your curriculum
How will you choose to attune?
Curriculum flows from currere—to run—coursing our past and future within our present lived experience.
As a young teacher, I studied curriculum through a lens of currere which informed my early theorizing of teaching and learning—curriculum as a verb, a living process (not a noun or prescribed manual of methods). What I didn’t see then, but I know now is that I was called into the study of currere by my inner listening of what felt most true to learning. Currere continues to feel true and deeply rooted in what I know about process… processes for learning, teaching, leading, creating, and being alive.
Everything is currency—condition of flowing—in and out, give and receive.
Everything flows—the course of our days, the currents of our exchanges, the breath of our presence, the paths of our learning, the discernment of our listening.
How we attune to this is our curriculum.
How resonant is the curriculum you’re living now?
Do your days unfold with the breath of your surroundings? Or does it feel like you’re pushing against a current inviting you somewhere else?
What about the children in your life? Does the curriculum of their learning let them listen to themselves? Does it flow with their light and joy and dreams?
Our curriculum lives inside us.
We breathe with its currents through what we pay attention to, how curious we have the courage to be, and how deeply we let ourselves listen.
Curricula isn’t to be outsourced. We are resourced from within. We receive as we give up, give over, give into our release at the bottom of the exhale.
Do you know this place? This place of root and sky, seed and becoming, the source of all currency.
We resource here.
You may know this place well. You may visit it often or only sense a glimpse. You may call it by another name. You may not know what I’m talking about.
Whatever each of us may know of this place, we have access to its currency. We all breathe.
Each breath is a place to die and begin again, to choose how we attune to our present lived experience.
Marvel at a bee’s path through a garden. Listen to children immersed in their play. Carefully select what we turn on and off. Make space to hear ourselves. Follow the wisdom of our dreams. Open our hearts to our neighbors. Invite curiosity to what we think we know. Trust that it’s all connected—each thought, word, question, hum, and prayer.
Humans experience twenty-thousand or more breaths per day.
Pause and bring your attention to one.
Follow its path all the way in and all the way out.
When you get to the bottom of the exhale, stay a bit longer than usual.
You may feel nothing—a sense of empty.
Stay here.
Don’t fill it up or cover it up or run away.
The empty is the everything.
Attune to its current and find your curriculum.
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with listening awe, Melissa
Children Whole and Free
An 11-week course with optional online gathering sessions for parents, grandparents, guardians, educators, and caregivers who want to nourish a strong foundation where children know themselves as whole and free.
If you’re a student of curriculum theory or would like to read more about currere in contexts of education, you might be interested in: Curriculum theorizing: The Reconceptualists; What is Curriculum Theory?; or the books in this photo:
We are in a moment of collective emergence. I’m in the compost pile along with you, and also…
I can see where we’re going and how we build the bridges to get there.
If you, too, are ready to step into and create in the new paradigm, let’s work together.
