Making the Curriculum Adaptable Posted on April 10, 2008 Marc Brackett (bio) explains that flexibility in curriculum implementation increases buy-in among teachers.

I haven’t been running around soliciting, but when I meet with schools, they tend to be very motivated, interested in doing this kind of work. Whether or not they do it well is yet other story. I've had a lot of variability in that area.

And the one thing, we’re sort of taking a corporate culture in mind for this, is that we know that the first year, I end my presentations now when I do my training saying, the first year, just have fun with this.

Don’t be stressed. Don’t try to make every lesson work. Do a few lessons. Just try it. Feel comfortable with it. Make this curriculum work for who you are as a teacher because we realize that so many curriculum, they’re so prescribed.

I’m an extrovert who likes to lecture and jump up and down on a stage. And I have to adapt whatever I’m going to do in my class to that style. Now, I’m very, I’ll share with you anything about my emotions. I have no qualms about sharing times when I was alienated as a kid, but a lot of teachers are not comfortable with that.

So we’ve got to make a curriculum adaptable. And that’s what we’ve been really careful about in work is saying there’s general lessons that have to get done, but you have to do them in a way that makes sense for you.

And we get much more buy-in that way. And I think it’s important for curriculum to have that kind of flexibility.

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