Curriculum and Student Interest

I really enjoyed the connection made this week between curriculum and the importance of getting to know our students. Many times, I think that it is tempting to keep the two very separate in our minds because curriculum sometimes seems so sterile and one-dimensional, while getting to know our students can seem so multifaceted and "non-academic." The activity where we had to directly connect our content area curriculum to the different ways students would like to be known/ understood was helpful with making that connection. It showed in a concrete way that presenting the curriculum and getting to know our students are not two entities that are to be kept separate. It is quite the opposite; we need to link the two together in order to truly invest our students in what we are teaching and to have them truly connect to the material. I was also reminded that for each lesson, I must think to myself "Why will this matter to my students? What will make this lesson interesting to them?" As educators, we must constantly assess our mindsets going into the classroom, and we must ensure that we are making every possible effort to keep the atmosphere positive, interesting, and motivating for our students.

The facilitation this week was very effective due to the various activities that kept interest and interaction high, which I think did a wonderful job of mirroring what the facilitator was saying we should do in our own classrooms. The various video clips were interesting, and I think that they presented the material being shared in a more fun and interesting light. Also, I appreciated being able to break into groups based on our content areas and create lessons. The most important part of that activity was the fact that we were required to explain our reasoning for the lesson and why we thought it would be interesting to our students, reminding me of the necessity of taking into account students' interests and personal motivations when planning lessons. I also appreciated the acrostic poem that we got to create around the one word that we thought was central to teaching. As the facilitator stated, this caused us to think critically and to "think outside of the box," which is what we should be having our students do in class.

This facilitation inspired me to go into my classroom the next day and use more multimedia sources to support what I was teaching. The videos I found really interested the students and got them excited about what we were learning. The videos also gave them a new and different perspective other than just my explanation. I will definitely continue to increase the use of videos and media in my classroom!

I would have loved to learn more practical ideas on how to adjust curriculum to make it more personal and applicable to students and their interests. I loved the ideas that I did hear from the other teachers on how to connect with students and create more interest, so I would have loved to have had more time to share and explore different ideas in more depth. I usually heartily agree with the things we discuss theoretically, but sometimes I find it difficult to practically apply everything we talk about because I need more concrete examples.