Once upon a time, in the thriving kingdom of Glendale Community College, there lived wise faculty, brave deans, and the ever-watchful dragon named Accreditation. Every few years, this dragon would awaken, demanding evidence of student learning, curriculum alignment, and something called “closing the loop.”

Now, the scholars in the land of Glendale Community College were excellent teachers, crafting spells of learning in their classrooms. But they often stored their magic, rubrics, reflections, and results in faraway towers, where no one ever looked. The dragon grew restless, for it craved not just stories, but proof told through data.

One day, a member of the wise CART sect whispered a secret: “The key to taming the dragon is in the scrolls of Assessment. If we align our curriculum with learning outcomes, map each course to the big goals, and tell the story of how our students grow, we won’t just survive the review. We’ll thrive.”

And so, the Circle of Faculty met. They created curriculum maps, plotting where outcomes were introduced, reinforced, and mastered. They turned course content into a shared quest: What do we want students to know? Where do they learn it? And how do we know they did? The answers, they realized, lived not in anecdotes alone but in the numbers, charts, and patterns that revealed the students’ journeys.

Assessment results, once hidden, became the kingdom’s most powerful artifact. Instructors used data to strengthen their spells: tweaking activities, crafting better assignments, even inviting allies (like librarians and career advisors) to join their journey. Data was no longer a burden; it became the voice of the students, narrating their struggles and triumphs.

In the Keep of Alchemy, data from the Scrolls of Quantification showed students stumbled over the Mountains of Graphs. So the guild of faculty introduced more visual map-making and graphing rituals. Across the land, students began to climb with confidence.

In the villages across the land of Glendale Community College, brave faculty adopted Open Education scrolls to replace overpriced tomes. They mapped, assessed, adjusted, and most importantly, shared not just their practices, but the data that showed how student achievement improved. Their numbers became part of the kingdom’s collective story.

And when the dragon returned? It yawned, nodded, and quietly slinked away, satisfied not by empty promises but by the clear, evidence-based story of student growth.

The moral of this tale? Assessment isn’t the villain. It’s the narrator, using data to tell the story of how our curriculum lives and breathes, and how we, as faculty, are the true heroes supporting our students’ success.

So let’s keep mapping, reflecting, and sharing our magic. Because in the land of Glendale Community College, every scroll, every rubric, every dataset, and every insight builds a better narrative of our learning kingdom, a story where students are at the center, and their success is written in the language of evidence.
And they taught, and assessed, happily ever after.

#CurriculumThatCounts