| New Curricula for Catholic Schools |
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By D.F. Kratzer
WEST VIRGINIA—The Cath-olic Schools Office of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston is preparing new curricula for its elementary and high schools. Although it will not eliminate essential content being taught to students, the new curricula will have a considerable impact on the ways students are taught and assessed, said Sister Elaine Poitras, CSC, Ph.D., superintendent of Catholic schools of the diocese. The new curricula, she continued, will assure the inclusion of 21st century skills at every level.
“In view of the changing horizon,” Sister Elaine said, “we are required, ethically and morally, to assure that our students are more than appropriately prepared to be active in the world in which they are going to live, to take on leadership and to participate fully in the world in which they are going to live.”
The new curricula will focuse on outcomes, Sister Elaine said. An outcomes-based education places priority upon what students are able to do at the end of the school year, instead of focusing on what materials are covered during the school year. With an outcomes-based curriculum in the grade and high schools, “we can assess the quality of learning because we are basing it on what (students) know at the end of a grade or course,” Sister Elaine said.
“When you are using outcomes-based curriculum,” she continued, “there are a number of ways to assess students” and their progress, including traditional assessment, which includes written tests; standardized testing, which shows what students know and what they need to know; and alternative assessment, which includes classroom projects, real-life assessment and other types of assessment. All forms of assessment are important and “give us the guidance for teaching and learning, for assessing learning and for moving forward.”
The new curricula will emphasize the development of critical thinking and collaborative skills that are necessary for success, Sister Elaine said, because “we want to be sure that we engage the minds of young people in the best ways possible.”
Additionally, the new curricula will emphasize “appropriate use of all electronic media,” Sister Elaine said. It is important for students to learn about how to morally and ethically use technology, because a significant amount of learning happens via the Internet. “If we do not teach them, in school, the appropriate use of media and do reliable research, then we have failed and that’s a major point for me.”
Building the new curricula for the diocesan Catholic schools is a long process, because it requires writing the entire curriculum for each grade level and then preparing teachers to implement it in the classroom, said Sister Elaine, who helped write new curricula with six diocese in New England in the past.
As the new curricula is built, the schools office will work with principals and teachers from the diocese’s schools, all of whom are state certified educators, and “we are going to use West Virginia standards and national standards, but our goal in creating the curriculum is that we are going to exceed West Virginia standards ... and we are putting great emphasis on the kinds of skills that are needed for the 21st century,” Sister Elaine said.
After the curriculum guidelines are completed, she said, each school will use the schools office’s guidelines to build a curriculum appropriate to its learning environment. This allows each school to focus on the needs of its students while working to assure that each student meets the same benchmarks as other students, regardless of which school he or she attends, during the course of his or her education, “strengthening Catholic school education across the board,” Sister Elaine said.
Implementing new curricula is difficult to accomplish, she continued, and “we will be working with teachers to do this ... we will never ask teachers to do something very different without preparing them to do it, so there will be appropriate inservices, professional development and training as we go along to keep our teachers continually prepared.”
Currently, the development of the new high school curriculum is advancing, Sister Elaine said, and work on the elementary curriculum recently began. |