With all the discussion of curriculum widening my connotation and denotation of curriculum I have been looking around me for what else could include curriculum. The example I have is watching my nieces make model airplanes. First of all, their dad told them to wait for help as the wood was fragile, my nieces are 4 and 7. Both girls opened their airplanes and proclaimed “this piece is broken”. The plan was to take the pieces apart carefully and assemble the parts to create the airplane without any broken pieces. The lived experience included a lot of tape and almost every piece becoming broken. Some were so broken that us adults weren’t sure how to tape it back together right away. However, with time the airplanes were assembled and ready to fly.
“IMG_3071” by joelogon is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
This feels strangely familiar to our teaching situation once Covid 19 hit and we were not able to meet in school with our students. It was as if our communication was broken, their at school support system was broken, the routine was broken. On top of trying to help students manage in this new environment (related to mental health), we were trying desperately to tape back together our communication lines with students and parents, the support structure for students, and the routine of school. Our plan of teaching concepts and content was less of the focus compared to practicing these new tools with students and helping them learn new ways to communicate with each other, submit assignments and get feedback or support.
This experience reminded me that curriculum is not static, it can change because curriculum is experiential. Provinces have taken on the term curriculum to refer to their learning outcome documents but in reality curriculum is so much more than a document. This makes me more eager to alter my teaching towards competencies rather than content. As content feels like a rigid framework whereas competencies are more fluid and experiential, in my opinion.
I’m looking forward to starting with a plan of no broken pieces and then figuring out the tape that’s needed when my plan intersects with lived experience.
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