What's the Big Picture?

So after a general mentor training with the after school program coordinators, I met with my partner to plan out the curriculum and settle on the final project/task that the girls would work on throughout the 10 week period. I came to the planning session with what I thought was a clear sense of the final outcomes. However, even though I have seen a zillion curriculum maps, putting down "the" culminating task on paper along side the skills being assessed, the ties to college and career readiness and the content knowledge all in one place suddenly seemed so much more challenging. All of this had to be done in 35 minutes because the training was just 2 hours. The task felt insurmountable but what made it even more difficult was that I had just met my co-teacher for the first time.We began with one of many graphic organizers (for those of you who aren't familiar, a graphic organizer is using a print document as a guide to help people with what could become a task with no structure/boundaries- there are graphic organizers for everything!) that outlined our 10-week curriculum. We had a tense conversation that I at the time attributed to her not understanding the big picture of the program / curricula. I felt like I was being challenged with what were solid ideas but at the same time struggled to really provide a sound argument for why I thought my ideas were right/good/logical. Needless to say, at the end of 35 minutes we had not accomplished much and the curriculum map graphic organizer remained almost entirely empty. I left tense and frustrated with myself and with my partner and no closer to being prepared to start teaching.However, as I had some time to reflect on the session and realized a few things:1. When collaborating with someone new the first and most important thing you have to do is to get to know one another so that you can be productive together. Trying to set some norms about how we'll work together, what are expectations are of one another etc. (Why are we both interested in this work? What do we hope to accomplish together? )2. What I thought was a clear sense of an end product/ larger assessment or project didn't really exist. I wanted the girls to create a bunch of things - a PSA, a radio ad, a print ad, but the rationale for doing so was missing. What was the goal of creating all of these things? How did they fit together? When the girls walked away from our 10 weeks together, what were the skills and content they could use? How did this connect to their other work? 3. Layering all of the different components of curriculum development is really really really hard work! This is my perspective, but I have absolutely no idea how someone can pick up a curriculum they didn't write and just make use of it without really digging in and making adjustments. I realize now that the Girl Scout curriculum is a guide of activities, materials and tasks, but, it was still my job to make sense of it and to break it down into modular pieces or lesson. (During the first meet up with the other teacher, I was not using the book as a guide or a reference, but rather the source of ideas).A side note - I just got word that my co-teacher isn't coming back due to some other issues, so for now, I am writing my "pitch" by myself. I hope that it goes okay!!