02.782, Curriculum Planning and Implementa-tion

One thing I found fascinating in road construction what how many independent companies were involved in a single project. My son worked for a company whose sole concern was the quality and quantity of the raw materials. He weighed trucks coming into the materials site and weighed them again going out. He was not involved in the filling of trucks – that was another company. There were guidelines regarding physical location and performance of duties.

Negotiations and hiring of the various companies must be a difficult management issue – Ben’s job was delayed for almost a month due to contract negotiations. Each company will bring with it different values, resources, understandings and talents. These aspects will affect philosophies and deliveries of services.

The Curriculum Foundations course provided an opportunity for us to look into various conceptual models of curriculum. We negotiated our understandings of theories on curriculum through reading and discussing various articles. Dr. Tim Skuce describe education in the outline by quoting W. Pinar and G. Biesta (2014)to education as a “complicated conversation” and a “beautiful risk”. I expanded my scope and depth on various theories, including currere and participated in discussions that stretched my global view of the purpose of curriculum.

Management, negotiating, appreciating and making complicated decisions – whether in curriculum or hiring companies, are demanding and essential in the large scope of a project. There is constant monitoring, growth, reevaluating and research needed to remain relevant.

My heart and head keep going back to “The Mile Road” project. It captures the time and space that this course occupied in my consideration. We all value time in our busy lives, but I really considered space in connection to time in this project. I was able to connect theories presented in class, to my daily mile road walks, to what I was currently doing in my school classes. I later revisited this project through a connection in my Innovative Pedagogies in Education course when we studied the book “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmer. The author connected Indigenous teachings, personal experience and biology.

I was exceptionally proud of this essay as it had so much meaning for me as I brought my lived experience of teaching the elements of art to the various concepts of curriculum making. Potentially, only a teacher who has taught the elements of art for a decade can truly appreciate the connections I made, but for me this essay provided an opportunity for a thorough examination of the new content and unveiled new understandings of the old content. I also took the opportunity to share my creation experience with a couple of other “art-minded” teachers which was a gentle move into the experience of fostering opportunities for peers.