Personal Experience In Education

What is curriculum and what is my personal experience with curriculum as a student and as an educator? I would define curriculum as the content and material that is to be covered in a particular course as well as the assessment methods and activities used to ensure student learning and progress. As a teacher in NJ, much of the focus of curriculum has shifted to assessment techniques. The idea is to have data that supports student growth in your course now mandated by the state and coined the term student growth objectives or SGO’s. As a student I remember good and bad curriculum in both high school and college. As an educator I have been fortunate enough to write 4 different curriculum guides in various science content areas since 2006 so I have firsthand experience in curriculum writing and revisions. While I understand the basic intricacies of curriculum I hope to gain a much better understanding of how to improve curriculum to create the best possible learning environment and experience for my students with hopes of one day taking a role such as a supervisor or principal.

As a student there are many memories that I have of curriculum at its best and curriculum at its worst. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of the in between as those courses because they don’t stand out as much in my memory. I know that the course that really sparked my interest in science and teaching was my high school anatomy and physiology class. I took this class as a senior at Phillipsburg High School and it absolutely sparked my interest in science and is now the course I have been teaching for the last 11 years. The teacher was in his last year before retirement and really did a nice job of making the class fun, exciting and not rigid by t...

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...sible and my students are getting the best learning experience to prepare them for their future career goals. I want to be more hands on when it comes to curriculum development and revision so that I know exactly what is being done and covered in each class to be able to field administrative, parent or board concerns or concerns that would arise with standardized state scores.

In conclusion, curriculum is essential to every school system. It gives teachers a guide to use when constructing meaningful lessons, activities and assessments. I have memories of good curriculum as a student as well as bad and have had personal experience in curriculum writing. I want to learn as much as possible about curriculum and curriculum writing so that I can be involved with my staff during the process and be a resource to help them develop the most effective classroom lessons.