I was tasked last staff meeting to determine what classes my students should take next year and I am a little nervous at the prospect. I know I am fully versed on their capabilities and their motivations but I still hate to give limits to students. Then come the phone calls about the fact that it is not their student but instead your teaching or your subject area. Do you know how many parents tell me that chemistry just does not interest their student so they do not try their hardest.
What does this have to do with curriculum well everything. When we set up the science department program of studies we do so with the student's progress in mind. We try to determine what the most logical sequence of classes and levels of class we will need. It is like planning a road map for students to take and with all good maps there are areas for u-turns and alternative routes which what is exciting for students. I want students to explore our electives and challenge themselves with harder classes.
My final thought is why do we encourage students to reach for the stars if we are going to put Plexiglas ceilings in?
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I'm sure you've heard the explanations for the order of the traditional high school science curriculum (biology, chemistry, physics). Some say it was merely an alphabetical order listing and that biology should really be at the end.
ReplyDeleteAre you aware of other high schools whose science classes follow a different sequence? I wonder what the range of possibilities there are for hs science?
I know that in the high school I graduated from students take earth science their freshmen year, biology their sophomore year, and from their have the choices of anatomy and physiology, chemistry, and physics. I'm not sure how traditional/nontraditional this is in comparison to other schools. The freshmen and sophomore years also require students to do their own year long science experiment/investigation which gets presented at the end of the year.
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