Curriculum…any meaningful outcomes in the post-secondary world of learning?

      The curriculum in Ontario Education today has a wide variety of requirements. There’s the overall outcomes, expectations and standards that are required to be met, the different categories of knowledge that contains the various subject matter and education content, skills that teachers need to remember to incorporate throughout the curriculum, along with introducing new skills, and finally the integrative part of curriculum which helps students interconnect their discoveries and learning in school society to the experiences they will have within the global society. This is a lot for teachers to consider before they even start looking into how they are going to teach all this material!

      As mentioned in my first blog, my first teachable is Health and Physical Education (HPE), and after discussing the blog with fellow Concurrent Education peers, I have been fortunate enough to already have some first hand experience with the Ontario HPE curriculum (K-12), compared to some others with different teachables. I think it is important that students preparing to be a teacher, have experience learning about the various curriculums – all grades and subject bases. I won’t lie, when I was taking the PEKN course that required us to basically memorize the HPE curriculum, I was not impressed; but now going further into these Education based courses, I realize that the PEKN course helped me, and dare I say assisted me to a place where I consider to be on top of my game. Will I still remember the small details of the curriculum years down the road? …Maybe not. But will I have a stronger grasp on the curriculum content and requirements from the Government of Ontario’s Education Ministry? …For sure I will! If only fellow classmates and future teachers were also given the opportunity to learn about the Curriculum, have experience teaching the curriculum to various grade levels and students, and develop a holistic outlook on learning and education.

      This past week’s reading (Chapter 2: Know Your Curriculum Documents and Know Your Students) discussed the concept of Know, Do, Be (KDB). The Know comprises of the content that is mandated in curriculum documents. The Do includes the skills that can be subject-related, or inter-related, and needs to be acquired to apply other learning; including the latest 21^st Century skills that includes various cross-curricular skills. The Be is part of the holistic, integrated approach of curriculum, aka the hidden curriculum, to teach students to be better citizens within their local community and in fact globally. That is very brief information on each piece of the concept of the KDB, and it sounds quite overwhelming, right? These shows there are such vast aspects to learning and education that teachers need to include when educating their students. However, I now wonder, do teachers today have the KDB for the curriculum themselves, and for the “Teacher Curriculum” we have within our Education courses, the Concurrent Education program, along with Bachelor of Education (‘Teacher’s College’). Have we, the future teachers of the world, had the opportunity to expand our knowledge of content and information, in a variety of different kinds of knowledge (Factual, Conceptual, Procedural, Metacognitive – see p.29 of the text)? Has our professors only taught on the surface learning, or have we been able to go deeper? Has there been skills we have acquired during our post-secondary education, including the latest 21^st century skills; including innovation, character, culture and ethical citizenship. Have we learned a holistic approach, or just simply the traditional dictator-student, told to read the textbook for help instead of asking our professors, and not integrating the knowledge we are learning in university to the real world, and our future career, and life journey? I’d like you to think back to your years of post-secondary education, and ask yourself these questions. Odds are there will be at least one you will be saying “no” to. Our professors are telling us, “You are the future!” and “You will be the new and improved teachers of tomorrow’s world!” But will we really? Have we been educated in a similar or better way than what we is necessary to prepare us for teaching the students of tomorrow? I personally don’t think so. Sure, there are some different assignments that require us to use technology and creativity, or require us to critically think and assess a reading, but how are we being educated using The Be concept? Telling us, we will be the new and improved teachers that will make a difference is NOT enough! Where are the changes and learning’s that teaches us such learning skills, values, attitudes and behaviour. Most people just want to get through university, graduate with a piece of paper saying we passed more schooling, and get into the ‘real world’ of career hunting and working. Is that the right attitude we should have, and then portray to the youth of today, and ‘next generation’? No! There may be the few groups of professors and instructors that are able to incorporate the KDB concept of education into their courses, but not enough of them do. These requirements in the Ontario curriculum should also be required in the post-secondary schools, so called tertiary education facilities. Maybe then, the professors will be saying “Try to be better than the already successful, fabulous and innovative teachers out there in the schools…go ahead and try” instead of “The teachers today are awful…so listen to us and our beliefs and you will be just like them…mediocre and subpar.”

First Post, First Chapter...

             New school year, new courses, and one step further on my journey to becoming a teacher and graduate of Brock University’s Concurrent Education Program. This is my new blog where I will be discussing and reflecting on the readings from one of my education classes (EDUC 4P19), called Foundations of Curriculum and Assessment. The assigned text my blog posts are based on is Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment – Engaging the 21^st-Century Learner (Drake, Reid, & Kolohon, 2014).

            After reading the first chapter (Toward a new story of curriculum, instruction and assessment) I realized that this blog assignment is a great example on how teachers working today need to take full advantage of the technological world and how it can benefit them and their students, with learnings for both parties. I am only one week into this course and I already appreciate how this blog will allow us Concurrent Education students to have a first hand experience of how using technology within our given assignments can help improve our, and the students’, learning, progress, and outlook on education. The incorporation of the vast industry of technology is precisely how the current global Education system should evolve, adapt with the changes, and thus benefit the students and learners of the 21^st Century. Young children today can easily grasp the workings and functions of their parents’ smartphones. As future teachers, we need to be aware of the current culture around us, and learn how it can be incorporated into the ever progressing education system. A well balanced education system is when the best of the elder education traditions and methods are used, and adapted to help benefit the present learner, by incorporating the present day culture and innovations, and methods to assess and instruct. Therefore, the use of an online blog to reflect upon assigned readings is a perfect example of how student learning is being displayed, all while using a constructivist and project-based approach of assessment within the given curriculum of the subject matter.

            The subjects I have chosen to study and so are considered my ‘teachables’ are Physical Education and General Science, at the Intermediate/Senior level of Education. Many aspects and topics of Chapter 1 were a review to me thanks to some of the Physical Education based courses I have already taken. Health and Physical Education may seem like an empty subject for some, but it traditionally never was. Students should be taught and have knowledge of both physical literacy and health literacy. The Health and Physical Education curriculum already aims for students to develop some of the skills the twenty-first century learner is trying to develop now (i.e. problem solving, creativity, comprehension, and critical thinking). Brock University’s PEKN 3P32 (Movement Activities for Physical Education in the School), gave myself and fellow classmates, the chance to learn about the Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum (which is still outdated and the only subject yet to revised in the 21^st Century…but that is a debate that I will not touch upon now), and to learn about classroom assessments and evaluations methods, including the 3 approaches of assessment with a targeted purpose (Assessment OF, FOR and AS Learning). As we further developed our knowledge on such topics, we were given the chance to teach Physical Education classes of various grades, and first handedly assess how the curriculum can be used in various instruction strategies and assessment approaches to see if student learning was promoted, plus how positive the students’ learning experiences were. I am looking forward to further increase my knowledge on curriculum, instruction and assessment, and how the future teacher I will be and change agent I should strive to be (p.26) can become a part of this twenty-first century change; where education progresses towards “The New Story”, and the learning for both students and teachers will advance together.