299-Redefining What Curriculum Is

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Well, hello. I hope you're doing well. I am bringing you another episode today all about what is curriculum. I know you're probably like, why the heck would you do an episode about this?

And the reason why is because curriculum is more than just the stuff you use. I feel like when we throw around the word curriculum, I know for me, and I going all the way back to college, when I learned about curriculum, it was more about the stuff you use. And your school will have a curriculum and your district will have a curriculum and

you'll be handed a curriculum. You can buy a curriculum and so on and so forth. Which, yes, those things are part of what curriculum means. But I've come to find out throughout the years

that curriculum is more than just the stuff you use. It's more about just the what. It's about the how and why. So let's unpack that a little bit.

Curriculum actually comes from a Greek word, which I'm not gonna try to pronounce because I will butcher it, but a Greek word that means to run.

So when I read that definition, I went, okay, what exactly does that mean? And how do we apply that? So when you're thinking about running,

when you're thinking about running a race, think about all the things you need to do to prepare for it. Now, if you're anything like me, you're not a runner.

Okay? I love to walk. I have a treadmill in my room. I, and so I try to work out at home,

but when it's nice outside, I love to go on walks. I've tried running. I'm one of those people that tried Couch to 5K in the running part.

It's just, I don't know. I just am not good at it. But anyways, I have friends who are runners. They have competed in 5K and all the things.

And I know just from watching them or listening to their stories and just from common knowledge that to prepare for a race,

there's a lot involved in that. You're given the date you're given. So you know how long you have to prepare. You probably need to work on your endurance.

You need to work on your breathing and a lot of other things just to prepare for the actual race itself. So then when you're actually in the run,

you're thinking about, I'm at the starting line, I need to get to the finish line. So what do I need to do to get from point A to B or Z, whatever that would be.

And so you're probably trying to pace yourself. You're probably looking at markers on the race of where you're at, like how far along in the race are you? And things along those lines.

So when we're thinking about running a race when it comes to using curriculum or in the teaching field, that some of those things can apply to that. So when we're thinking about, okay,

I know what day school starts, what do I need to do to prepare for that? What curriculum do I have? So if you just have the curriculum, that's great.

But if you've never looked through it, then you're not gonna know where to go with it. So it's okay to do things in order the way a curriculum lays out for you.

But in my course, the curriculum design roadmap, I teach teachers, I teach teachers how to unpack curriculum you're using. Let's say you're only using one thing

or you're using a lot of things. I show teachers how to unpack it to create it in a way that makes sense for yourself and your students. So what I'm getting at is you're given this curriculum and instead of just going, okay,

I have it, I'm ready to teach. No, you got to dig through that. You got to know what concepts, what songs and activities are included in it to touch on the different concepts, what songs and activities are in there and what standards

apply to those and how are you going to teach it? Where are you going to teach these things throughout the school year? This is where backwards planning and having a curriculum map and scope and sequence songs and activities list and all those pieces I do teach in that course I mentioned look in the show notes those come into play it's all about what you do with the things you

have, not just having the stuff. So going back to the running a race example, when you have looked through it, that's the preparation part. When you're running the race as a teacher, that's teaching, right? That's the whole school year. And so as you're running the race, you're going to have different pace as you go. You may start off strong, you know, you're one of those that

sprints at the beginning. And then towards the middle of the school year, which is around right now, you know, it's the tiredness sets in. It's the, oh my gosh, like what else am I teaching at this point? When you have a plan in place, though, on your curriculum map, it'll tell you throughout the school year where to teach those chunks of content. So it takes the guessing game

out of it. It takes the guesswork, like what am I teaching? The Sunday Scaries I see talked about on social media. I personally, I'm not just saying this, I've never experienced that because I've always had a plan of what I'm teaching literally the whole school year. And so I don't wake up and then go, what am I teaching tomorrow? I already know. I may not,