Where to begin..

So I spent a long night re-reading and re-reading trying to gain some undersanding. After a short night of sleep two thoughts keep coming back to me.
The first is regarding Back to School Night and curriculum leadership. Our Back to School Night was last Thursday and as always, parents ask what curriuculum do you use? What kind of homework will they be doing? How are you preparing them for next year? ... Mind you I teach Pre-K. I do my best to answer the questions they are asking and them guide them to the questions I wish they would be asking. So often this envolves helping them to think about curriculum as not just a list of clearly and definitively achieved outcomes. I want them to know that learning how to learn is a more important part of our curriculum than any other; I want them to know that we want them to learn are pre-school skills not jump ahead to kindergarten. This is very thin ice - trying to value their understanding of curriculum and change it at the same time. Unhappy parents are a very strong outer curriculum I suppose. In my desire to be a good curriculum leader, I find myself exhausted by this effort to enlightend parents, but, fortunately, envigorated agian the next day by teaching their children.
The second is about hidden or evaded curriculum and a story I saw on the news last night. It had to do with a no PDA rule in a local middle school. That is 'No Public Dipslays of Affection'. Seemlingly some parents were upset about the extremity of it - girls not allowed to hug each other on their Birthdays or boys & girls not being allowed to hold hands or something. ( A father made some strange reference to a camel with his head in a tent?!) I have to say I can see the value in this rule - in fact not touching friends is common lesson in my preschool world. A young man I know, OK my son, was suspended lrom high school last year for five days for sexual harassment - he asked his English Teacher to the Prom. (He is not a conformist and would probably like defintion number 8 of curriculum from Mullen.."..the questioning of authority, etc., etc.) Some said this was extreme and I should fight it - I said he'll never cross that hard to see line again. In all honesty, it may have been one of the most important things he learned in that class.
Anyway I feel myself straying from the topic... time for some coffee.