How do you explain your curriculum decisions to others?

Who are these others? It would be impossible for me to cater that message without an audience. I think that is the key here. I know my why, but communicating it requires an understanding of the social capital of the interlocutor. Without that, I am blind to how to communicate. My advice is the following: -Understand your surroundings. Where are you? What is the setting? How might you leverage that to show your why? -Understand your audience. Would you tell a business person the same elevator pitch as an academic? They use different logics. -Understand your own social capital. Leverage your experience and knowledge to overcome the gap between your experience and theirs.

In my experience, leadership respects a teacher, trainer, or coach who's "why" is founded on facts, embedded in context and moving in a clear direction. If we're able to clearly and concisely explain the who, what, when and why, and produce results, we will help those we're teaching while simultaneously gaining the trust of our superiors.

As an English Language teacher, I need to balance the academic, linguistic, cultural, and social-emotional needs of my students. I explain first how we must meet objectives - standards set by the state, for example. From there, we must look at our students' practical needs. What academic areas are foreign to them? Where are the language gaps? Where do they need development in social skills? The lessons are then designed to help them achieve academic success, but also to cultivate their voices and sense of belonging within the society they live in. I maintain support by inviting parents to be a part of the process. Working toward the common goal of supporting their child helps preemptively alleviate friction.

In my experience it wasn't necessary to explain the curriculum to anyone since English as an L2 (2nd language) was highly appreciated at any level. The choice of the study books was free so was the curriculum. Only in high school we had to follow around 75% of the topics required by the Ministry of Education. Basically both the topics and the succession of the grammar subjects was decided by me. The criteria of choice were the level of English prerequisites, the level of Italian grammar prerequisites necessary to build up / strengthen the grammar basics by similarities / opposites, the students age and interests in order to make L2 respond to real necessities and the integration of cultural topics related to English history and geography.

If you can justify your design decisions based on pedagogy, the skills needed by your students, engagement needs and accessibility requirements, you can’t go far wrong.

I had a Lesson Plan provided by the local school board when I was teaching guitar at Adult Night School back in the 1980's. I worked through that, but some students progressed faster than others.

The speed covering the curriculum units and the width and depth may differ, but the approach and system, for me, was almost the same. One very useful practice to reinforce the curriculum and the working materials was to analyze in detail the results of the final exam. Common errors, mistakes, especially in vocabulary and the use of Spanish prepositions were marked and classified, so to update the exercise book and student handbook with new exercises and remarks regarding the most common mistake in the exam. This proved to be very handy for students and a great tool to emphasis the important and often harder things to learn that require more attention and dedication.

Explaining curriculum is a function of educational leadership. The curriculum objectives and outcomes should be explained clearly to all stakeholders. This calls for an efficient communication system. All stakeholders should be made to feel part of the curriculum through a well laid feedback system.

I think it's important to make independent decisions about what you want to teach, but you need to be able to explain yourself to a reasonable audience. It is important to note that some people will be unreasonable! I've had relatives who would say "what is the value of that" even as you explain 1) why it is valuable and 2) how it actually helped other people. So be able to explain yourself, but remember that you are the teacher.

TLCs and SLCs are the best opportunities for leaders to communicate about their curriculum to stakeholders especially to parents. They provide a more enriching experience to parents to understand and reflect on the fundamentals of teaching-learning process. Coffee Mornings, Teatime discussions, parent orientations and cultural evenings can be used for communicating about SEL(Social and Emotional Learning, Core values and beliefs and ethos) to parents and other stakeholders also.