Work & Academics

Standards-Based Curriculum and Instruction

Communication is extremely important, especially for a busy teacher. Teachers must communicate on many levels with different stakeholders. For example, communication with administrators and colleagues are likely to look critically at the overall operations of the integrated scholastic environment including curriculum decisions or sharing procedural ideas. Communication with students may often focus on the level of comprehension of the materials. This is not only in the delivery of the instruction, but also in the non-verbal communication that can offer feedback about the direction a course is going. Parents are another group with whom teachers are likely to have regular contact. In some ways, parents are the most challenging group to have effective communication with—teachers may find that parents have inadequate information about curriculum and instruction, making it difficult to verbalize performance standards. In an era when educational reforms are taking place, “clarity” for parents may be even more confusing, but if used properly, standards can be used to help reinforce communication with parents.

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Foundations of Curriculum and Instruction

Knowledge advances each day. With the passing of time, among the many changes we can observe are new scientific discoveries, people migrating to different parts of the world, and information being easily disseminated using technology. Indeed, the world today would probably seem very surreal or fictional to people living generations ago. For starters, the cliché that the world has shrunk definitely has a lot of truth today. During one of my previous classes, I traversed the Pacific Ocean twice within four weeks and was still able to complete my assignments by making posts from internet “hot-spots” in Thailand and Singapore on my layovers between my flights and by writing papers on my laptop while flying. Just as I write this paragraph, I am sitting at a coffee shop in south India and I have just gotten off a voice over internet phone call to my mother in California which has cost me absolutely nothing. I am composing responses to my classmates who are scattered globally in locations such as the United States, Germany, and Japan as if we were just sitting in a classroom together.

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