Balance in Curriculum

The last week was a very busy week as we had ERO at school.
Having discussion during staff meetings and Management Team meetings was a great PLD for us.

Out of the many questions, one of the questions that the Review Team asked was how do we know that we have covered science into our topics. They also mentioned that the Maori and Pacific students preferred to take Arts as their subjects and not science when they moved into universities.
Yes, that may be the case because our Maori and Pacific students have a talent for Arts and this talent runs into the families from generations to generations. This talent is very visible in our students and we do need to make sure that our students pursue this talent.
I also agree that we do need to have a balance in our curriculum. We have to make sure that we teach science to our students as well otherwise we would never be able to identify students who are interested in science. Students need to given the experience of science before they can decide whether they will like to pursue it later in their lives.
At university I had learnt that children have to be exposed to different ideas and subjects for them to open the window for that subject. The lecturer at the time had explained it like this:  A child's brain has lots of windows. All those windows have to be opened through an experience. This means that there will be an Arts window, a language window, a science window etc. As students have more and more experience of a subject, they will get better and better at that subject. This is why there needs to be a balance in the curriculum.
The immediate need is to go through different inquiry topics we will be teaching at school and make sure that there is a balance in our curriculum.
We teachers surely hold this responsibility that we provide opportunities and experiences for all different areas of the curriculum.