Curriculum Development

Last Friday was the second of three curriculum development meetings among teachers at Catholic Schools in the Oakland Diocese. Our first meeting had been in late September. The meetings were divided by grade level, so as a junior high Spanish teacher, I attended the gathering of 6-8 teachers at St. Patrick's School in Rodeo, CA. The last meeting saw a group of very confused foreign language teachers sitting around a table discussing a non-existent Diocesan curriculum. Oh sure, there were national and state standards for foreign language curriculum but our schools had never taken the time to create our own. So while language arts and math teachers were running over their standards with a fine-tooth comb to see which ones were "essential," "important" and "worthy," us foreign language teachers were wishing we had any sort of standards.

On Friday, thankfully, that changed. All of the foreign language teachers (most of us teach Spanish) met in the Kindergarten room of St. Patrick's where our mission was to start writing our own curriculum. We broke into groups based on grade level where our assignment was to either write what we wanted to teach students about Spanish or what we expect them to have mastered by the time they graduate eighth grade.

I joined the junior high group and we got to work. We were able to divide our standards into different vocabulary and grammar that we expect our students to know by the time eighth grade is over. Part of this process was realizing that we are tasked to do the best we can with what little we have. For example, one of the teachers in my group told us that his students don't learn a word of Spanish before the sixth grade, so he only has three years to try and teach them what they would learn in a regular Spanish 1 class in high school. Many of us were in similar boats. When we talked about teaching culture and prayer, we were careful to assume that not every one of our students would be attending a Catholic high school in the future and thus would not need to learn prayer. We finally settled on traditions and celebrations standards.

At the end of the day, the junior high teachers had come up with a pretty impressive list of our goals. Among the vocabulary we expected our students to have mastered were:
1. Days and seasons
2. Food/Clothing
3. Family/House
4. Greetings and many more

Among the grammar standards were:
1. Stem changing verbs
2. Preterite tense
3. Present tense of regular verbs
4. Some irregular verbs, etc.

I can't wait until we finally have all of these standards written up so we can submit them to the Diocese. The best part of the day for me was sitting down with actual Spanish teachers and comparing styles, textbooks and notes. In some cases, we commiserated over our lack of time in the school schedule, but after this process we just might be able to see our students more.