Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Designing a Curriculum

Mmmmm...I’ve never really thought about a topic like this before, interesting idea nevertheless. If I were to design certain curriculums for students of my age, I would probably design a more on-hands curriculum. What that means is that students are able to engage themselves on subjects that they see fit for their future careers. Of course, the basic subjects such as Math, English, History, and Science are still applied to a student’s schedule since I still think that the student should still have, even the most basic, knowledge on those subjects. Only with the kind of curriculum that I am proposing, the students would not be limited to classes that does not really classify or compatible with the careers they intend to take in the future. Being a student myself, I have taken some classes that are not really attuned to the career path I’m taking. I want to take the path of a businesswoman in the future, but how does cooking class help me with my choice of profession? Aside from the clubs and sports that the school offers, I seriously think that our school are still lacking in extra-curricular activities and classes that would facilitate our chosen professions as well as replace some of the tedious bookwork with actual hands on activities. For example, if you are interested in music or a musician (singing, composing, songwriting, arrangement, etc) there could be a class taken and it would occur in an actual music studio where students are able to be familiarizing themselves with how music production actually works. If you see yourself as being engaged in the business world, there could be a class that takes you to class trips to business districts and be familiar with how the business world actually works. So, it’s pretty similar to going to a vocational school, but at the same time different because a student doesn’t have to only take the general subjects like math and English. They would be still able to take other classes such as a language class or a calculus class while at the same time having a business class. I also think that we should have more varieties of languages to learn other than Spanish and French. The school should include languages like Latin, Italian, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, Portuguese, etc.

In all honesty, I view a basics skill class not as serious as other classes and more of like a fooling around class due to the student’s lack of motivation and understanding in such a subject. What I would recommend is that teachers should be able to have a more interesting way of teaching basic skills students rather than making them sit on desks and doing a numerous amount of work that they don’t really care much about. Teachers should be able to offer activities that let the kids be engaged on hands on activities because I think that they would be able to understand the subject more other than reading it from a book.

The day-to-day schedule wouldn’t be that much different to what it is now. The electives would stay, but there would also be an addition to the choices such as actual music class, business class, etc. I would probably have students be able to stay after school, if they want to, for an extra class that they would want to take, but can’t fit it in their schedules. So basically, students would have more electives and not be limited to just two.

As much as I hate homework, there is no denial that it really helps. I would leave the homework to the teachers, whether they want to give their students a lot of homework or not.

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