At NCRC we believe in children’s capacity to ask questions and engage in deep discovery around meaningful topics. In contrast to teacher-directed classrooms, where the topic is often determined in advance, at NCRC, teachers collaborate with their students in generating the curriculum. Within this emergent curriculum, our teachers are observers – noticing not just what children are playing and doing, but also how they are playing and what they are saying. For instance, the classroom teachers may facilitate an investigation into an obscure question the children have: How does a nose know what the smell is? The teacher’s job is not to know all the answers. Rather, it is to investigate, collaborate, and learn alongside children.  An emergent curriculum requires that teachers respect the voice of each child and their unique learning styles and talents, while meeting established standards in the five learning domains. This results in a responsive, observation-based curriculum. 

The following assumptions, offered in Susan Stacey’s book, Emergent Curriculum in Early Childhood Settings, provide a clear picture of what our emergent curriculum looks like at NCRC.  Our curriculum is:

• framed by the teacher, yet initiated by the child. It allows for collaboration and gives everyone a voice.

• responsive to the child, allowing teachers to build upon children’s interests, ideas and questions.

• one in which teachers take on the role of facilitator, using what they see and hear to create opportunities for children to dig deeper and discover more.

• is flexible and dynamic.

• made visible through various forms of documentation. The documentation informs decisions about the way to move forward.