In the article, “Curriculum Design and Materials Development,” Murcia-Celce did a nice job defining curriculum and showcasing it's depth and importance to not only teachers and students, but also to other stakeholders such as text writers, teacher educators, teaching aid developers, etc. Before reading this article, I already had an idea what curriculum was. I previously knew what a syllabus was as well. However, my mind was stretched as I continued to read and know I am sitting in awe, wonderment, and confusion. How can anyone create a curriculum that is suitable for one diverse class, let alone an entire school or program? There are so many factors to account for. Plus, the general field of curriculum development is constantly changing, so how do we know if the curriculum that teachers are currently using is up to date? I realize that my questions are nothing to really be concerned with, but I cannot help wondering. It seems like such a daunting and time consuming task to develop curricula that by the time everything is set in stone, it is out of date because new research had been done during the development. The never-ending process overwhelms me. Thankfully I will not have a huge role in the process.
I will however have to implement it into my classroom. Part of that implementation includes finding a textbook that correlates with the curriculum that my school has selected and then incorporating it into my classroom. From my experience, most schools already have textbooks designated for each course. In that case I would just have to familiarize myself with the ENTIRE text-front to back (according to Patricia Byrd) and figure out how I can use its content, exercises, quizzes, etc. in class and find other texts to improve/add to the course. If I actually have to or get to choose the textbook for the classes I will teach (which are normally chosen by a board), first I will probably freak out and become stressed. Then I would follow the guidelines for analyzing a text provided in the article, "Textbooks: Evaluation for Selection and Analysis for Implementation."
I think we are all getting nervous about creating curriculum for our classrooms. It is something that sets the tone for the whole class. I think creating a syllabus should go hadnd in hand with creating the curriculum. That way, you will have an idea of how much you can accomplish in how much time. It will be interesting to see how we do after only practicing lesson plans for our classes.
ReplyDelete