’t know - if you don’t know what you don’t know? Then he left for vacation. I was left to figure out what a year plan was and how I would create one for the 12 different courses I would be teaching that year. So I spent the next couple of weeks haunting that little rural school. Every other teacher was gone; it was just me, the humidity of Southern Ontario and the thousands of flies that came into the school from the adjoining corn fields and buzzed around my sweating pate. I dolefully went through the filing cabinets in my classroom, I found some archaic readers and texts in the book room and eventually I cobbled together a year plan for each of my courses. It wasn’t easy for a 21 year old kid on his first teaching assignment. But, I made them: each year plan carefully laid out the units, objectives and time allotments for the ten coming months, often based upon units or chapters I found in some of the texts that looked promising. Then he came back. After I submitted my plans and the principal dutifully went through them all making copious comments with his red pen, he handed the plans back to me and asked why I hadn’t looked at the year plans from the teachers before me, or why I hadn’t referenced the provincial curricula for the various courses I was about to teach. Apparently all those documents were right there in his office, in the filing cabinet next to his desk. It would have saved me a lot of time and re-writing. When I shared that I thought his office was definitely “out of bounds” and that he never once said that I might find the materials in there, he just took another drag on his pipe (you could smoke in the schools at that time), shrugged his shoulders and said: “Oh well then - that explains it!” And then I started rewriting my year plans. I learned a couple of valuable lessons that summer. One lesson was that you need to be a self-advocate and ask as many questions as you can, especially when you’ve been given the task of roughing out a plan for the year. The second lesson was a little more complex; I learned about the complex relationship between curricula, year plans (syllabi), resources and textbooks, and the freedom to teach what I thought might be important. So why the story, Jeff? At this moment, all around the college, NorQuest instructors are learning the very same lessons. I know that a number of departments are going through a major curricular review and that certain instructors have been given the responsibility of making a “curriculum map” for particular courses. It’s not an easy task. It may be tempting to simply find a suitable text, copy down a few chapter headings and extrapolate some key learning outcomes and figure all is OK, but the table of contents in a textbook is not a curriculum map. Now this is not a small topic, and certainly not something that can be sufficiently addressed through a Monday Morning Musings, but here are a few things to keep in mind when looking at the big picture of curriculum planning:
So where does academic freedom fit it? Are we teaching robots? No, we have been given a great deal of liberty, provided we meet the learning outcomes, program and government requirements, and accreditation requirements. (See the NQ Academic Freedom Policy) You also need to consider the program and college established curriculum, assessments, processes, and practices Each department may have specific requirements and concerns that can influence or impact your plans. (See again, the NQ Academic Freedom Policy). Think of curriculum maps like a road map; you know that you need to visit Red Deer, Calgary, Cardston, Brooks, Drumheller, Jasper and Banff. There is nothing that says how you get there (bus, plane, moped, skateboard, Harley, or minivan), or when (zip out and come back, plan a round trip, cluster certain municipalities according to festivals, plan according to COVID release times?), or even what else you may look at along the way. However, you do need to visit these specific places within a certain amount of time (by the end of term) and there are things you need to see/explore/do/appreciate in each of the places. In the end though, your students will eventually be assessed on their knowledge, navigational skills and cultural appreciation of Alberta, and hopefully your plans (route), activities and assessments will have helped to prepare them for this. If you want to discuss this further or if you have any specific questions, don’t hesitate to contact one of curriculum consultants or faculty developers at the college. Most of us love talking about this stuff (yes, we are nerds!), and see it as important, challenging and kind of fun.
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AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
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