District-Wide Curriculum Review Continues to Progress
by Steve Wilder
November 03, 2011
In the Fall of 2010, the Board of Education and Superintendent engaged in a series of planning and goal-setting meetings to identify a vision for the future of Knoxville CUSD #202. That process was facilitated by a representative from the Illinois Association of School Boards who has a clear process for leading this sort of planning.
Out of those sessions, the Board of Education identified three goals. Not surprisingly, the first goal had to do with curriculum. Teaching and learning is the primary goal of our school district and the first goal for the future was to complete a comprehensive review of our district curriculum. Planning for that work was done in the Fall of 2010, and the process began in the Spring of 2011.
Using district-wide School Improvement Planning (SIP) days, the teachers throughout the district began compiling information related to what content is being taught in each class and in every course in grades Pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade. This was a complex task that required every teacher in our district to spend time reflecting on each and every lesson that they taught.
After compiling that information last Spring, time was spent during both of the SIP days this Fall reviewing that information and aligning the curriculum (what we teach every day) to the current and future standards for curriculum...the current Illinois Learning Standards and the newly developed Common Core Standards. The process of aligning the curriculum to those standards gives us the opportunity to make sure that we are including everything in our curriculum that we need to. As you can imagine, it also allows us to identify some areas to review and consider making some revisions.
The teaching staff of Knoxville CUSD #202 is to be commended for the work that they have done during this process. During the last SIP day, October 28, the staff completed work to align the curriculum with the two sets of standards listed above. This was a significant step in getting closer to our goal of completing the district-wide curriculum review. We hope to finalize that work over the Winter and be able to post information about our work on the Curriculum & Instruction link on our website.
Any questions regarding this process can be made to the Superintendent, Mr. Wilder, at the District Office.
