If I had a million dollars, I'd build you a school.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Build a Curriculum: Some Structure to Start

I think it's time to give some structure to this whole discussion of creating a new school. So far we have established the general approach of thinking of student development in three categories: knowledge, skills, and character. So let's make a table with those as our three column headings:




Our row headings, then, will be the learning areas where we hope to be teaching the students these things. As a starting point, let's use the traditional departments in a typical school and add them into our table:




As the ideas on this blog develop, I'm sure I will be making many additions and changes to this structure; but for the time being, it gives us a good jumping off point to describe on the most basic level what our school hopes to teach. Once complete, it should paint a picture of our ideal graduate, a student who has acquired all the knowledge, skills and character traits that we decide are desirable and necessary for someone with a high school education.

The majority of the posts that follow will take the boxes of this table one at a time and start filling them up. It will always be a living document; but eventually, we should have the table filled in completely enough to have a good picture of what our new school is trying to do.

What do you think? Anything important missing from the table before we start?


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