ABOUT OUR
PROGRAM A GLIMPSE INTO TEACHING AND LEARNING AT BURKE’S Burke’s academic program is grounded in educational best practices while also meeting the evolving needs of our students. As a school that values dynamic and nimble curriculum, Burke’s empowers its teachers to constantly reflect upon, revisit, and re-envision what they are teaching and how it is being delivered and applied. This document offers a historical glimpse of the “Materials Covered” paragraphs that were part of last year’s report cards and presents a peek into how Burke’s teachers engaged students in rigorous, joyful, and inclusive learning during the 201718 school year. With new teachers joining the Burke’s faculty this year, fresh units designed by teachers based on professional development
workshops, and specific time devoted to cross-grade/crossdiscipline collaboration, students will experience many new and innovative units alongside Burke’s traditionally celebrated learning themes. Two examples of innovative new curricula that our teachers will launch during the 2018-19 school year are a new unit that asks Upper School students to examine gender stereotypes in the media and a series of new Lower School workshop-style math units.
Mike Matthews
Director of Curriculum and Program Innovation
HOW WE THINK ABOUT CURRICULUM Burke’s curriculum development is based on the Understanding by Design (UbD) framework. This model for designing and implementing curriculum begins not with activities, skills, and content, but instead with thinking about teaching for “enduring understanding.” We we want our students to use and apply these “enduring understandings” in real-world situations, both now and throughout their lives. With this well-established and dynamic approach, teachers are empowered to design engaging, relevant, and purposeful units that will best prepare our students for the future.