What is a "21st Century Curriculum"? (Part 6 of 9)

The current tagline of Christian Heritage Academy is "A 21st Century Curriculum. An Eternal Perspective." This post continues a nine-part series explainign what we mean by the first half of that phrase: A 21st Century Curriculum.

6. Increasingly differentiated learning. At some point in the future, every child will have an IEP (Individual Educational Plan) tailored to their own learning intelligences and pace of learning. We already achieve some of this through smaller classes, individualized tutoring and mentoring. Our Veracross system will assist in tracking students better and allowing parents to partner more effectively, especially in understanding the pace at which individual students learn. The commercial software is not yet written to do this on a class by class basis for all grades, but noted economist, Clayton Christensen, in his book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, notes that the majority of private school students will be using such software by 2013. We are beginning the process in the Upper School and those teachers will collaborate with the Middle School teachers to pass on best practices each year while we await even more powerful software tools. The key is to prepare for it through technology upgrades, staff training and curriculum prepared to absorb such different pedagogies and methodologies. The result will be teachers who are focused more on individual tutoring and meeting children where they are each day, rather than on lectures presenting one size fits all lesson plans.