I recently presented my GURU presentation to the committee and invited them and now I am inviting you to start a conversation with me.  So this is the beginning of my Teach 2033 blog series.  The Big Question is how are we are going to prepare our students to live in the year 2033.  At the bottom of this post you will see a video describing the context of the conversation we are hopefully about to have.

The first guiding question I would like to deal with is “Should all curriculum follow the AP audit model?”

If you are not familiar with the AP Audit model it is as follows:  For each instructor of an AP course there must be a submitted curriculum for that course on file with ETS.  Even if more than one person is teaching it in the same school each person needs their own curriculum document.  I come from a small school district so I write a lot of curriculum.  I have also had the opportunity to write some curriculum for other organizations.  I found that through those writing experiences I think a lot about what I teach.  On the opposite side of the fence I taught a course this year using someone else’s curriculum.  (Including their materials and study guides …course in a box)  It resulted from the need to have 4 different preps this year and a lack of time to prepare them all myself over the summer.  I have found at several points throughout the year I have been wishing I had the chance to do the course differently.  There are just some things that I like to present using methods other than the curriculum provided to me suggested.  Unfortunately with time being a premium this year (I also am happy to have a 6 month old) I was not able to go through the whole curriculum and adjust it to what I thought was best.  Should it be that each teacher has the time (I know pie in the sky) to write the curriculum for their own course and have it approved by a larger body like the department they teach in?  In some cases our curriculum is 5 and 7 years old or even older and gets updated by teachers who teach the course but never gets written in a document.  Should curriculum renewal occur every time a teacher teaches a new course?  This would allow them change the way things are done so we can all move our students towards 2033.

Join my conversation… comment here or tweet me @mrmclaughlin at #denchat Thursdays at 8pm