Curriculum SWOT Analysis

For the winter term, I’m taking a STEAM course called Social Entrepreneurship and you. So far, we’ve completed the majority of our first unit: "Organize", which was focused on behavior through individuals and groups. During this first unit, we had a very rich internal investigation. I was introduced to a number of different concepts like I-O Psychology (Industrial and Organizational Psychology) and I learned how to solve equations with complex numbers.

In class, my classmates and I took a few personality tests: the Myers-Briggs test, TKI Conflict, and the Big Five. I’ve completed the Meyers-Briggs test before and according to my results, I am an INFP (which surprisingly was the same as when I took it years ago). With the results of these tests, I saw a common theme between them all, being that I am more of an empathetic, creative, and introverted person. Reflecting on my results from all tests, they weren’t that surprising and as a senior, I’ve seen these work for and against me throughout my high school experience. At GCE, I’m not only able to, but encouraged to integrate creativity into my learning experience. One of the biggest ways that I’ve done that is through action projects and independent studies. From my experience here, our curriculum helps me with using all of my strengths and weaknesses to get the most of what I need out of the classes. The teachers are a great help with that and it'c commonly encouraged to do so "It's you're curriculum, not just a curriculum in a perfect world" says my STEAM teacher, AMD. In addition to being able to grow in that area, I’ve also been able to grow in a social aspect as well, although I am introverted, at GCE I've learned to be more comfortable with expressing myself and actively being apart of a close community like we have here.

For the external investigation of this unit, we prepared for our Action project by compiling a SWOT chart (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) as well as interviewing different members of GCE’s community. For the Action Project, the guiding question was “How can we improve our school?”. To answer this question, I completed a SWOT analysis of GCE’s curriculum as well as a proposal of how we could improve the individual student experience at our school.

 

After completing a SWOT analysis of the curriculum at GCE and assessing how the curriculum covers Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I talked with a couple of students and staff members and collected some additional information. With this information, I mostly took away that students desire to get more out of their classes based on where they’re at. I spoke with two students about the curriculum at the school and both of them had something to say about the pace of the classroom. One of my classmates, being at GCE for all 4 years had things to say about the rigor and coverage of what we’re learning. “I think that it isn’t rigorous enough. I think that there are a lot of good things about it (the curriculum), it teaches you to think differently, it teaches you to question why you’re learning it but it definitely misses on the key aspects ... it’s scary to me to know that my high school education isn’t as good as it could’ve been.” -CM. Another one of my classmates had related opinions on the curriculum, “Sometimes I feel like we could spend more time on certain subjects to get more familiar with some of the traditional subjects so that I feel more secure with the transition between high school and college” -TM.

I wasn’t surprised to hear things like that, as it has come up before in classroom discussions. With this information, I came to the conclusion that although we are all exposed to the same coursework, students should be able to feel comfortable about what they're learning as well as how it's going to benefit them. There were a number of improvements that I thought would be beneficial to the curriculum design like an Individualized Student plan, a better way to collect student experiences and feedback, college and or post-graduation prep classes, more test prep classes, and alternative assignment opportunities. 

A SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based) goal is a system that helps make sure goals are practical and digestible. As a senior, I’ve finally completed all my college applications and seen my peers go through the process as well. I feel like I had a very good support system through my family, GCE counseling, and an extracurricular program. With knowing all that I do now, the best improvement plan that I would say is to have it required that students take two workshops focused on post-graduation exploration and preparedness. This year I took a workshop “Personal Branding 101” which focused on us presenting ourselves the right way to prospective employers and college counselors. Towards the end of the class, we focused mostly on college applications. This class was helpful and I’m glad I had the time to do those things during my school days, however it would be more beneficial to have classes based solely on college prep as well as alternative options. Here is my improvement plan based on the SMART acronym as well as my experience.

Proposal: Provide 2 required workshops for students to educate and prepare for life after graduation. The first course being towards the end of junior year and the second being at the beginning of senior year.

Specific- Facilitate 2 workshops for upper class students, that exposes students to the opportunities that could rise after graduation and helps guide the students through college prep/planning.

Measurable- This would be required for each student and treated as an actual course. 

Achievable- We have the resources and connections to provide to students, Staff is already a big support for students, it would be more beneficial if provided structurally. 

Relevant- GCE actively wants students to be prepared for “the real world” and having these workshops, it would add more college prep that students need and desire during this process. It’s important to stress that these would not ONLY be for college prep but as well as a place where students can learn about alternative paths and ultimately be aware of what’s best for them after graduation.

Time-Based- I think that this is something that could start next year, given the fact that this year we have already started exploring more options for college prep classes through the Personal Branding workshop.

As far as my role in this plan goes, I plan on giving more feedback on this subject and getting more opinions from other seniors in my class so that the seniors and juniors next year would have more support from GCE than we got. I believe that this plan could help so many students be more confident in what they want to do and how to go about it. I’m glad that I was able to use a lot of my personal experience while coming up with this goal. For me, my process has been pretty smooth compared to some of my other peers only for the fact that I’m apart of a college-prep/development program. Not everyone has accessibility to that and as a school, we could do better with providing that support in a more foundational way. I’m also glad that this could potentially help students in the
future.

Citations: 

SL interview  MW. January 30, 2020.

“INFP in depth”, Truity, https://www.truity.com/personality-type/INFP

AMD talks. MW. January 31, 2020.

“Our Values”, Global Citizenship Experience Lab School, https://gcelabschool.org/about/

TEM: on curriculum. MW. January 30, 2020.

CM Interview. MW.. January 30, 2020.