Indie Education Press · Our Process
How We Create Curriculum
Thoughtful research. Intentional design. Relentless refinement.
At Indie Education Press, we believe students deserve learning materials that are accurate, engaging, thoughtfully organized, and designed to encourage genuine understanding.
Browse the curriculum
Great curriculum doesn’t happen by accident.
Creating those materials involves far more than writing lessons and assembling activity pages. Behind every published unit is an extensive process of research, instructional planning, content development, evaluation, and refinement.
We use modern technology, including artificial intelligence, to support that work. But technology doesn’t determine what makes a good education. Human experience, expertise, and judgment do.
And we take that responsibility seriously.
Step One
Research Comes First
Every curriculum project begins with questions.
- What should students understand about this subject?
- Which sources will help us present it accurately?
- What historical, scientific, or cultural context matters?
- Where might popular explanations be incomplete, misleading, or biased?
We research topics using multiple sources, examine competing interpretations where appropriate, and work to distinguish established facts from opinions and disputed claims.
Our goal isn’t to tell students what to think. It’s to give them the knowledge and context they need to think well.
Step Two
Designed for Learning, Not Just Reading
Accurate information is essential, but information alone isn’t curriculum.
We consider how students will encounter new ideas, build understanding, connect concepts, and demonstrate what they’ve learned. That means thinking carefully about lesson sequence, reading accessibility, vocabulary, discussion questions, activities, and opportunities for deeper exploration.
Sarah wants students to develop solid knowledge, think critically, ask thoughtful questions, and gain the confidence to keep learning independently. Above all, she wants them to love learning. Making lessons engaging for students with different learning preferences, strengths, and needs is a priority throughout development.
Currently, Sarah personally develops and reviews Indie Education Press resources, bringing her educational experience and editorial judgment to the finished materials.
Who is behind the work
Our approach is guided by founder Sarah McCubbin’s 19 years of homeschooling, six years directing a homeschool co-op, and experience raising nine children, including children who have gone on to pursue education and STEM careers. The high standards she holds for her own children’s education also guide the resources she creates for Indie Education Press.
Step Three
More Than a Dozen Steps. And Then We Keep Improving.
Creating curriculum at Indie Education Press is not a matter of entering a prompt and publishing whatever comes out. Our development process involves more than a dozen steps, from initial research and instructional planning through content development, fact-checking, editing, resource preparation, and final review.
And we don’t stop there. In addition to our regular review process, we run materials through several additional rounds of evaluation that we call excellence loops — opportunities to revisit the material with fresh questions and increasingly demanding expectations.
Is the information accurate?
Have we overlooked important context?
Are we presenting ideas fairly?
Could an explanation be clearer?
Is an activity genuinely helping students learn, or simply keeping them busy?
Does the finished resource deliver the educational value we intended?
Sometimes an excellence loop reveals a small improvement. Sometimes it sends us back to substantially revise something we thought was finished.
It might sound like an excessive amount of scrutiny for a unit study.
We’re comfortable with that.
We believe the materials families and educators trust with their students deserve that level of attention.
Step Four
How We Use Artificial Intelligence
We believe artificial intelligence can be a valuable tool in curriculum development when it is used thoughtfully and responsibly. We also believe families deserve a straight answer about how it is used.
Where AI helps
- Organizing research
- Brainstorming
- Drafting
- Editing
- Developing instructional variations
- Creating design elements
We use technology because it can help us research more broadly, explore more possibilities, and devote more attention to the educational decisions that matter.
Where people decide
AI-generated content is not automatically accurate, balanced, or educationally effective. We don’t consider an AI-generated draft a finished curriculum product. Content must be evaluated, verified, and refined through human editorial judgment.
We also recognize that AI can introduce errors, oversimplify complex subjects, and reproduce bias. Our development process includes deliberate checks designed to identify and address these weaknesses rather than assume technology has solved them.
AI helps us do the work. It doesn’t replace our responsibility for the work.
Step Five
A Commitment to Accuracy and Improvement
No curriculum publisher gets everything right. Despite careful research and review, mistakes can happen. New information becomes available. Better explanations emerge. Educators and families sometimes identify things that deserve another look.
We take that seriously. When we discover an error or identify a meaningful improvement, we’re committed to correcting the material and making it better.
We also welcome thoughtful feedback from the families and educators who use our resources. Their experiences can help us identify opportunities to improve clarity, accuracy, usability, and educational value.
We see curriculum development as an ongoing responsibility, not something that ends when a product is published.
What the process produces
Every unit on the shelf has been through all of it.
Our Promise to Families and Educators
We believe you should be able to trust the materials you bring into your home, classroom, or learning community.
That trust isn’t earned through impressive technology or claims of perfection. It’s earned through careful work, honest communication, educational judgment, and a willingness to improve. At Indie Education Press, we’re committed to creating resources that reflect those values.
Because the goal isn’t simply to produce more curriculum.
It’s to help cultivate better education.
Questions about a unit, or something we should take another look at? Get in touch.