Written in Sand

 

Photo by Eric Olson

When presented with the task of creating a year-long curriculum from scratch, I first had to sit down and re-acquaint myself with my teaching philosophy. I made sure I reflected on what was important to me, and that I still felt that way. Not much had changed since its birth, so moving on I had to assess what my goals were for the year. Since my school is "an academy," we include 7th and 8th grade. Therefore, setting goals that were appropriate for each grade level was extremely important to the program's success, besides the fact that it was co-ed. To be honest, I wasn't sure about how I was going to sell a creative movement class to 8th grade boys on the South Side of Chicago...
 
I attacked this project as I would anything else; I researched everything I had that said "Dance" on it, met with multiple Dance Education teachers in the area to pick their brains, and emailed just about everyone I knew that would have any insight to gather more information. I still did not feel adequately prepared to start creating something and really had no idea how to start putting things down on paper. But the clock was ticking so I had no choice but to dive right in. The exciting thing about Lindblom is that their dance program is part of the Fine Arts Department, so I knew I could practice creativity with a project-based curriculum (which definitely aligned with my philosophy). I organized the concepts that were most important to me in a clear and sequential pattern, an order that made the most sense throughout the year. I then made sure that each concept had objectives, aligned with National and State Standards, had appropriate assessments, essential questions, and enduring understandings. Our Fine Arts Department is very interested in the students' ability to ask questions about concepts for use in other settings, not just in school. So I made sure that my objectives and goals gave my students the opportunity to extract certain experiences from our units and use them to answer bigger questions.

The fear of being ill-prepared to create something successful and substantial that lurked inside of me only subsided when I started. I have found that the hardest, and most rewarding, part about building a curriculum is that it is constantly growing. One of our philosophies at LMSA is that we "write in sand," so application of that theory allows for the curriculum to be changing, adapting, and building itself over again, every step of the way. We take the responsibility of always updating and providing the freshest material to our students so that we can give them the best practice possible. It is something that I will refer back to forever. I will constantly add and subtract elements. It is alive, and although the task of completing a year-long scope and sequence left me indoors for the last month of my summer vacation, I am extremely grateful for the chance to say I have done it.  

Submitted by TDC Dancer Madelyn Doyle, Tuesday, October 29, 2013.