A theme that stands out among the rest in the process of designing a curriculum is that of moving from the big picture down toward the narrow, focused details of our project. This is easier said than done; how many times does one just jump right in with laying out ideas for a unit or lessons without first writing out the goals and objectives for those very units? In that case, one would then have to retroactively adjust their goals to fit their ideas, as opposed to guiding your ideas by way of first clearly defining goals and objectives. I think students (including myself) tend to have an apprehension to starting on the goals and objectives level, perceiving it as another “to do” as opposed to its actual purpose – a compass for a coherent project. Our inclination to do things this way reminds me of a quote from Alice and Wonderland, which just so happens to be the theme of my group’s syllabus on Drugs. The line goes:
Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
The Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
Alice: “I don’t much care where –”
The Cheshire Cat: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
However, in the case of designing a curriculum, the process is completely nullified if one chooses to go down a path first, without having established where to go. The result would be, as I alluded to before, the retroactive act of looking back and justifying where you ended up in your syllabus and in your units and lessons by way of rewriting your goals and objectives to match where you are.
Thus, “staying true to the process,” or in other words, following the logical flow of steps, serves a more important purpose than many originally perceive it to.
Another reflection I have in the is, as Peter put it, “seeing all the bones in the body before you can make sense of the whole.” This is a relevant truth directly applicable to curriculum design, regardless if whether that “big picture” perspective plays to one’s learning style, because that in fact is intrinsic in the design of our curriculums. To add on to Peter’s metaphor, we need to put in perspective all of the bones (the needs assessment, rationale, and goals) that make up the skeleton of the curriculum before we can start to put flesh to it, and bring it alive.
. Peter often referred to the process being start big, and end up small, eventually zeroing in on the details, all the way down to the materials and time allotment for activities in a Lesson Plan. And I like to think that, to use an overplayed buzzword, that curriculum design is somewhat of an “iterative process; often times when you obtain certain pieces of information from different sources (for example, the various sources utilized in our needs assessment), it requires going back and “re-centering” yourself and your group, so that the work you are doing reflects the actual needs of your target beneficiary (in our case, the middle school teacher and students at Bolsa Knolls Middle School), and the reality of the context and situation in which you are designing a curriculum.