Student Oriented Curriculum

I found this presentation to be extremely informative and interesting. It presented me with material that I haven’t seen before and left with me with a curiosity to observe this in a classroom. One aspect of the presentation that I thought worked well was having all of the class get up and move to the different areas of the room when questions were asked. I liked that the presenters asked why we were in that group and if we would have liked to have seen our schooling worked out differently. The other thing that I enjoyed was the activity they did at the end of the presentation; they have everyone pick a favorite quote and explain why they chose it and how they would implement it in their classroom. I feel like the presenters really grasped the concept of a student-oriented curriculum and that was noticeable in the way they presented the information to us.

The few problems that I had with the presentation were the jigsaw and the final activity. I liked the concept of the jigsaw, but I didn’t feel that it worked out well. The amount of information given was too much to process at one time; the group I was first with had note cards given to us to help us take notes, but I felt like that was a waste of time. There was another group that had notes typed up by one of the presenters and I felt that the notes would have been more efficient. Also, I had a hard time understanding what other teams were saying since they hadn’t read the book. I think I would have preferred just having the presenters talk to us as a whole class instead of in groups. Maybe we could have still done a jigsaw, but instead had each group come with ideas on how we would implement the presenter’s suggestions in our own classroom. The other problem I had with the presentation was the assumption that everyone would agree with the material. As we witnessed with Jen, whom I agreed with, some of the suggestions posted on the board didn’t work with certain people’s teaching philosophy. I would have liked to have seen what they would have done to work with the people who weren’t completely sold on their book.

The two questions I had at the end of the presentation were: “How would you be completely inclusive in your classroom if you have students with severe disabilities like autism?” and “How and why would you implement this in your own classroom?”

Thank-You for an interesting look at another type of middle school environment. I enjoyed learning about a different, slightly unorthodox, teaching philosophy. Your presentation has left me wanting to observe these alternatives schools to see how they work. Good Job!