Curriculum Development
This is one of the best parts of teaching! One of my primary purposes in teaching is to provide an environment of diversity in learning experiences. My current model is to take the required curriculum and adapt it to be contextually relevant to each student. I try to give the students every opportunity to participate in their own education. I have found that if you leave assignments too open, however it can sometimes be overwhelming for students to come up with their own ideas. They can spend the whole class time trying to come up with an idea instead of actually working. So, I always start with a prescribed assignment/multiple assignments to choose from. For the students who like to branch out with new, creative ideas, I allow modification when appropriate. I usually require that the students approach me with their idea, and show how they will be able to incorporate all of the required curricula within the task parameters. I have found that when students are given even a small amount of control over their education, they tend to be more engaged in the task. It is always very refreshing to see a student become intellectually and emotionally invested in a project. Often, they can get so immersed that they go beyond the project requirements and exceed my expectations!
Individually encouraging students to be creative and push the the envelope goes along with my previous post this morning regarding diversity and prejudice. Many of my students are culturally very quiet and reserved. If I didn't take the time to get to know them, I might just assume that they were disengaged or disinterested. For past few semesters, my top students have been such individuals. In each case, the students started out just doing the basic task as assigned. I sat down with each, asking questions about them; what were their interests in school, what where their hobbies at home? I offered suggestions as to how they might incorporate their personal interests into the projects. Once the ice was broken, each student enthusiastically jumped in, creating amazing projects for the rest of the semester that were full of creativity and meticulous care and skill.
In my experience working with students, I have found one consistent commonality: Everyone is a unique individual. Thus, everyone needs to be treated with equal attention toward discovering those unique differences, regardless of how they look or behave on the surface.
You are absolutely right about taking the time to find out about each of our students. For example, in my own experience one particular student was so abrasive against any instructions given to him that he would make rude remarks and call out names to other students to disrupt the class. It wasn't until a series of referrals and parent meetings the student realized that he was not going to get away with that type of behavior. After time had passed, the student seemed to follow protocol, but seemed trapped in his own skin. Just the other week, he showed me a picture of his new puppy. He was so excited to show me that ever since then; he seems to have turned around. I think, like you had mentioned, by breaking the ice, he seems to have come out of his distant shell. There may have been other factors that might have been causing the student to act out in these ways, but until I took only but five minutes to find out something personal, his personality came around full circle.
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