My Curriculum Situation in 150 Words
This semester I am participating in an Introduction to Curriculum class through Brandon University as part of my Masters program requirements. While there is a traditional class held in-person on campus I am one of 15+ students who tunes in via teleconference and online modules due to distance. Our course assignment is a large project that is slowly created piece-by-piece through the semester and is a collaborative work between two or three people. I am very fortunate to have a good friend in the course who lives only 20mins away and is also on Mat leave right now as well! So… of course, I asked to work with her and one of her colleagues who is also taking the course with us.
Our first assignment asks us to analyze our own Curriculum Situations in no more than 150 words. After looking at the examples provided by the professor I feel that this analysis should include:
– What I am teaching (or would be teaching if I wasn’t on leave right now)
– What type of interaction I have with my students
– What type of learning opportunities I provide for my students
– Where I am teaching
– What demographic(s) I am teaching
With that being said, my Curriculum Situation is as follows:
My curriculum situation is
working in a small rural farming community teaching middle- and high-school
level science and humanities courses. This community has a strong Catholic
influence and is situated in close proximity to an Anishinaabe/Ojibwe First
Nations Reserve. While both of these cultural situations present themselves
among the students in our school, with an approximate 50-50 split in all
classes, there is often a noticeable cultural tension between students of
different backgrounds. My interaction with my students occurs in a face-to-face
classroom situation 90% of the time while the remaining 10% is maintained
through individualized mail-out programs created for students with attendance
concerns. I try to provide both experiential and inquiry-based learning
opportunities that see “teacher as mentor”. I strongly believe in the
incorporation of technology that expands learning beyond the classroom walls,
opens up opportunities that aren’t possible with traditional tools, and allows
students to curate and create.
working in a small rural farming community teaching middle- and high-school
level science and humanities courses. This community has a strong Catholic
influence and is situated in close proximity to an Anishinaabe/Ojibwe First
Nations Reserve. While both of these cultural situations present themselves
among the students in our school, with an approximate 50-50 split in all
classes, there is often a noticeable cultural tension between students of
different backgrounds. My interaction with my students occurs in a face-to-face
classroom situation 90% of the time while the remaining 10% is maintained
through individualized mail-out programs created for students with attendance
concerns. I try to provide both experiential and inquiry-based learning
opportunities that see “teacher as mentor”. I strongly believe in the
incorporation of technology that expands learning beyond the classroom walls,
opens up opportunities that aren’t possible with traditional tools, and allows
students to curate and create.
_______________________________________________
Remember, all assignments are collaborative so I am now uploading this to Google Docs to share with my two partners. Our next step will be to take all three of our Curriculum Situations and create one paragraph that appropriately represents all three of us at the same time.
Wish us luck!
Good luck ! haha It will be interesting to see how you piece them together since your 'curriculum situation' is shaped by context. A fun exercise to pick out those similarities. I like how this assignment is collaborative too – of course, you do go to BU! BTW, I came across a very interesting online journal that explores technology and education from a critical perspective – take a look ( hybridpedagogy.com/). Finally – I do hope you are thinking thesis route?
Thanks Mr. Nantais! We are just working on piecing each of our curriculum situations together right now; the similarities are easy to address but it is difficult to determine how to work in the differences between each of our contexts. I will post our final product tomorrow.
I have been exploring that journal slowly (I tend to get distracted lately haha). I really like how many of the articles (that I've read anyways) challenge a lot of the "fad" tech ideas that are being thrown around online; I like to see a different perspective. Thanks for sharing it!
P.S. still undecided about the thesis route