CHERRY BREZA S.

COSTANILLA

How may a teacher take into account the formal, informal, and hidden curriculum in both planning
and teaching?

Nowadays, teachers are bombarded with so many things to do and things that

must be done. Teachers are not just teaching directly to the students, but she must take

into considerations that her teaching must be in accordance to the curriculum. The

curriculum has been defined throughout the course in many different ways and its

concept and function may slightly differ for different people.

However, one of the definitions that I found most fitting is that the curriculum is a

plan of action for learning and therefore we, as educators, have the task of interpreting

and implementing the curriculum that is handed to us. This is not a simple task

because, as we saw in the course, there are a certain number of curriculum aspects

(formal, informal and hidden) that need to be taken into account when both planning

and teaching.

Within the curriculum, we also outline a process to help teachers create their own

daily lessons. A successful curriculum should also allow for collaborative study with

colleagues. When teachers have a good curriculum that works, they need to study it

methodically, but they need not always do it alone. Working with colleagues in

professional learning communities can enhance this process. Spending dedicated time

with one another discussing lessons, objectives, and working through problems

accelerates and deepens teachers’ math knowledge. Teachers can use the curriculum

as a guide to creating their own lessons and then give them to colleagues for review
and shared use. Classroom teachers should feel comfortable and confident with what

they are teaching, and peer feedback can strengthen their skills and identify places

where they may need support.

In a less formally organized but entirely 21st century way, individual teachers

may also choose to join an online community of teacher-learners who want to improve

their math practice by engaging with each other and our curriculum writers around a

shared instructional tool. We see curriculum as something that can help teachers better

understand the math and teaching sequences at hand, a curriculum that is instructive

for students and educative for teachers, too. Providing this kind of rich, job-embedded

support to teachers hasn’t traditionally been the role of curriculum developers and the

textbook industry, but it should be.