Reflective Journal

One of the things that I like about the curriculum mapping process is the collaboration that is involved. When I was first hired 5 years ago, the school district wanted me to pilot a program called Project Lead the Way (PLTW). Now every technology teacher in my district has been required to attend the same training because the district and other principals have seen the benefit on student achievement at my school.

PLTW curriculum focuses on integrating math and science into problem solving activities that give the student a feeling of what it is like to be an engineer. It was started in New York state high schools during the 1997-1998 school year and has expanded to around 3,000 schools today. The program has developed a good reputation with industry, colleges, and school administrations. Most schools look forward to joining the program because it helps train the teacher and gives students a more real life problem solving curriculum that is constantly being updated and shared through the program. I like to look at PLTW as being a giant, nationwide professional learning community (PLC) that continuously updates its curriculum map. Teachers are able to look at new curriculum as it is developed each year and attend training sessions to help implement the program. PLTW provides teachers with standardized workbooks and worksheets to help guide the class.

When teachers attend training to teach a PLTW course, they are given a mountain of information in two weeks that they need to be able to teach the next year. I have noticed that many teachers become overwhelmed with this mountain of curriculum. Most of it gets put in a file cabinet and waits to be implemented while they stick to most of the things that they were teaching before. I would like to find ways to reduce the amount of time that it takes a teacher to add in the new curriculum. One strategy that I would like to implement is creating smaller, local PLCs. DuFour (2007) said it best when he said that “the rise or fall of the professional learning community concept in any school will depend not on the merits of the concept itself, but on the most important element in the improvement of any school—the collective capacity, commitment, and persistence of the educators within it.” These PLCs would look at the new curriculum and find out the best way to teach it.

By implementing a PLC, all of the teachers who have been trained in PLTW can collaborate and share the best methods that they have found to teach the new curriculum. Teachers who have just been trained can share with me new additions to the curriculum and I can in turn show them tricks and strategies to help them to better teach the curriculum.

There is a group of master teachers that get together and create new PLTW curriculum every year. I would like to work towards becoming a master teacher for PLTW because I would like to share some of the curriculum that I have developed with other teachers so that we can all work together to improve student learning.

Whether my curriculum comes from a giant, national community of educators or is something that I have created on my own, I should take the time to map out what I teach. This will help me keep better track of the content and the skills that I teach, how I assess my students, and align to academic standards. With a map in place it will be easier for me to share with others and collaborate to make changes easily when needed.

 
References

DuFour, R. (2007). Professional Learning Communities: A Bandwagon, an Idea Worth Considering, or Our Best Hope for High Levels of Learning?. Middle School Journal, 39(1), 4-8. http://search.ebscohost.com.kaplan.uah.edu

PLTW (2007-2009). Project Lead the Way. Retrieved April 21, 2010, from http://pltw.org/

Udelhofen, S. (2005). Keys to curriculum mapping: strategies and tools to make it work. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.