Coming Soon! Making Maps That Meet the Needs of All Students

As mission driven educators, we believe that ALL students can learn and that our God calls us to ensure student success through academic rigor and deeply rooted faith formation. Today’s emerging disciples come from all walks of life and bring with them a rich slate of learning styles, academic needs, diverse languages, and global cultures.

Challenges arise when we impose a standardized approach on non-standard students. Benchmarks are vital in providing a foundation and a pathway to meeting goals leading to career and college. The journey towards accomplishing those standards requires us to think in ways that are creative, messy, reflective and that veer off the pages of traditional textbooks into a wider world of reflective, research-based resources that we may not have studied in our teacher preparation classes.

Most of us have participated in professional development pinpointing current best practices like differentiation, intervention, social emotional learning, gifted education, and data-driven decision making. But how do we glean the golden moments from ongoing professional growth, gather those concepts into something meaningful, and then incorporate what inspires us into a school wide curriculum? How beneficial is a curriculum map over time if we are willing to settle for a one-size-fits-all approach to our course outlines?

Curriculum Trak users know that mapping offers a structure to document curriculum. We first focus on the initial “data dump” as we identify units and standards. Then we add depth to the database to include instructional methods and assessment strategies. Once these first phases are completed, we can sometimes lull ourselves into thinking our maps are done. For those ready to venture into the next phases of mapping, and who are determined to put their professional development into practice, there are very concrete ways to refine our existing maps to reflect the needs of today’s learners.

This spring, Curriculum Trak will host a Level 2 training opportunity – Making Maps That Meet the Needs of All Learners. This 8-hour course will be offered in two-hour sessions over four days. The course begins with an overview of current trends in school demographics. We will reflect on how Jesus, the Master Teacher, approaches his diverse “students,” and then look at what some of the experts in today’s educational field have to offer.
This is a hands-on workshop where we will discuss and implement specific strategies to ensure that your curriculum maps meet the needs of all your learners – from refining a clearly articulated curriculum to defining teaching methods and resources that embrace differentiation, language learning skills, intervention and more. We will include specific practices that fit into the Curriculum Trak framework and that you will be able to work with immediately and share with your mapping teams. We are also inviting your school’s intervention specialist to participate.

There will be time built into the training for participants to interact with one or more of their existing maps to incorporate strategies discussed in the module. The final day will culminate with “show and tell,” where participants will be expected to share one of their refined maps.

Recognizing the gifts of those seated in our classrooms is a first step; how we build upon those gifts is another. We look forward to partnering with you as we Make Maps that Meet the Needs of All Students.

Four Remote Sessions – February 13-16

Session 1 – Monday, February 13, 1-3 p.m. EST
Session 2 – Tuesday, February 14. 1-3 p.m. EST
Session 3 – Wednesday, February 15, 1-3 p.m. EST
Session 4 – Thursday, February 16, 1-3 p.m. EST

Registration Required: Only registered users will be permitted to attend this training and earn a certificate of participation. Registered users are invited to bring along your school’s Intervention Specialist to the training. To register, an administrative user within your account can click through the Help button to find the Registration option. Information for attending the event will be provided to each registered attendee directly.

Lynn Cuffari has been committed to faith-based education for nearly 30 years. Most recently, she worked as a teacher and principal for both the Diocese of Tucson, Arizona and the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. Lynn graduated from the University of Arizona in 1982 with a B.A. in Journalism. In 1983, she married Joseph Cuffari, an Air Force officer. While stationed in Naples, Italy, Lynn earned her M.Ed. from Framingham State University of Massachusetts, which had a program for military families stationed overseas. In 2001, she joined the faculty at Immaculate Heart School in Tucson, Arizona as the middle school ELA teacher. In 2006, she became the principal at IHS, leading that school from 2006 until 2011 when she became principal at St. Augustine Catholic High School. In 2019, Lynn “retired” from St. Augustine to join her husband who had accepted a position in Washington, D.C. Not quite ready to sit still during the pandemic, she completed the 2020-2021 academic year as the middle school ELA teacher for the Diocese of Arlington’s Saint Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. Lynn is also a mentor for Notre Dame’s Latino Enrollment Institute. She continues to work part-time as an educational consultant for Curriculum Trak as well. She and her husband enjoy cherishing every moment they can spend with their son Joe, daughter-in-law Grace, and grandchildren Vinny and Carolina.