Individualizing the Curriculum with Electives

Entry #2: Individualizing the Curriculum- Select one model or individualized program from Chapter 15 of the Glatthorn text that you think would work best. Explain your choice and reasons supporting it. What, if anything, would need to change in your school or district to adapt it, and how as a curricular leader would you make those changes?

This is actually a really hard blog post to write because in my town, many of the ideas identified as individualizing the curriculum are already embedded somewhere or were tried (such as open classrooms) and failed.

Encouraging students to explore their particular passions is a challenge in most schools with a large diverse population and shrinking school budgets. While large swaths of the country have eliminated elective courses, Greenwich has a rich tradition of offering amazing opportunities that engage a wide variety of students. The Greenwich High School catalog resembles a small college and includes eclectic (and popular) offerings across the subjects, especially in the arts. Being the only high school with a population of 2700 students provides a broad base of support for the extensive offerings. The courses are not a mish-mash of items, but a guided discovery for advancement by students that include four levels of electronic music (including honors), 19 different musical performing groups, three levels of cooking including a honors in Culinary Skills, transportation and energy technology in Engineering and more.

I believe that part of the support comes from the international nature of the residents who want their children to have exposure to a wide range of subjects and encourage this. I went to Greenwich High Schools and my favorite class, was on East Asian history. I guess the course China Today that my son took last semester would be its replacement. While I know that large areas of the country don’t have the type of elective offerings that Greenwich does, my experience with it is absolutely lacking. But I support elective offerings in schools as long as its supported by the community and there should be some sort of procedure in place to allow the expansion of courses, but the process should vet ideas and test their appropriateness. As a curricular leader, I’d support a rich load of elective courses, especially at the middle school where students want to begin to explore new options. But adding new courses takes collaboration and consideration as to the unintended consequences (what gets cut out if a student take the elective etc.). Before adding a course, would the topic be best served as an after-school club? These and other questions about staffing, space, and budget need to be discussed.