Reflecting back on UBD, Curriculum Planning and CCCS

Where do I begin to cover it all. Never having written curriculum or even closely followed curriculm, since I am a speech therapist, this class scared the _ _ _ _ out of me! The 5 page syllabus and course description had me in a panic. Fortunately, I began reading the UBD bible after our first class. From then on I said I can do this because I was the type of student that would have excelled when I was in my K-12 grades. Never able to memorize info for the test and not understanding information unless it was presented in a meaningful way, UBD was designed for me!

I have learned that I can survive as a non-teacher at this graduate level and also that UBD planning makes more sense to me than most people. To me it is a much more straightforward and functional way to present information to all students. I wonder if all curriculum was written this way, backward design, and then was taught this way would many of our learning disable students make it more successfully in regular educational classes. It always seems to me that students are either memorizing information or trying to figure out why are we learning this material, what am I going to get out of this and how can I make sense of this?

I plan to continue to talk about UBD to as many educators as possible and get this going in Midland Park where I live and where I was on the BOE for 12 years. What a shame I took this class this semester and not last semester. I still have my BOE buddies who will get the professional development $$$ in place for this to be a priority.