Curriculum Drafting

Curriculum always grows out of the mission of the school, whether it's crafted into a nice mission statement or not. The written mission is not necessarily the understood mission. I always read the mission statements that are posted on the walls of the schools I visit. If we assume that these statements actually do inform all of the curricular decisions that occur in schools (and I believe this is assuming a little too much reflection on the part of busy administrators and teachers), we should all raise our eyebrows at statements like "All students will achieve academic excellence", and even the proverbial "We will provide students with a safe and nurturing environment." The truth is that the mission of the school is frequently just a list of lofty, idealistic goals that do not inform instruction or most school decisions at all. It's the fluffy, warm and fuzzy greeting to the community, while the actual business of the school usually goes on as usual. It's what we WOULD LIKE our schools to be, but the realities of high poverty neighborhoods, teachers who need greater preparation and higher morale, funding restraints etc. keep us far away from achieving them. We must work on changing the realities before such lofty mission statements will ever be true of what actually goes on in a school. The school itself can do very little to make good on its promises to students without these factors changing first. However, it is possible to craft a mission statement that is both realistic and optimistic, and that provides for the creation of attainable goals.

If teachers and administrators are able to craft a realistic AND optimistic mission statement (imagine something along the lines of "we will help every student to reach his or her highest potential"), then this statement is more powerful to impact curricular choices. In school A that emphasises "academic excellence" for all children, I imagine many children who don't reach this goal feeling left out and worthless. In school B that emphasizes more choice for success to help students reach their "highest potential", I imagine all students being held to higher standards, but also more opportunities for non-traditional success so that fewer students feel left out.

Still, how much of this macro level mission-making actually makes its way into the daily curricular decisions that occur in classrooms? Again, not much, unless an intentional effort is made to align the curriculum and teaching practices to the mission. In schools where teachers and administrators meet together for real discussions (not just administrator speech giving), such curricular alignment to the vision and mission of a school can occur. Teachers must absolutely be involved in the planning process if any real changes are to happen. Thus, administrators must build time for such professional collaboration into the work week, and should even provide training and a framework for discussion, such as a protocol. (For more information on protocols for more effective group discussion, see Allen and Blythe's The Facilitator's Book of Questions.) This way, teachers in each subject area or grade level can decide upon their curricular objectives and actually write them down and discuss them frequently. These discussions will inform the teaching decisions that are made if focus is brought back to the overall objectives often enough through regular collaboration. Most importantly, without such concrete, explicit curricular goals, schools are leaving important long-range decisions up to time-pressed teachers working largely in isolation. Teachers mean well, but cannot be expected to do everything on their own that goes into making a strong school. The end result is always that SOMETHING gets taught in SOME KIND OF WAY. With strong teacher collaboration where the school's realistic and optimistic mission statement is the foundation of the curricular decisions that teachers decide upon as a group, I think we are much more likely to get a high quality product, i.e. more knowlegable and skilled students.