Session 2, Part 1: What Students Need to Know Now and For the Future

Create Your Ideal Curriculum, Session 2: Decide What is Worth Learning

In this session, the second of four, we continue to engage in the process for determining what we choose to include and exclude within our curriculum. We dig into the deeper details of what is worth learning for today and for an unknown future. Knowledge, skills, and dispositions are understood as what is necessary for students to develop to reach the bigger goals of instruction. Standards are utilized as supports and guidelines, but are not the reason for learning. This information will help us create a pathway for our students, from where they are at to where we want them to be. (If you missed Session 1, click here to start from the beginning.)

As well-meaning and thoughtful as educators can be, we can sometimes be our own worst enemy. This becomes apparent when I see how teachers prepare for instruction. 

For example, two posts came across my timeline while reading Twitter one morning (in the midst of preparing for schools reopening during the pandemic):

• Teacher A’s tweet: “If you’re…