In a meeting this morning, we learned a lot about a social curriculum called "I Can Problem Solve". The speaker showed some great examples from the curriculum that help students understand and deal with the variety of emotions they may feel in different situations. The speaker herself is convinced that the curriculum is a great one, and her enthusiasm makes me excited about using it. It makes sense to me that understanding and dealing with our emotions is a learned skill; it doesn't just happen.
The curriculum has lots of important words that students should incorporate and there are 60+ lessons that the teacher should go through. So I'm at this point of being excited about the curriculum and wanting to use it very effectively. Part of me wants to read the whole thing start to finish, memorize the key points, and then use it. But I realized that to do so is not really possible. People always maximize their learning when they combine book knowledge with practical application. I realized that the way for me to get the most out of it is to become really familiar with how the book is organized so that I can use it as a reference for specific situations that come up. I've learned to wait to study something until it's relevant in my life because then I pay much closer attention. If sometime down the road I become a regular classroom teacher where I'm actually teaching the lessons, I will definitely go through the book from start to finish.
It may seem like I'm thinking too much about this one curriculum that I just learned about today, but the concept of cool resources has ben on my mind for a long time. The school has given other great books to the teachers to use, and I've had the same thought to read and memorize the whole thing before using them. So I'm glad that I have found a more effective way to become familiar with a curriculum. In future entries of this blog, I plan to give updates on how I've been applying things I've found in these resources.
