Episode 129: What It Takes to Be Successful as a Curriculum Developer

Let’s talk about what it takes to be successful as a curriculum developer. I think teachers have the best background possible. We need more people who know what it's like in the classroom to be creating curriculum. Teachers have the most relevant experience. But that's not to say that we don't need to learn other skills.

In this episode I talk about what curriculum agencies look for that you can’t get in the classroom. Of course I get into lesson plan frameworks, curriculum pedagogies, and curriculum portfolios. But I also get into what curriculum agencies are looking for that isn’t so obvious.

 

Topics Discussed:

  • The importance of a growth mindset

  • Making a commitment to learning

  • Being open to feedback

Resources mentioned:

Related episodes and blog posts:

 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.

Today, I want to talk about what it takes to be successful as a curriculum developer, and I know that many teachers, I was one myself, but wanted want to transition into curriculum development, and I think teachers have the best background possible, like we need more people who know what it's like in the classroom to be creating curriculum we absolutely have the most relevant experience. But that's not to say that we don't need to learn other skills. And so I support teachers all the time through our curriculum programs in transitioning from the classroom to working in curriculum development. And the reason I created these programs is because there are some key foundational skills that teachers need to be successful in curriculum development. Often, when I hire for curriculum jobs, I get people's curriculum samples, and they're written in a way that they were really written for the classroom, for a teacher to follow on their own, that they wrote, not written for an outside audience, not written to be published in books shared with millions of teachers and students. And so when you think about transitioning into curriculum development, I want you to know that you're transitioning into a writing job. And so a lot of what you're going to need to learn is writing skills. And for many of us, that's a new thing to lean into. You'll be working as a writer, and so as you learn these skills, I really want you to develop a growth mindset that you don't have to know everything at once, and you don't have to know everything right out of the classroom, but you do need to put in some time to learning new skills and to developing your writing skills and to learning about different lesson plan frameworks and curriculum pedagogies and great thinking and research and curriculum development. You don't need to know everything at once, but you do need a commitment to learning. So I would say these are three things I really want you to keep in mind learning new skills you have a great background, but you likely are going to be able to and need to learn some new skills. And we learn by doing it, by trying things out, by getting feedback. All of this is something we include in our curriculum programs, getting feedback from expert curriculum coaches, because often we don't know what we don't know, but having a growth mindset and a commitment to learning and developing writing skills is key, and then when you're able to really see this as a journey that everyone's always learning new skills, you can really dive into working in curriculum development. There are so many ways that you can do this. You can work with ed tech companies. You can work with educational publishers. You can work with nonprofits or museums or cultural institutions. You can work for children's media outlets creating scripts for places like Sesame Street. You can work for school districts like the list goes on and on, and I would really think about curriculum broadly as any educational product that gets in front of students or teachers or families, like really anything right when students are playing apps, all of the content in those apps were created by curriculum developers, and so start studying. How are the questions asked in this app? What feedback do students get when they get the right answer or the wrong answer? And start really studying how these things were written. This is one of the best ways you can learn. Or if you love a certain ed tech site, and you go there and you get their resources and use them in your classroom, start thinking about how they're constructed, how they're written, what the tone is that they're written in any norms that you would say their writers are following. And start learning by really critically looking at the resources you're using. Or, let's say you maybe want to work for an educational publisher, like a textbook company, start really studying how they structure their lessons. Maybe there are bullet point instructions for teachers that all start with active verbs. Maybe they aren't giving any instruction about classroom management because it's a math textbook. Start thinking about what you can learn and the best writers learn by emulating the writers they admire. Same thing is true for curriculum development, you'll learn best by thinking, Okay, I'm going to write a lesson in the style of this ed tech site, and I'm going to look at one of the resources on this website, and I'm going to not copy it, but use it as a model. And so I really think that embracing the process is key. You have valuable expertise, but you're going to need to learn how to write in a new way, and so not feeling like you know it all already, which I know that you probably don't, right, but taking the time and really creating some great samples of your work will get your foot in the door.


Yeah, and this is really where I would want you to create an awesome portfolio, through this research, through this commitment to learning about curriculum development and pedagogies. I want you to create some stellar samples of your work before you share them with people who are hiring for curriculum roles. I want you to share them with somebody else. This could be a teacher friend, this could be a mentor. This could even be somebody who doesn't work in education, but I want you to get you their feedback on your writing. This can be, is this clear? This could be looking for typos. This could be looking for missing punctuation marks, like whatever it is, show it to someone else and get their feedback, and then implement their feedback before you send it out as a supporting material for a job description, when you write things, it can be so easy to get in our own heads, and we need feedback, and so I really Want you to put in the effort and the time to make your portfolio shine. When I hire for curriculum jobs, I look at people's samples and portfolios first, and I love hiring teachers like, you know this, right? Like I love teachers. I absolutely want teachers to be curriculum developers, but so often I get samples that are full of grammatical mistakes or aren't cohesive, or are written in different tones and are really full of notes like they're not polished. And I want your curriculum samples to be polished. I want you to think about, oh, could somebody publish this on a website, in a book, in a textbook, whatever it is, and could it be pretty good to go That's what your curriculum sample should look like. It should look like it is cohesive with the curriculum you see out there in the world, being bought by people being taught in schools. And so I really want you, if you want to transition into curriculum development, to put time and effort into your portfolio. I also think it's really important to be able to talk about the why behind your curriculum. Why did you create this curriculum? This way? Being able to talk about this is key. When you go on job interviews, people will ask you, why did you create this curriculum this way? And you want to have reasons behind your approach. You want to be able to talk about the why. You want to be able to use effective teaching practices and pedagogy and so really, being able to talk about and know the why is so important, and so often we create curriculum that's just replicating what we've been asked to do in the classroom without a real strong reason why. And so I want you as a curriculum developer to be really clear on why you create curriculum a certain way. Maybe you really believe in student centered curriculum. So all of the curriculum you create involve students actively in their learning, or maybe you believe that curriculum should be inclusive, so you include many different access points in the curriculum that you create, whatever it is for you think about what you think is important and intentionally include that in your curriculum. And if you're interested in really taking this next step and committing to learning and growing as a curriculum developer, I would love for you to join our curriculum development Foundations Program. This is a program I created for this purpose. You know, after getting teachers as samples for curriculum jobs, I was hiring for and realizing, oh, there are some key foundational skills that teachers need to learn to be successful in curriculum development. And I want to show you that, because I do think that teachers are the best people to create curriculum so if you're interested in joining us, I'll put the link to the curriculum development Foundations program in the show notes, and you can check that out, and I would really just encourage you to practice writing, to look at curriculum that you come across with a critical eye, think about what you can learn from the curriculum that resonates with you, and then intentionally create some writing samples and get feedback on those samples before sending them out as part of your job applications. This part is key, because we want feedback from as many people as possible. So again, we would love to have you in the Curriculum Foundations program. If that feels like a good fit for you, you will get paired with a curriculum coach who will give you that feedback, and so you'll know that your curriculum samples are ready to shine, and we're really cheering you on. Hope that if it feels interesting to transition to curriculum development, that you feel inspired to take that next step. You absolutely can do it, and your skills are needed. 


Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Lily Jones