Next Generation Curriculum: One Innovators Journey in Change
My name is Aubrey Joy Barnett. In the winter of 2014 with the cooperation of the wonderful team of teachers at Wildwood World Magnet IB a Chicago Public School with 420 students grades K-8, we applied for the Next Generation Learning Challenges Breakthrough Schools Model Planning grant. We were lucky enough to be awarded $100,000 to try out a new curriculum model for the 2014-2015 school year!
As a former CPS teacher, former curriculum manager for a private company, and current graduate student in Clinical Counseling, I have developed a passion for changing the way the system manages, treats, and interacts with children. Too often our systems squash out creativity and innovative thinking in favor of standardized behavior, performance, and status quo. With the goal of transforming children's' experience of themselves in the place they spend most the of their time, school, I developed a new model of curriculum and instruction that puts children at the front.
The most basic and critical changes the the Next Generation Curriculum Model are these:
1) Students are now in charge of designing, developing, and presenting their own curriculum
and
2) Students are challenged to asses their own and their peer's work based on the rigorous national standards they are to meet by the end of each grade.
This blog will aim at recording the first year's implementation of this curricular model with middle school students at Wildwood. Professional development resources, records of students' successes and struggles, work samples, social media, and professional publications will all be housed using this meager site.
For more information about the NGLC and Wildwood's grant, please check out this link! Wildwood, NGC, and NGLC
As a former CPS teacher, former curriculum manager for a private company, and current graduate student in Clinical Counseling, I have developed a passion for changing the way the system manages, treats, and interacts with children. Too often our systems squash out creativity and innovative thinking in favor of standardized behavior, performance, and status quo. With the goal of transforming children's' experience of themselves in the place they spend most the of their time, school, I developed a new model of curriculum and instruction that puts children at the front.
The most basic and critical changes the the Next Generation Curriculum Model are these:
1) Students are now in charge of designing, developing, and presenting their own curriculum
and
2) Students are challenged to asses their own and their peer's work based on the rigorous national standards they are to meet by the end of each grade.
This blog will aim at recording the first year's implementation of this curricular model with middle school students at Wildwood. Professional development resources, records of students' successes and struggles, work samples, social media, and professional publications will all be housed using this meager site.
For more information about the NGLC and Wildwood's grant, please check out this link! Wildwood, NGC, and NGLC