Curriculum 21: Mapping Our Students' Future

Providing a dynamic array of professional support services since 1991, Curriculum Designers, Inc. has achieved an exceptional reputation nationally and internationally.

Much of our practice is based on the work of Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, whose groundbreaking models for Curriculum Mapping, Integrated Instruction, and Active Literacy are the basis for education practice throughout the world. Most recently, her new book, Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World, focuses on upgrading school curriculum to integrate new technologies and global perspectives in a practical transition.

Another new release, The Curriculum Mapping Planner: Templates, Tools, and Resources for Effective Professional Development, written with Ann Johnson, highlights the Fours Phase Model for Curriculum Mapping and provides the foundational structure for implementing and sustaining Curriculum 21. Dr. Jacobs and the CDI Faculty use the theory and practice in these books as they work with schools across they country and internationally in implementing the principles of Curriculum Mapping and Curriculum 21.

Four Phases of 21st Century Curriculum Mapping

• Laying the Foundation: Establish a prologue to 21st Century teaching and learning.

• Launching the Process: Create 21st Century skills for students and teachers.

• Maintain, Sustain, Integrate: 21st Century assessments aligned to today's standards.

• Advancing 21st Century Skills: Replace and upgrade dated curriculum.

21st Century Action

• Generate a long-term action
  plan to sustain and integrate
  digital tools into each
  classroom.

• Design comprehensive
  differentiated professional
  development integrating
  21st Century digital tools.

• Articulate and obtain a
  commitment from each
  teacher to upgrade an
  integrated use of digital
  tools into the ongoing
  curriculum.

• Articulate and obtain a
  commitment from each
  administrator to upgrade an
  integrated use of digital
  tools into a current initiative.

21st Century Students

• Model the establishment of
  21st Century benchmark
  assessments that require
  21st Century presentations
  by students.

• Implement virtual courses
  that are aligned to state
  standards.

• Develop teacher supervisor/
  evaluator criteria for
  assessing teacher
  performance in the use of
  instructional technology.

• Establish rigorous formative
  benchmark assessments for
  21st Century schools that
  reflect the growing capacity
  of modern learners.

21st Century Schools

• Replace and upgrade dated
  content curriculum through
  focused review for each
  discipline.

• Identify contemporary
  interdisciplinary issues for
  study to prepare students
  for global challenges,
  economic shifts, local
  sustainability, and world
  language instruction.

• Begin the process of
  rethinking school formats
  and structures to support
  sustainable 21st Century
  learning.

• Guide school leadership
  teams in long-term plans for
  implementation of 21st
  Century curriculum.