Curriculum design and instruction
I taught language arts, AP language and composition, and art history as a national board certified teacher for ten years.
Curriculum design is a lot like writing good UX copy:
You need an objective and strategic approach. That means you need to know your audience to know their current level of subject understanding and desire to learn more. So you have to research: conduct interviews to know where they’re at and what they want to accomplish.
Then you need to craft user-focused curriculums. You have to craft your lessons with clear, helpful, and appropriate writing for each situation and lesson. Your words are tools that help your users (the students) engage with the subject to accomplish their goals and yours.
And it takes collaborative teamwork to create a successful lesson plan: you have to involve other dedicated stakeholders like other teachers, students’ parents, and the students themselves.
Finally, you need to monitor and analyze the data to see what’s working.
The handy thing about teaching is that you get real-time data the minute you start teaching your lessons, so you can continually tweak your words and lessons to help achieve greater success for your students.
Here are some examples of that should showcase the work I’ve done:
Lindbergh high school’s first Certified AP language and composition course
I created the course content, wrote out the year-long curriculum, received AP certification, and made constant yearly tweaks to improve coursework and student performance. Here’s the syllabus if you’re interested in seeing how I planned a year-long advanced placement course.
National Board certified teacher
It took around 100 pages, four tests, and a lot of hard work, but I earned my national board certificate in 2015. If you’re unfamiliar with the process, this gives a good summary. But in a nutshell, it certifies that you’ve reached a rigorous standard of teaching and hold students to the highest standard of achievement.
Art History Seattle Art Museum assignment
I worked with the Seattle Art Museum’s teacher resource department to craft a student-guided project. I set up meetings with the museum and shared various iterations of the project with educational staff at the museum, integrated their feedback, and created an art assignment students enjoyed engaging in. The student assignment is linked below for a small taste of what the project looked like.