Summative Assessment Curriculum Proposal Analysis
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Summative Assessment: Curriculum Proposal Analysis
Ilka Jauregui
University of Phoenix
CUR 506
Dr. Linda Florence
2/27/23
Summative Assessment
Students are our future citizens. It is important that they receive a good education, but it is equally important to teach them healthy coping skills to manage their emotions. The social and
emotional development of students is essential in them becoming positive and productive members of society. Olympia Della Flora poses an important question in her TEDTalk, “Creative Ways to Get Kids to Thrive in School,” which asks, “if we teach kids how to read and write, and they graduate but yet they don’t know how to manage emotions, what will our communities look like?” This question resonated with me, and is the reason why I chose to analyze her video for this assignment.
Speaker’s Definition of Curriculum
Della Flora’s idea of curriculum includes a social emotional aspect on top of the academic side to it. She believes that it is important for students to learn how to manage their emotions and cope with stress and anxiety to have the ability to learn. Her idea is that students cannot be receptive to the concepts being taught if they do not know how to manage their emotions. She says for kids to not only survive, but also thrive, in school, “we somehow had to figure out a way to not only teach them how to read and write but also how to help them deal with and manage their own emotions” (TED, 2019).
Underlying Curriculum Theory
The underlying curriculum theory that best aligns to Della Flora’s idea of curriculum is a content-oriented theory, which is concerned with identifying the main sources that should influence what goes into the curriculum and how that should be organized. Within the content-
oriented theory is a child-centered curricula. Theorists who support a child-center curricula argue
that “the child is the beginning point, the determiner, and the shaper of the curriculum” (Glatthorn, Boschee, Whitehead, and Boschee, 2019). One child-centered curriculum movement associated with this theory is affective education, which emphasizes the feelings and values of the child. “Curriculum leaders were concerned primarily with identifying teaching and learning activities that would help the child understand and express feelings and discern and clarify values” (Glatthorn, Boschee, Whitehead,
and Boschee, 2019). Della Flora addresses ideas in her video that relate to affective education. She describes creating a calming area for one of her most difficult students to use to transition himself from a less-structured environment at home to a more-structured environment at school. She also talks about making this student a kindergarten helper because he liked to help the younger students. These changes showed the student that his feelings mattered and that he was important to adults and other children on campus. In giving this student these opportunities, Della Flora helped him thrive emotionally, which in turn helped him improve academically. Furthermore, the ideas presented in Della Flora’s video are connected to two schools of thought regarding curriculum, which are the holistic view and laissez-faire philosophy. The holistic view, according to our text, “pays attention to the emotional and creative components who are ‘productively idiosyncratic’” (Glatthorn, Boschee, Whitehead, and Boschee, 2019). Holistic teachers persuade students to be active learners by finding content and strategies that meet the varied interests of their students. The belief is that every student is a unique individual with a unique way of learning and we must address that to stimulate students in the classroom. In
the laissez-faire philosophy, “children freely explore ideas they wonder about” (Glatthorn, Boschee, Whitehead, and Boschee, 2019). For this approach, learning stations provide students opportunities to make their own choices and pursue their own interests. “In this participatory
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democracy, students initiate all their own activities and create their own environments” (Glatthorn, Boschee, Whitehead, and Boschee, 2019).
Major Era Aligned with The Proposed Change
Progressive Functionalism is the major era aligned best with Della Flora’s proposed change in curriculum because this is when we see progressivism in education. The progressive view of education emphasized a child-centered curriculum. For progressive educators, the child is the dominating influence of the curriculum. One leader of Progressive Functionalism is John Dewey, who believed that classrooms should allow children to participate in learning activities and have flexibility in a variety of social settings to ensure achievement (Williams, 2017). This is
what Della Flora did at her school where her teachers were including time in their lesson plans to
teach kids healthy coping strategies for dealing with their feelings, like allowing students to grab a fidget spinner or take a quick walk as well as incorporating brain breaks. This type of flexibility in the classroom, according to Della Flora, helps students focus and learn. My Position
I agree with Della Flora’s idea that we need to address students’ emotional well-being if we expect them to learn academic content. Students need to be in the right mindset with their emotions to be able to focus and receive the academic content at school. From my experience as a teacher, I have witnessed students who are disruptive in class or reluctant to do schoolwork because they do not have the right coping strategies to heal with their emotions. Many of those students come from unstructured environments at home and transitioning to a more structured environment at school is a challenge for them. Addressing their social-emotional wellbeing first is critical to their education because if we are able to teach them healthy coping skills, then
students would be more receptive to learning. Della Flora argues in her TEDTalk that small changes can make huge differences. “You don’t need bigger budgets or grand strategic plans, you simply need smarter ways of thinking about what you have and where you have it” (TED, 2019). In my classroom, I like to incorporate Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) activities as warmups. Something as simple as a “Mood Check-In” can really help me gauge where my students are at emotionally before beginning the academic content. Students complete these check-ins on platforms like Pear Deck or in a Google Form I create. They know that their responses will be kept confidential from the rest of the class, which allows them to be more honest. Students are also allowed to take “brain breaks” by going out for a drink of water or to take a quick walk. This is also a way to help students manage their stress or anxiety when an assignment or lesson seems overwhelming for them. Benefits
The proposed change to curriculum would benefit students, families, the schools, and the community. First and foremost, this would benefit students because the proposed change is about them. Addressing students’ emotional wellbeing improves their academic performance and
reduces disruptive behavior. Like Della Flora states in her video, “when less kids are disrupting, all kids do better” (TED, 2019). Additionally, focusing on students’ emotional wellbeing helps them improve problem-solving, self-regulation, and impulse control. With the skills they acquire, students can analyze their behaviors and think about the best course of action to deal with their actions. Also, these skills can transfer over to their everyday life. “Social-emotional skills also help kids successfully manage everyday life. They help students focus, make good decisions, and become members of their community well beyond school” (Committee for
Children, 2023). Families would benefit from this because students may come home at the end of
a school day with many pent up emotions, which may result in conflict with other family members. If students learn coping strategies, they can implement those at home as well. The school would also benefit because there will be less disruptions in the classroom, which will allow for the school day to run smoothly and students can get the most out of their education. Lastly, this proposed change in the curriculum will benefit the community because children are learning how to be positive members of society. Conclusion
Students are more than a grade or score on a test. They must feel that their feelings matter
and that their teachers care about them to be successful. Della Flora explains it best when she states, “by us taking the emotional development of our kids seriously, we moved from a philosophy of exclusion – you disrupt, you get out – to one of trust and respect” (TED, 2019). Respect and trust must go both ways between teachers and students if we expect them to value education, focus, and do their best.
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References
TED (Producer). (2019). TEDTalks: Olympia Della Flora – Creative ways to get kids to thrive in
school [Full video]. Films on Demand.
What is social-emotional learning?
Committee for Children. (n.d.). Retrieved February 25, 2023,
from https://www.cfchildren.org/what-is-social-emotional-learning/ Williams, Morgan K. (2017). John Dewey in the 21
st
Century. Journal of Inquiry & Action in
Education, Vol. 9 (1), 91-102. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1158258.pdf