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Curriculum Renewal

Within the next three years, Milton will renew our curriculum, K–12, relying on our faculty, in dialogue with each other and with educational leaders from outside of Milton. Renewal includes all disciplines and curricular strands, as well as particular School-wide themes.

Upper School

Curriculum renewal in the Upper School will occur through a continuous process, at regular intervals. The Upper School leadership team and a steering committee will oversee the reviews, led by each department. The renewal process will deliberately engage expertise and perspectives from outside of Milton.

Each department will take responsibility for completing a review of the curriculum that responds to:

  • students’ current and anticipated needs for knowledge and skills in the particular discipline;
  • emerging trends in content and modes of instruction from outside of Milton;
  • opportunities for collaboration within the discipline and across disciplines;
  • opportunities to use off-campus resources to enrich the classroom education, provide real-time exploration, and apply competencies;
  • the role of technology in supporting teaching and learning;
  • appropriate assessment strategies.

The Upper School has established an initial sequence of departmental reviews.

The steering committee and leadership team will work across departmental reviews to address common objectives and issues, and develop integrated solutions and improvements. These will include: graduation requirements, meeting common curricular and educational goals (e.g. “analytical thinking, data analysis, and writing”), schedule, workload and pace, and technology.


K–8

The principal will establish a K–8 Curriculum Committee (2013) charged with reviewing grade-level and cross-grade curriculum to achieve greater depth and sequential cohesion, and to develop sustainable mechanisms for ongoing innovation and renewal. The Committee will:

  • act as a design lab to seed K–8 program ideas; research best practices; provide leadership in incorporating leading-edge innovations;
  • develop consistent principles and authentic approaches for assessing student learning in K–8;
  • solicit faculty proposals for rewriting grade-level curricula; make recommendations to administration about these proposals.

K–8 will use its comprehensive curriculum map (completed in 2012) to evaluate gaps, identify cross-grade connections, and highlight opportunities.

The principal and the Curriculum Committee will establish an overall schedule of review projects. A review team, responsible to the Curriculum Committee, will direct each project. View the Curriculum Review Timeline for the 2013–2018 schedule of reviews.

K–8 curriculum review will also address schedule and workload for K–8 students, including opportunities to use time more effectively in support of curriculum goals; the role of technology in K–8 curriculum; the identification of new instructional technology; and staffing models that can support greater flexibility and innovation.

School-wide

Curriculum renewal efforts will also consider School-wide priorities:

  • Develop points of engagement with the world outside Milton, including global and international perspectives that expand both intellectual and experiential horizons for students.
  • Support the health and well-being of students by attending to their social and emotional needs in a context of rigorous academic and extracurricular life. Address questions of pace and workload across K–12 during the curriculum renewal process and consider the use of time as a catalyst to well-being.
  • Take better advantage of Milton’s proximity to Boston, its intellectual and creative resources, and its diverse communities, as a catalyst to new approaches to learning and understanding.
  • Create mechanisms in the curriculum to connect students across grades in K–12 in meaningful ways.

K–8 and Upper School curriculum renewal feed directly into other aspects of the strategic plan, including faculty professional development, master planning (in terms of academic facility needs driven by new curriculum strategies), and technology planning.

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