I'm Back...

Well it's been a long week as I was in PEI for the National Student Leadership Conference. Amidst the chaos, the excitement, and the occasional down time I couldn't help but think about curricular issues. I felt myself drawn to the idea of extra-curricular as a title for those events we advise or coach. Why is it extra? Is it because it is done during after traditional school time?

I believe that events such as sports, drama, music, SRC are all very important and often times this is where some students excel and live for, not school. I have known two students over the last couple of years that have lived for their "extra" curricular. To the point that one of them basically comes for just that reason and then when the season was over left or dropped out.

I like the idea of co-curricular instead running alongside the tradiational curricular subjects. For some students this hands on living experience is more powerful and more life altering than subject areas. I am sure in a lot of "extra" curricular events one can incorporate real world experiences from subject matter within the event. In drama we look at values and morals to help define character roles. Math is used in construction. Etc. SRC has much of this moreso ingrained in this.

I believe that by calling it "extra" curricular is doing it a diservice. Co-curricular encompassing curricular ideas and subjects would be more proper.

This idea began as we finished that chart in class about the various types of "isms". I find myself following around with Dewey and the idea of experiential learning being the best and most productive and this reminded me of the "extra" curricular events.