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Editor's Note: This story has been modified to clarify the District's planned use of and purpose for the "curriculum mapping" software.
CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.- The Croton-Harmon School District received an $8,000 grant from the Croton-Harmon Education Foundation at Wednesdays Board of Education meeting. The grant allowed the district to buy new software for curriculum mapping.
To explain the concept of curriculum mapping, Dr. Edward Fuhrman broke the parents down into small groups to discuss their questions. Many parents admitted their children told them little if nothing about what they did in school on a daily basis.
What are they learning? asked Janet Kraybill, allocations director for CHEF. What are they going to learn this year? What are they going to know this year? What are they going to learn next year?
The district created "curriculum maps" using Atlas software, as a visual aid to explain the curriculum throughout the district.
"In enhances that whole school-parents relationship because you have a lot more information to work with," said Board of Ed President Karen Zevin, "The maps are so you align a curriculum across a grade, across a school, across the district, so youre doing it horizontally across the grade, and vertically between the grades."The curriculum maps include overarching ideas to be addressed in the class, and a variety of highly specific material and concepts to be learned. Whether or not the maps have a specific book the students read is not exactly the point, said Fuhrman.
Does one need to read a particular book? he asked. Not that Im downplaying that, but theres something to be said about what hooks the kids. Fuhrman used the example of being confronted with the question of good versus evil, certainly there were myriad books students could read to address these questions, but it was up to the instructor as to whether or not they broadly assigned one book to all classes learning a curriculum.
As administrators, we want people to struggle with that, thats the whole point, said Assistant Principal of Croton-Harmon High School Mark Maxam. Over time, the idea is to build the richness of the system.
Teachers who designed the curriculums, as teams, can be found under the Collaboration tab on the maps. This links directly to an email for the teachers, if parents have questions regarding a curriculum.
Visit the Atlas homepage on the Croton-Harmon District website to browse the currently listed curriculums. The site is as of yet incomplete, with only 20 of the districts curriculums mapped. The district intends to map every curriculum in the district.
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