My current role involves shepherding our residential curriculum and training and advising our professional staff on our goals, outcomes, and strategies. Every year I plan for the fall in the spring and vice versa, aided by an active and resourceful group of individuals on our curriculum committee. During the summer, I tweak a few things here and there, make a bunch of updates to documents and calendars, and prep fresh materials for fall training. As the beginning of the semester approaches, there’s always that nagging feeling…you know the one. The “I swear I’m forgetting something as I’m boarding the plane” feeling. Some years, I’m over the proverbial Atlantic Ocean when I remember: SHOOT. That’s what I wanted to do…
We’ve all been there. We have aspirational ideas in January about things we normally execute in October and it’s hard to make it all happen. If you work with a residential curricular model, there can be a lot of pressure to get the curriculum “set” before the semester starts and present it as a Ten Commandments inscribed in stone rather than a living document. When we work with curriculum, we should feel empowered to approach our work with flexibility and grace, knowing that being nimble improves the experience for our students in the long run. Here are X ideas to help you stay on your curricular toes throughout the year.
- Loosen your grip on your facilitation guides. If your learning outcomes are pretty specific, you may have strategies that demand detailed and prescriptive facilitation guides. However, my observation is that many Student Affairs or Residence Life learning outcomes are fairly broad and focus on high-level developmental areas. There are many ways to “develop healthy relationships” and our guides should reflect that! Instead of telling your staff exactly what to do, give them one or two non-negotiables and a few jumping off points. Then trust that they know their communities and let them take it from there.
- Build in room for serendipitous collaborations. Not all departments will know their full semester’s calendar of events in July. Sometimes people come to us in September with an opportunity to partner or try something new. And sometimes it’s best to take advantage of the energy and enthusiasm of that new idea in the moment instead of kicking it to the next year. Try designing a curriculum that leaves your staff with enough bandwidth to take advantage of serendipitous opportunities that emerge midway through the semester. Or, be willing to take something off of everyone’s plates if you want to graft in something new.Â
- Pay attention to learning outcomes during the semester, not just after. It’s all too easy to wait until the end of the semester or even the whole year to dig into the data and “check” to see what learning outcomes you achieved. If you’re tracking learning outcomes for each program, keep an eye on whether you’re achieving what you think you are. And if your strategies seem to be missing the mark, do you have assessment data to tell you what is being achieved? Maybe you simply need to adjust what outcome you should be anticipating. Or maybe you need to retool the strategy to support your original goals. The semester break is a natural time to make bigger changes, while smaller adjustments can happen “mid-flight.”
- Be willing to admit when it just ain’t working. It’s so hard to admit when we get it wrong. Our research, our theory, heck—even our pride—can sometimes become a blindfold that prevents us from seeing what’s happening on the ground. If a strategy sounds good on paper but is falling flat in real life, it’s time to change course. Quick story: several years ago, we introduced “weekly hangouts” to our RAs’ curricular responsibilities. Just like an office hours concept, the idea was to provide residents a routine time and place they could find their RAs every week. The novelty of weekly hangouts wore thin pretty quickly and staff were really challenged to maintain these programs the entire semester. So, we slashed the requirement to the first six weeks and saw a massive improvement in both staff morale and outcomes.Â
Curricular models can feel like enormous beasts at times. But these beasts can be tamed—or at least tempered—with a willingness to be flexible and evolve as needed. How will you leave room for a “PIVOT!” in your curriculum this year?
