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Curriculum Mapping - Friend or Foe

by Ted Lutkus, Assistant Headmaster for Academic Affairs
A great school has a great mission, a great program to fulfill that mission, and great people to put the program into action. An even better school constantly strives to do better with all of these components.

The 2017-2022 Strategic Plan calls CCES to deepen the implementation of our mission. Seven of the eight goals in the plan directly compel CCES’ curriculum to be relevant to today’s world. It provides a roadmap for consciously creating experiences that will equip students with skillsets to find their genuine voices and be change makers.

Goal 6 of the Strategic Plan provides a framework for constant renewal of this dynamic curriculum: “CCES will design a systematic approach to updating and communicating its comprehensive and integrated program of study in Primer (K5)-12th Grade to ensure that every graduate is well prepared for a 21st century college experience”. To do this we need a curriculum map.

Of course we have curriculum plans and guides throughout the school. Unfortunately, they do not exist as one cohesive whole that allows for easier comparison and analysis. For many educators, curriculum mapping invokes memories of hours and hours of work, filling out highly bureaucratic forms that have no bearing on future instruction. It can simply be a catalogue of information for administrative purposes. It can also be something quite different.

The Goal 6 Steering Committee is composed of a team of teachers across the divisions. After researching different mapping tools and hearing other schools’ experiences, we decided to develop our own simple instrument, based on one school’s successful mapping experience. The instrument includes content, skills acquired, and assessment for each unit, in each class, P-12.  On February 19th, during the faculty/staff professional in-service day, the faculty mapped the curriculum with 95% completion.  

The map will help us to see differences between teachers in a given grade or common course. It provides us the ability to look for redundancies and gaps in the curriculum.  It will help us assess what content and skills students are expected to learn from Primer to commencement. As new learning priorities and teaching methodologies emerge from the Strategic Plan, it allows us to identify where these can take place and perhaps replace. Finally, curricular review needs to be ongoing. Each subject (P-12) will be staggered into a rotation for in-depth analysis every four years, with the map as a basis for this study.

I am in the final few months of my first year here at CCES, and feel so fortunate to work with a faculty that is motivated and motivating. Wanting to do it better is the norm. The curriculum map, in the hands of this inspiring faculty, is a springboard for furthering our mission - making what is already a great school even better.
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    • The Goal 6 Steering Committee meets to map the current CCES curriculum

    • Goal 6 Steering Committee members Elizabeth Williams and Marilyn Mullinax

    • Goal 6 Steering Committee members Ted Lutkus and Martha Wrenn

Christ Church Episcopal School (“CCES”) admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at CCES. CCES does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, national or ethnic origin, creed, religion, or sexual orientation in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, financial aid, scholarship or other programs, or athletic or other school-administered programs and activities.