38 hours

Curriculum Design and Assessment

 

This class was all about creating and assessing my own lesson plans and units. During this class and my Secondary Methods class, I created and implemented a Bill of Rights unit which included several lesson plans. In the creation process, I received feedback from my professor which mostly focused on fully explaining concepts and making sure my work is differentiated for various learners. I found myself wanting to focus on lectures and projects, but I had to remind myself that this is not the only way to teach students. I hope to broaden my ability to use various methods of curriculum creation  to keep myself from falling into the lecture-dominant type of teaching.

 

15 hours

Curriculum Design and Assessment

 

As a human ecologist, I think interdisciplinary methods create more meaningful and holistic lesson plans. I would love to work in a humanities classroom with an English teacher and combine writing and history/current events together. Therefore, in addition to my Bill of Rights unit, I also collaboratively created a unit with an outdoor educator. The unit we created combined group dynamics, place-based education, history, and science all together.  I want to include more outdoor education in my classroom, this is why I was excited to do a collaborative unit with an outdoor education focused peer. It was not implemented into a classroom, however, the creation process was such a learning process that I had to put it in here. Working collaboratively turned out to be harder than I had expected. We agreed that meeting with each student or group was important, but didn't necessarily agree with how the unit would play out. The result of this was not interdisciplinary because the two topics did not relate or overlap at all. 

 

50+ hours

Academic Affairs Committee. 

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As the College of the Atlantic website states, "The Academic Affairs Committee (AAC) is charged with overseeing all aspects of the academic program. This includes approving all new courses, new faculty positions, arranging for classes to be taught by visiting faculty, major changes in academic direction and programs, and academic policies and procedures." Being on this committee has helped me as a teacher because I have been able to see the process in which curriculum is altered or maintained, as well as the administrative aspect of adding or changing a class. This may have been on a college level but being able to identify the academic value, value to the student, and what is and is not a good class is extremely valuable to me as a teacher. Being able to evaluate other teachers' ideas has made me more critical of my own class proposal ideas and lessons. Lastly, being able to see the administrative side of the curriculum will prepare me for these same things in the future when I am the one proposing ideas. Knowing the process helps planning become much easier.