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Journal Article, Published December 10, 2024 in the Journal of Curriculum Studies, Early career teachers’ curriculum realities:implications of school context on a continuum of curriculum-making possibilities

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Journal Article, Published December 10, 2024 in the Journal of Curriculum Studies, Early career teachers’ curriculum realities:implications of school context on a continuum of curriculum-making possibilities

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“Ongoing performativity agendas are narrowing the scope of teachers’ curriculum decision-making, challenging notions of curriculum as a process dependent on teachers’ professional judgement.”

We need to ensure that identities are not inhibiting curriculums, but instead amplifying them.

“We argue that attention should be placed on enabling school contexts that promote teachers’ engagement in process-oriented forms of curriculum-making. In so doing, strengthening teachers’ own positioning and aspirations as curriculum-makers, not deliverers, and empowering them to re-claim their expertise in curriculum.”

Teachers need to reclaim their expertise in everything and administrations and school buildings should be helping them do this. The first step to this is empowering them to become curriculum-makers.

“It is important to consider the implications of early career teachers’ experiences of product-oriented to process-oriented forms of curriculum-making, particularly when their professional identities are formed ‘in reference to the contexts in which they practice”

We need to support early career teachers to ensure they are making beneficial and actionable curriculums for their students that still follow the identity of what they teach.

“We argue that this will contribute to more transformative notions of teacher professionalism more broadly, helping to position curriculum and the specialized nature of teachers’ curriculum-making capabilities as recognizable and long-lasting tenets of teacher professionalism.”

Curriculum needs to be centered to teacher’s identities. This is how we do that.

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Editorial, Published on August 2, 2020, at The Cult of Pedagogy, Historically Responsive Literacy: A More Complete Education for All Students

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Editorial, Published on August 2, 2020, at The Cult of Pedagogy, Historically Responsive Literacy: A More Complete Education for All Students

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"Start by asking yourself, “How does my teaching and learning help students to learn about themselves and about others?”

I picked this quote because I believe that as teachers it is our job to help students figure out who they are and how they fit into the world. By building curriculums directly for our students we can do just that.

"Sometimes we think that when we add identity or when we add voice and freedom of expression, that somehow we don’t focus on skills at all. But that’s just simply not true. You can have it all. You can have voice and fun and engagement and skills.”

A lot of the struggle with teacher built curriculums is we are worried teachers aren’t encompassing everything a student has to learn, however it is possible for teachers to create incredible all encompassing curriculums.

"It’s like we’re sucking the power out of them by telling them to read a script in a curriculum. We need to go back to teacher as intellectual, teacher as scholar, reserving the field for the brightest among us who are knowledge-seekers.”

Teaching used to be such a well renowned profession, reserved for the best of the best. If we allow teachers to be this incredible version of themselves then we are closer to fully serving students.

"Because oppression exists in the world. Period. We want students to leave our schools not contributing to more oppression or wrongdoing and hurt in their relationships and with strangers. We also don’t want them to be silent. If they see oppression, we want them to actively respond to it.”

Relating back to the first one, our job as teachers is to prepare our students for the world. We can’t do that without curriculums that are built by the teacher for the individual student.

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For years teachers have been looking for ways to improve the academic performance of all students, especially students of color and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. While some of these efforts have been successful, many more have had lackluster results.

In the past, we've explored different approaches teachers can take to do a better job of reaching all students: interviews with Dena Simmons, Zaretta Hammond, Pedro Noguera, and Hedreich Nichols, to name a few. In these conversations, we looked at more effective ways of relating to students, strategies for working toward equity outside the classroom, and instructional methods that are more culturally responsive.

This post continues that work with a fresh response to the question of how to better serve diverse students. It's a framework that deals directly with the curriculum side of things, the standards, the actual content we teach in our classrooms. The framework is called Historically Responsive Literacy, and it was developed by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, a professor, a former middle school educator, and the author of the book Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, where she makes the case for this framework.

In short, Muhammad believes we're not reaching many of our students, especially Black students, because our curricula and standards are lacking. The emphasis in our current standards is mainly on skills-skills that can be measured easily on standardized tests-and not a whole lot else. Some teachers go beyond the tested material, pushing students to think critically, exploring social emotional competencies, and designing opportunities for inquiry-based learning; unfortunately, the standards themselves don't require those things.

But there was a time in history when a more complete, more human form of "curriculum" did exist, and it energized and inspired its students-all of them Black men and women-to read, write, speak, and publish with the kind of passion and dedication we would want all of our students to have about learning. This curriculum evolved within the Black literary societies of the 19th century. These groups met regularly to read, write about, and discuss a wide range of texts and ideas. Their goals were far loftier than basic skill development or scores on a test, and engagement-to borrow a term we use in modern education-was at an all-time high.

These societies were the inspiration for Muhammad's Historically Responsive Literacy framework, a four-layered pedagogical model that places skills on an equal plane with three other learning pursuits: identity, intellect, and criticality.

The framework was designed with Black students in mind, but it will benefit all students. Muhammad explains it this way: "If we start with Blackness (which we have not traditionally done in schooling) or the group of people who have uniquely survived the harshest oppressions in this country, then we begin to understand ways to get literacy education right for all" (p. 22).

In our interview, she unpacks all four layers of her framework and helps us understand what it looks like to implement them in the classroom. What follows is a summary of our conversation.

First, Two Clarifications

Is Historically Responsive Literacy Just for "Literacy" Teachers?

No. In the book, Muhammad explains that in the past, "literacy was synonymous with education, so although I name 'literacy,' these four pursuits can be used and layered with math, science, ELA, social studies, or physical education/health" (p. 57).

In other words, this is not just a framework for ELA teachers, and in the book, Muhammad explores how to implement HRL in many different subject areas.

Is HRL different from Culturally Responsive Teaching?

Think of HRL as living under the broader umbrella of Culturally Responsive Teaching, which includes relationship-building, instructional strategies, and curriculum. "My work is taking a more historic look back and putting a practical model to the theory," Muhammad says.

The Four Layers of Historically Responsive Literacy

Historically Responsive Literacy is built on four layers, four "learning pursuits" that Muhammad believes should receive equal priority

1. Identity

For students to be fully engaged in school they must first find it relevant, and that starts with identity.

"Identity is who you say you are, who others say you are... (and) who you desire to be," Muhammad says. "I feel like children are trying to make sense of all three areas, and the curriculum and the pedagogy should be an opportunity for students to know themselves."

Muhammad believes this is especially important for children of color because "when we look at representation in children's literature, in society oftentimes, and historically, they are invisible or represented in negative ways. So the classroom needs to be a space for students to affirm and celebrate and validate who they are, so that they know they are enough, so they know they are brilliant and excellent and beautiful. Because society doesn't tell us that all the time."

Along with self-knowledge, the learning pursuit of identity should also include knowledge of others who are different from ourselves. "When students learn about the lives of other people," Muhammad says, "they are less prone to hate, to treat them in harmful or hurtful ways."

What it looks like in the classroom: Start by asking yourself, "How does my teaching and learning help students to learn about themselves and about others?"

From there, plan instruction and write learning goals to satisfy that question. Muhammad gives an example from science. "Some teachers have written it (in language like) Students will understand their environmental identity and their roles and responsibilities regarding the planet. Then in the lesson or unit there are opportunities for students to deeply reflect about how they recycle or (whether) they take care of the earth and the planet and the environment."

Finally, be sure to assess for it. "Kids know that if my teacher values it that she or he or they are going to test it," Muhammad says. "You can assess it in discussion, in a quiz, or a summative kind of test at the end: What are five things you can do to take care of the planet? Or Name five roles that humans play on climate change. So it could be a qualitative or a quantitative assessment, but if you value it enough, you can assess it."

2. Skills

So much of our current curricula and standards already focus on skills, so this part of the framework is nothing new; what's important is to not throw it out when the other three layers are added.

Muhammad explains that this abandonment of skills is a common problem when new approaches to schooling are introduced. "That's a way of thinking that we have to dismantle," she says. "Sometimes we think that when we add identity or when we add voice and freedom of expression, that somehow we don't focus on skills at all. But that's just simply not true. You can have it all. You can have voice and fun and engagement and skills."

What it looks like in the classroom: Teaching skills is more or less what you'd expect typical school content to be, what our current standards are already prescribing. "In math it can be learning equations. In ELA it can be citing textual evidence. In social studies, it can be questioning the source. In physical education it can be learning to play basketball."

So the skills themselves may be taught in whatever way works best for your students. The difference now is that in terms of class time and assessment, their weight will be equal to that of the other three layers.

3. Intellect

Along with identifying the skills students need to acquire, Muhammad urges us to ask What do we want our students to become smarter about?

Because our recent standards have been so skills-driven, knowledge has fallen by the wayside in a lot of schools, and that can strip away the joy that comes from simply learning new things about the world. But the Black Literary Societies of the 19th century valued knowledge as a vital part of a person's development. "So I'm pushing this idea of intellectualism," Muhammad says, "of treating young people as if they are scholars and intellectuals and thinkers."

She sees the loss of intellectualism even in how we prepare and treat teachers. "It's like we're sucking the power out of them by telling them to read a script in a curriculum. We need to go back to teacher as intellectual, teacher as scholar, reserving the field for the brightest among us who are knowledge-seekers."

And Muhammad's definition of intellectualism goes beyond simply gathering facts. "Intellectualism is when you do something with that knowledge, where you apply it somehow, in your discussion, in your activism, in your actions."

What it looks like in the classroom: When developing lessons and units, ask yourself, "How does my teaching and learning help to teach students new knowledge and concepts? New histories, new people, places, and things?"

Muhammad cautions teachers not to confuse skills for knowledge. "You shouldn't say they became smarter about equations or citing textual evidence," she says. "That's not intellect. Those are skills."

4. Criticality

"Criticality is helping students to read, write and think in active ways," Muhammad explains, "as opposed to passive-when you ask a question and there's one correct answer, and you just take it in. We don't want them to be passive consumers of knowledge. We want them to question what they hear on the news."

"We see the word critical and sometimes our minds can go to critical thinking," she continues. "But it's more than just deep and analytical thinking. Criticality is deep and analytical thinking to understand power, equity, anti-racism and other anti-oppressions. This is where we help students to be woke."

This fourth layer is essential "because oppression exists in the world. Period. We want students to leave our schools not contributing to more oppression or wrongdoing and hurt in their relationships and with strangers. We also don't want them to be silent. If they see oppression, we want them to actively respond to it."

What it looks like in the classroom: "With criticality," Muhammad says, "the teacher is asking, How does my teaching and learning help students to understand power, equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression? So (students are) reading, writing, thinking in active ways to understand power, inequality, equity, oppression. They're investigating different standpoints, especially the marginalized point of view, and reading between the lines. In other words, reading for what's not being said and for what's not there.

The brilliance of the framework is revealed when Muhammad explains that the four layers are not separate, but progressive, each one building on the layers that came before it, starting with identity: "They see themselves, they validate themselves, they're learning about other people, which creates a safe space to learn the skills. If you learn the skills, you can learn the intellect. You cannot learn the intellectualism without first having those skills to do so. If you have the intellectualism and that knowledge, you can critique the knowledge. Because of all the layers that came before it, you now have the capacity to disrupt and to dismantle. If you're just woke without the identity and the skills and the intellect, you're not going to be able to make change in ways that you could with those things."

Tough, but Possible

Making this kind of shift-especially if our standards still don't reflect these four layers-will not be an easy task to take on. This concern has been expressed when Muhammad presents her framework to teachers. But despite its challenges, she feels this type of curriculum is exactly what any parent would want for their child.

"It's not a matter or a question of if it's tough," she says. "The question is, is it possible? Everything is tough. And if you had your own child, if you're a parent, parents are going to equally value the beautiful ways that their child loves themselves: identity, the skills they have, the intellect they have, and the social consciousness they have. I don't see parents saying No, let's just talk about my child's reading skills. They talk about their emotional intelligence, they talk about the whole child."

"And that's what we're trying to get to," she says. "This is humanizing work."

Come back for more.
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Historically Responsive Literacy: A More Complete Education for All Students

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Based on the work of 19th century Black literary societies, this fresh approach to curriculum focuses on identity, skills, intellect, and criticality.

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Editorial, Published July 23, 2024, at The Hechinger Report, Should teachers customize their lessons or just stick to the ‘script’? 

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Editorial, Published July 23, 2024, at The Hechinger Report, Should teachers customize their lessons or just stick to the ‘script’? 

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“Every year, school districts across the country spend millions of dollars on curricula, the planned sequences of materials teachers use to guide instruction.”

I chose this quote because many schools are drastically falling behind on funding. If they allowed teachers to help with curriculums, then they could invest some of this money elsewhere.

“When you have a curriculum that’s been researched and vetted — it’s okay to use it,” she said. “But you have to make it your own.”

If a curriculum follows the standards you need to use then, use it. However, you need to make sure you supplement it enough to relate to the students in your classroom.

“Pre-written, district-provided curriculum materials often don’t cover local history or are not relevant for his students. Recent anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ legislation has also made it harder to teach history in schools.”

If we want students to have a good idea of their identity and their place in the world, then we need to teach them real history and show models of who they could be.

“It’s teachers that are on the front lines,” she added. “They think of things that maybe someone who hasn’t been in the classroom for a while won’t think of.”

We listen to the people who do the field research in almost every other field. Why don’t we do that with education?

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It's a Sunday in June, and high school history teacher Chris Dier is poring over readings, lesson plans and other resources to put together next year's curriculum for his Advanced Placement U.S. and World History classes.

School doesn't start until mid-August. But Dier, Louisiana's teacher of the year in 2020, has followed this same routine for years. He spends part of his Sundays throughout the school year and summer preparing lessons for his classes. In his 14 years of teaching, Dier said he has never really had a curriculum provided by his school district that he can use without making significant adaptations. In fall 2020, he started teaching at Benjamin Franklin High School, in New Orleans, a top-performing charter school that doesn't offer teachers any curriculum or materials.

"For better or worse, essentially, we are responsible for creating our own curriculum," Dier said. "The curriculum I teach is purely something that I create."

Every year, school districts across the country spend millions of dollars on curricula, the planned sequences of materials teachers use to guide instruction. Many buy off-the-shelf materials created by curriculum companies, while a few districts create their own.

But many teachers say those materials don't always work well - at least not without changes. Teachers say curricula aren't culturally relevant or inclusive, don't prioritize a student's perspective, ability and experience and seem to be created by providers who are removed from the classroom. In some cases, teachers say a lack of professional development on how to implement a curriculum can make it hard to use.

It's long been common for teachers to write lesson plans and adapt instruction to their students, to a degree. Some districts and schools, like Benjamin Franklin, where Dier teaches, even expect it, asking educators to create their own curriculum using state standards and subject-specific frameworks from groups like the College Board as a guide.

But teachers, regardless of where they teach, say that they often spend a significant amount of time and effort creating and refining curriculum materials. Experts and researchers warn that if teachers are provided with a high-quality district curriculum and mix it with materials from sites like Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest, which some experts say have low-quality, unvetted resources, they dilute otherwise rigorous content, and create inequities among students.

David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, said he thinks curriculum providers need to do a better job of offering curricula for students who have genuine challenges with grade-level materials and for English language learners. Steiner's team at the institute surveys teachers nationally to determine what curriculum they use in the classroom, and how they use it. Based on some of those responses, Steiner said he worries that there's also a "sort of resistance to a scripted curriculum" among teachers who say it doesn't properly build on or connect to a student's prior knowledge or experiences.

"The research is against them," Steiner said. "The research is heavily in favor of following a script - not necessarily every last letter of that script, but following a really good curriculum that's standards-based and content-rich."

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

A curriculum is meant to guide educators in what to teach students in particular subjects and grade levels, and should be aligned with a state's standards on what knowledge and skills students need. How a curriculum is designed, rolled out and used in the classroom varies by state, district and teacher.

Steiner, who has worked with several states to implement high-quality curriculum, said there has long been a tradition of school districts and state education leaders recommending, but not mandating, a particular curriculum. That creates a risk that inexperienced teachers might select materials that are below grade-level, according to Steiner, who referenced a recent report on the subject from the education nonprofit TNTP.

There have been attempts to better align curriculum to learning standards. In 2017, the Council of Chief State School Officers created a network designed to help states implement high-quality, standards-aligned curricula. At least 13 states, including Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Texas, have signed on since then and have begun developing initiatives to review curriculum to ensure it is high-quality and to help districts use vetted materials.

Louisiana has also served as a model of how to better align curriculum with state standards and provide teachers professional development, according to a 2019 survey by the group RAND. Louisiana's use of standards-aligned materials was higher than other states, with 71 percent of math teachers in Louisiana and 80 percent of English Language Arts teachers reporting they used such materials and understood what their subject standards are. (The next-highest state for math was Delaware, where 51 percent of teachers of that subject reported using standards-aligned materials.)

Alexandra Walsh, chief product officer at curriculum company Amplify, said that ultimately "it is the district's responsibility" to determine how a curriculum is used. "We really try to put great materials in the hands of teachers and let them make informed and great decisions about what to do for their students," she said. All of Amplify's curricula include pacing guides, she added, so if a teacher needs to modify a lesson, there is room to do so. The company also tries to provide at least one day of professional development on each curriculum.

Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher at RAND and a co-author of the RAND report, said a high-quality curriculum should be standards-aligned, have built-in support and instructions for teachers, engage students in a meaningful way and include assessments that are tied to what a student is being taught.

According to the survey and other research by Kaufman and her team, elementary and high school ELA and science teachers are the most likely to cobble together materials from several different comprehensive curricula. Math teachers are more likely to be what Kaufman's research identified as "modifiers," who make considerable changes to a single curriculum or supplement it to better address students' needs. Only 19 percent of teachers surveyed were "DIY teachers," meaning they use a completely self-created curriculum. DIY teachers also tend to be high school teachers of science and English (the survey did not look at history teachers).

If teachers are coming up with their own curricula rather than relying on standards-aligned materials, chances are that every class is learning different things, Kaufman said.

"Some modification feels healthy to me and important," she said. But, she added, there should be some foundational content that is aligned with what the state says a student should learn in a particular grade.

Related: Students with disabilities often left out of popular 'dual-language' programs

Teachers of students in special education and of students learning English, in particular, complain that curriculum materials are not sufficiently attuned to those children's needs.

Simone Gordon, who teaches English as a new language to fourth and fifth graders at PS 361 in Brooklyn, said she has to adapt the district-provided curriculum to her students by using a different book than the one suggested or by breaking a lesson into parts that can be easily understood by her students.

Gordon will often bring in books that offer more diverse characters or discuss current events that are not included in the curriculum but are "what students are seeing and witnessing," she said.

"I like being given the curriculum when there's flexibility, and then the option to kind of say, 'I'm going to use this part, but I won't use that part,'" she said. "It's nice to be able to say, 'My students are really interested in what's going on with climate change. I'm going to do a thematic study on that.'"

Similarly, Sarah Said, who teaches English language learners in School District U-46 in Chicago's northwest suburbs, said she sees pre-written curriculum as a starting point, then adapts it to what her students need.

"When you have a curriculum that's been researched and vetted - it's okay to use it," she said. "But you haveto make it your own."

Kate Gutwillig, a special education teacher at PS 134 in New York, acknowledges that tension. In the past when teachers in her district and elsewhere had more freedom to create their own curriculum, she said it felt like a "double-edged sword" because "I know what my kids need but on the other hand, we're teachers, we're not curriculum writers."

Gutwillig, whose school was in the first cohort to roll out a new literacy program, NYC Reads, said the new curriculum is a welcome change from previous ones she's been given because it was vetted to meet the diverse needs of students. Still, there are gaps when it comes to her students with disabilities.

"Those curriculums were not written specifically for those kids," she said; they need to be "adjusted or perfected."

PROOF POINTS: Many high school math teachers cobble together their own instructional materials from the internet and elsewhere, a survey finds

The research on the value of a scripted curriculum is important - but teachers say so is the reality they face in the classroom every day. Dier, the teacher in Louisiana, said pre-written, district-provided curriculum materials often don't cover local history or are not relevant for his students. Recent anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ legislation has also made it harder to teach history in schools, he said.

"My goal is to ensure that the minoritized identities that are so often excluded from, in terms of curriculum, find their space," he said. "I don't see a robust curriculum, at the district or state level that ensures that, so that's why I always want autonomy over my own materials."

Dier said he isn't just picking random materials for his classes. He uses the A.P. U.S. history curriculum and Louisiana's U.S. History state standards and what will appear on the state assessment, and mixes those with current events and history he thinks his students should know.

"I look at the two curricula that I have to use, and then I try to teach the history that is usually pushed to the margins and not included in that framework," Dier said.

Still, he said that teachers who create their own curriculum must make it transparent and accessible to parents, students and administrators. Dier said he creates a public Google calendar at the start of every school year that includes the materials he's teaching "so people know these are still materials of high caliber, quality and rigor."

In some districts, teachers are pushing for a bigger role in selecting or developing curriculum so they can provide better materials for their students.

Petrina Miller is a transitional kindergarten teacher at the 116th Street Elementary School who has been teaching at Los Angeles Unified School District for 26 years. Her district is slowly rolling out the Core Knowledge Language Arts, a new curriculum based in research on how students learn to read. She said it doesn't necessarily work for all students.

The curriculum is split into two parts, skill-based and knowledge-based; the latter "is really not student-centered," she said. "It is the strangest, most detached unit that makes no sense." The unit includes lessons on kings and queens - but only "talking about the European kings" - and on Christopher Columbus, which was "just revisionist history, and it was just horrible," she said.

"I'm not teaching them that, it's not even true. We just can't do that," she said. Instead of telling teachers to follow a curriculum as written, without review, administrators have to get teacher and student buy-in, she said.

After her normal workday, Miller said she goes home and spends about two hours making worksheets and activities. She also spends hundreds of dollars of her own money to make the curriculum more engaging. For the unit on kings and queens, for example, Miller and other teachers hosted a ball and bought hats and crowns for students that featured favorite characters like the princess from Super Mario Bros.

Walsh, of Amplify, said the company, which produces the Core Knowledge curriculum, tries to ensure that it contains materials that reflect and speak to students from many different backgrounds. She said the company also hopes it is "expanding their view of the world." Units like the one on kings and queens, she said, "ignite students' imagination about things they don't know anything about."

In Los Angeles, Miller is part of a small educator-led campaign, informally launched this year at her school, to involve teachers in reviewing curriculum and other materials to ensure they are culturally relevant. The campaign got the attention of LAUSD school board members and the district, she said. Educators hope it will result in a bigger role for teachers in the buying process for new curriculum programs going forward.

"My students are mostly Latino and African American, and they don't see themselves in the curriculum," she said. "It's hard for them to connect with it."

"It's teachers that are on the front lines," she added. "They think of things that maybe someone who hasn't been in the classroom for a while won't think of."

This story about teacher curriculum was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Should teachers customize their lessons or just stick to the 'script'?

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Some educators say district-provided curricula don't serve student needs. Experts fret about too much drift from standards.

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Editorial, Published on March 26, 2024, in Edutopia, Making Space for Your Autonomy Within a Set Curriculum 

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Editorial, Published on March 26, 2024, in Edutopia, Making Space for Your Autonomy Within a Set Curriculum 

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“One of the most important moves a teacher can make is to prioritize the most crucial elements of the curriculum while ensuring that there is enough flexibility within lesson planning to meet the needs of students.”

You don't need to completely come up with your own curriculums, there is room for freedom in set curriculums and teachers need to take advantage of that.

“With curriculum nonnegotiables in mind, teaching pedagogy itself must take classroom culture into consideration to ensure that content outcomes are set up to meet student needs”

Just because you are forced to teach a set curriculum doesn’t mean you have lost as a teacher, you can use your knowledge and experience to create an environment that is beneficial to students.

“Sometimes, it seems that a curriculum is one giant to-do list of one thing after another.”

Curriculums can be hard and feel impossible, it is important to remember that not all curriculums need to be built 100% by you. Teachers should adapt curriculums to help their students, but don’t always need to build from the ground up.

“A curriculum may begin as a written product, but it is a dynamic entity that comes to life in the classroom. When teachers put their own stamp on provided instructional pathways to engage students in grade-level work, they are able to meet the distinct needs of each individual while maintaining high standards and equitable outcomes.”

Curriculums are ever moving and evolving things, just like students we can’t shove them in a box, we need to give them room to grow and reach their full potential.

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Here are a few ways teachers can exercise professional agency in deciding how to make a curriculum relevant to the students in their class.

Michael Morgenstern / The iSpot

Just as we sometimes open closets full of clothing but feel like there's nothing to wear, a curriculum can be perceived as a large collection of materials that aren't as useful as one might hope. Contrary to common perception, a curriculum does not tell anyone how to teach-rather, it identifies content-based learning targets with standards-aligned objectives, often in conjunction with recommendations for sequencing or pacing.

In other words, a curriculum tells us what to teach, but it doesn't tell anyone how to do that. This is appropriate given the fact that teachers and students are human, and a degree of flexibility is therefore needed when it comes to lesson delivery.

To that end, getting the most out of any curriculum product is about determining how to present the material in a way that is most beneficial, which requires careful decisions that are specific to the students who sit in front of them. In essence, as teachers build years in the profession, they amass a variety of tools and strategies that help with instructional delivery. To make sure that kids are getting the most out of any given class period, aligning what is in our teaching repertoires to kids in a way that maximizes results is the mark of teaching expertise.

Backward designing to meet curricular priorities

There is a common misperception that the rigidity of a curriculum lies within the instructional activities it inspires rather than in the overall focus of any given unit of study. In truth, the engaging activities that teachers love to design are often not provided in any resource, but they should support larger outcomes. Every curriculum contains a series of nonnegotiable priorities for instruction that cannot be overlooked. Therefore, one of the most important moves a teacher can make is to prioritize the most crucial elements of the curriculum while ensuring that there is enough flexibility within lesson planning to meet the needs of students.

1. Identify a measurable learning objective. An example from a fifth-grade science class might be, "Students will develop an argument that supports the downward pull of gravitational force."

2. Design evidence to determine whether the objective has been achieved. To measure the objective above, teachers could assess student performance by asking them to find quotations in their science textbook that support the argument.

3. Plan instructional activities that are aligned to the measurable objective. To work toward a deeper understanding of the concept, students might be asked to construct mini roller coasters that exemplify the downward pull of gravity.

The process of backward design provides clarity for focusing instruction while still giving space for agility and creativity through three essential steps of planning:

Often, teachers reverse steps two and three (or even put step three first) as they prioritize the activity portion of class. However, effective instruction is not just a series of tasks (a "what" followed by another "what") without any through line. When the backward design process is followed, there is still plenty of room for innovative thinking, but the curriculum nonnegotiables do not get lost along the way. In other words, the "what" and the "how" work together to keep course content aligned to grade-level standards, and the teacher still has the ability to exercise some creative freedom in executing the lesson.

Meeting the needs of individual classes

With curriculum nonnegotiables in mind, teaching pedagogy itself must take classroom culture into consideration to ensure that content outcomes are set up to meet student needs. This reality can hold true even for students who have the same teacher and the same subject at different times of day.

For example, if the daily lesson involves talking about a weekly current event that everyone read about for homework, a group of sleepy kids who meet first period might need to get up and move by talking to a learning partner about their thoughts, whereas an overexcited fifth-period class that is typically difficult to calm down after lunch could benefit from a quieter method of discourse that keeps everyone in their seats, like a traditional turn and talk.

In both cases, the curricular goals would not change; however, the method of delivery (the "how") is determined by the teacher to best serve the students in the room and is therefore a more responsive approach that allows students the maximum level of access and opportunity to achieve learning targets.

Make room for professional agency

Sometimes, it seems that a curriculum is one giant to-do list of one thing after another. However, there might be more room for autonomy than we first suppose. Consider taking an integrative approach to aligning interdisciplinary standards, which allows for creative freedom without adding anything extra to anyone's plate. Teachers are responsible for ensuring that students meet learning targets set by the curricula they use; however, style and capacity differ from classroom to classroom.

It's also important to remember that students benefit from the same agility as adults. While we get comfortable with exercising more professional agency as teachers, it is also wise to model a 360-degree use of autonomy by empowering students to share the responsibility for learning. Children tend to mirror adult behavior, which is useful in this context when teachers let members of the class share responsibility for components of the learning.

For example, suppose one student a day is in charge of developing a summarizing question. That way, each person in the class is able to engage more fully with how the daily objective has been reached, and it also provides a wonderful opportunity for growing critical thinking skills. As students become more autonomous and confident, teachers also have more time and space to address the more flexible nuances within a curriculum. With added student capacity, the teacher has the freedom to provide extension opportunities for course concepts or work with students individually who may need more scaffolding.
Here's a question for you: How are you finding ways to exercise your autonomy within the curriculum you've been provided? Please share in the comments to help create a rich set of strategies for your fellow teachers.
A curriculum may begin as a written product, but it is a dynamic entity that comes to life in the classroom. When teachers put their own stamp on provided instructional pathways to engage students in grade-level work, they are able to meet the distinct needs of each individual while maintaining high standards and equitable outcomes. Navigating the limitations and the agility of a framework effectively is key to executing skillful instruction and to reaching a deeper level of understanding about how to correctly implement any curriculum to maximize student growth.

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Making Space for Your Autonomy Within a Set Curriculum

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Here are a few ways teachers can exercise professional agency in deciding how to make a curriculum relevant to the students in their class.

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Editorial, Published on February 1, 2023, at Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, We Need Coherent, Teacher-Built Curriculum—NOW!

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Editorial, Published on February 1, 2023, at Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, We Need Coherent, Teacher-Built Curriculum—NOW!

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"The most game-changing elements of education are still not standard practice"

I underlined this because in so many fields we are constantly trying to improve and use the best methods to get the job done, but that is not the case for education for some reason and that is really saddening.

"Do we sincerely desire a life-changing education for every student? If so, education leaders must begin the transformation toward that aim by making the case for coherent, robust curriculum with unprecedented urgency."

I got into education because of the prospect of giving a student a life changing experience in education. If curriculums are stopping us from doing that, change needs to be made.

"'What we teach,' writes David Steiner, 'isn't some sidebar in American education; it is American education'"

As teachers it is our job to provide the next generation of citizens the knowledge to make it in the world. We are failing them if we are not treating our curriculums with this vitality.

"We have a real opportunity to provide our students with the richest and ideally the most equitable curriculum ever."

I deeply believe that there is something wrong with education and needs to be fixed. Integrating equitable curriculums could be just the thing to start change.

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Vol. 80

No. 5

Abstract

The Case for Curriculum

The Best Curriculum? One Teachers Build

How to Build Literacy-Rich Curriculum

Seize the Opportunity!

The action that would most raise student achievement is creating a coherent curriculum for-and with-our teachers. What are we waiting for?

Credit: HYNSKYI / iSTOCK

Abstract

The Case for Curriculum

The Best Curriculum? One Teachers Build

How to Build Literacy-Rich Curriculum

Seize the Opportunity!

Let's begin with perhaps the most important question in all of education: If we knew there was one thing that would substantially-even swiftly-narrow achievement gaps and increase overall achievement, would we implement it?

Because we do know that one thing. It is curriculum. Much research and the experience of many schools confirms the significant, near-immediate impact of implementing a consistent, high-quality curriculum throughout a school. Any school or district can build such curriculum, at virtually no expense.

The reason the impact would be so dramatic is simple: (1) The evidence for the primacy of curriculum in student learning is indisputable and (2) the great majority of schools don't currently work from a coherent curriculum, by which I mean a clear, organized schedule of "what to teach and when," amply infused with reading, discussion, and writing (Darling-Hammond, 2010, p. 295).

The introduction of such curriculum into current school environments could have as big of an impact on education as the "Fosbury Flop" had on track and field when it was widely adopted by high jumpers in the 1960s. High-jump records were shattered almost overnight. But unlike the "flop," the most game-changing elements of education are still not standard practice (Willingham & Rotherham, 2020). We are many years into an era of "curricular chaos" (Schmoker & Marzano, 1999), which has crippled improvement efforts for decades (Hirsch, 2020). Deprived of this essential tool, teachers are forced to work from a self-selected jumble of topics, texts, and writing assignments. An astonishing proportion derive their curriculum, on the fly, from worksheets and activities they find on Google and Pinterest (Pondiscio & Schirra, 2022).

In most schools, teachers are not provided with anything akin to a coherent, literacy-rich curriculum.

Do we sincerely desire a life-changing education for every student? If so, education leaders must begin the transformation toward that aim by making the case for coherent, robust curriculum with unprecedented urgency. They should no longer allow inertia or controversies to excuse our failure to develop simple, equitable curriculum in every school in America.

The Case for Curriculum

Let's look at the case for the primacy of this element of school success. "What we teach," writes David Steiner, "isn't some sidebar in American education; it is American education" (2017). There is a "mountain of real-world evidence" signifying that high-quality, coherent curriculum is the single largest factor contributing to gains in learning (DuFour & Marzano, 2011; Sahm, 2017). It is 40 times as impactful as class-size reduction (Wiener & Pimentel, 2017). It is so powerful that a good curriculum can compensate for the large learning gaps among entering kindergartners. And it can make any teacher, new or veteran, vastly more effective (Darling-Hammond, 2010-2011).

The logic of coherent curriculum is equally unassailable. If implemented, a consistent curriculum guarantees that more students are taught essential content, with greater rigor, regardless of which teacher they happen to get: It prevents the catastrophic variance in content and expectations among teachers in the same school, subject, and grade level that wreaks havoc on student knowledge acquisition, reading comprehension, and math and science achievement (Hirsch, 2020; Schmoker & Marzano, 1999).

Of particular importance: A deliberately built schedule of "what to teach and when" that includes close attention to the rigor of the assignments students are given multiplies the odds that students will be given generous, daily opportunities to read and write across the disciplines. It likewise reduces the use of below-grade-level materials and low-value activities-like worksheets and aimless, excessive group work-that dominate the school day in too many schools (TNTP, 2018). And a common curriculum is an absolute precondition for effective "professional learning communities," which have a profound impact on teacher efficacy and student achievement (DuFour & Marzano, 2011; Visible Learning, 2018).

Knowledgeable educator advocates have contended that good curriculum reduces teacher anxiety, lightens teachers' workload, and "brings coherence to the whole educational endeavor" ( American Educator, 2010-2011, p. 2). For David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, an education system that doesn't include coherent curriculum "is like a car without a working engine." Absent that, any attempt to improve schooling will flounder (Steiner, 2017).

Yet study after study finds that in the preponderance of schools, teachers are not provided with anything akin to a coherent, literacy-rich curriculum (DuFour & Marzano, 2011; Hirsch, 2020). What would happen if schools added that "working engine" to the car?

The Best Curriculum? One Teachers Build

Aside from quality phonics programs, I'm not a fan of prepackaged (or agenda-driven) curriculum products. Even the so-called "best" of these are too long on skills, multiple-choice exercises, worksheets, and literary trivia (like craft, structure, and symbolism). Leaders with highly praised curriculum programs have admitted to me privately that their programs need to be modified considerably and supplemented with more purposeful reading, discussion, and writing (Schmoker, 2019).

A deliberately built schedule of "what to teach and when" multiplies the odds that students will have generous, daily opportunities to read and write across the disciplines.

I agree with the late Rick DuFour and colleagues, who strongly recommended that schools or districts create their own curriculum, with reasonable administrative oversight. At the high-achieving high school he led, teachers employed efficient processes for selecting and organizing core content, texts, and writing assignments into an easy-to-follow schedule, setting aside time in the schedule for teachers to supplement the core with their own topics and perspectives (DuFour et al., 2016). One of my books, Focus, contains similar processes for developing curriculum (Schmoker, 2018).

Real-life school examples show how creating a coherent curriculum used by all teachers in a department leads to dramatically improved student achievement:

Mather Elementary School is the largest and oldest elementary school in Boston's public school system. For nine years, achievement there stagnated-until principal Kim Marshall persuaded his faculty to create a clear schedule of essential content, reading, and writing assignments all teachers in each department would follow. In a single year, achievement at "The Mather" made the largest gains of all Boston schools, rising from the bottom to the top third in the district (Marshall, 2003).

Math achievement at the diverse, high-poverty Tempe High School in Arizona was so abysmal the school was threatened with closure. Starting in 2013, the assistant principal and department head (both professional acquaintances of mine) arranged for math teachers to work in teams to create a biweekly schedule for teaching the most essential math topics for every course. There were large gains after the first year this schedule was implemented, and at the end of two years, Tempe was among three schools that had made the largest math gains in the state.

Brockton High School, the largest in Massachusetts, ranked near the very bottom in achievement. Embarrassed by these results, in the early 2000's, an ad hoc leadership team emerged and saw to it that teachers built curriculum for every course, replete with abundant amounts of "reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning." When I visited the school, leaders stressed that they "monitored like crazy" to ensure that their homegrown curriculum was actually taught. After one year, the state commissioner informed Brockton that they had made the largest gains in all tested subjects. In the next five years, Brockton rose to the top 10 percent in achievement in Massachusetts (Schmoker, 2018).

Note that these are all cases of homegrown curriculum built by teachers-not in months or years, but in days. There is no excuse for delay.

How to Build Literacy-Rich Curriculum

One of the main barriers to creating homegrown curriculum is the tendency to complicate-and thus elongate-the curriculum-development process. To succeed, we must avail ourselves of simple, time-bound protocols.

The process used to select and organize core content, texts, and assignments into a schedule all teachers will follow should allow everyone to express, defend, and vote on their curricular preferences-within reasonable time limits. While there is no one right process to use for developing a curriculum, a good process might include these key steps. (The steps are described in more detail in Schmoker, 2018, chapters 3-4.)

In English language arts, course-alike teams (in one school or on behalf of all district schools) should decide, preliminarily, which major works students should read each grading period, leaving some room for teachers to add their own favorite texts, and list these in a column on a document they create. In an adjacent column, teachers should list one main, guiding question for each text, for at least the first grading period (samples of such questions can be found in Schmoker, 2018, chapters 4-7). These questions will be the primary, though not exclusive, basis for the near-daily, in-class analytic reading, discussion, and informal writing that are the true core of English language arts instruction.

The team should also establish agreements for the number and approximate length of formal papers. For instance, I taught at a school where our team agreed to have students write two formal, 2-3 page papers per grading period. We taught writing skills and mechanics in the course of guiding students as they wrote.

In the content areas, the curriculum-developing process is similar, with one major difference: In the first column on the document they create, the team should list essential topics. I recommend that the team run through the content standards aloud, quickly identifying essential topics tied to each standard for which there is strong agreement, and list these in a sensible provisional order. In the next column, list texts (e.g. textbook pages, journals, and online sources) that will support teaching these topics.

At this point, the team should approximate the number of days it would take to teach each topic, inclusive of reading, discussing, and writing about the texts (leaving some space for each teacher's preferred topics). Now add up the total number of days. If it is less than about 140 instructional days, you can add topics. If more, you must reduce. Then arrange the content by grading period. In the last column, generate guiding questions for the topics and texts, indicating those for which students should write formal papers, and their approximate length.

To avoid "analysis paralysis," I strongly recommend that teams rough out such preliminary, always provisional curriculum guides in several one- or two-hour sessions. They can then move forward and refine the curriculum as they implement it. In most cases, such a rich, common curriculum will impact achievement levels during the first year of implementation.

We can begin this work right now, at the next PD or faculty meeting.

These processes should embody the democratic principles of civil exchange and an appreciation for compromise that we should impart to students. Such an ethos is vital as we navigate current controversies around curricular content. We should be sure to consider all legitimate viewpoints, including parents' views and community standards (see sidebar for more on this topic).

Seize the Opportunity!

We have a real opportunity to provide our students with the richest and ideally the most equitable curriculum ever. In the end, none of the current controversies-or the tendency to stick to the status quo-justifies a delay in developing high-quality curriculum that all teachers in a particular school or course use consistently. We can begin the work right now, at the next PD day or the next team or faculty meeting. When we actually implement such curriculum, we will be tapping into a proven source of swift, significant improvements to education.

Knowing this, will we do it? Will we, after decades of delay, install this singularly powerful, life-changing engine into the automobile of American education?

Aside: A Plea for Respecting Community Input and Diverse Viewpoints on Curriculum

In developing a common curriculum, the viewpoints and preferences of teachers involved must be taken into account. I also believe curriculum in public schools should not flout reasonable public and parental standards. Indeed, according to a recent Education Week survey, a strong majority of educators themselves believe that parents "should be involved" in their local school's "curriculum choices" (Najarro, 2021). This doesn't mean we invite citizens to dictate topics. It does mean that as we build or revise curriculum, we should adequately respect tradition and community input.

Leading with Focus

Mike Schmoker's must-have, bestselling guide for leaders who want to streamline their practice and focus their efforts on radically improving student learning.

References

American Educator (Eds). (2010-2011, Winter). Common core curriculum: An idea whose time has come. American Educator, 34(4), 2.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2010-2011, Winter). Soaring systems: High flyers all have equitable funding, shared curriculum, and quality teaching. American Educator, 34(4), 20-23.

Marshall, K. (2003). A principal looks back: Standards matter. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(2), 105-113.

Schmoker, M., & Marzano, R. (1999). Realizing the promise of standards-based education. Educational Leadership, 56(6), 17-21.

TNTP. (2018, September 25). The opportunity myth.

Visible Learning. (2018). Collective teacher efficacy (CTE) according to John Hattie.

Wiener, R., & Pimentel, S. (2017). Practice what you teach. The Aspen Institute.

Willingham, D. T., & Rotherham, A. J. (2020, May). Education's research problem. Educational Leadership, 77(8), 70-75.

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We Need Coherent, Teacher-Built Curriculum-NOW!

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Vol. 80 No. 5 Abstract The Case for Curriculum The Best Curriculum? One Teachers Build How to Build Literacy-Rich Curriculum Seize the Opportunity! The action that would most raise student achievement is creating a coherent curriculum for-and with-our teachers. What are we waiting for? Credit: HYNSKYI / iSTOCK Abstract The Case for Curriculum The Best Curriculum?

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I have not given, received, or used any unauthorized assistance. This work is mine. 

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I have not given, received, or used any unauthorized assistance. This work is mine. 

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Some of our students experience racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and other oppressions every day. Sometimes, they experience more than one of those oppressions at the same time. In the classroom, a student might experience classism when an instructor requires an expensive textbook and does not provide any alternative options. A student who is a woman of color may experience racism and sexism when someone assumes they are not a STEM major. Students may also face barriers within the institution (like financial aid, advising, and other spaces) because of their identities.

A big part of creating a safe classroom and facilitating the learning process for diverse groups of students is tailoring your approach to who is in the room. This can be tricky, as students often have multiple identities that intersect in ways that can allow them different access to power and privilege at UConn. In this article, you'll read about a helpful and impactful concept called intersectionality and some strategies for teaching students with multiple identities.

What Is Intersectionality?

Intersectionality is a concept Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined in her work in the early 1990s. As Crenshaw worked with the law, she found that Black women were often erased or excluded from legal progress. In her landmark essay, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color," Crenshaw describes how challenging it was for women of color to get help in domestic violence cases. She describes feminist groups as fighting primarily for white women and in white communities and anti-racism groups as fighting against the tendency for men of color to be criminalized. Between these two groups, no one was looking out for women of color.

Within Black feminism, intersectionality describes how oppression can multiply when a person embodies intersecting marginalized identities.

Crenshaw saw that because Black women existed at the intersection of racial oppression and gender oppression, their experience of both those kinds of oppression multiplied.

She describes this more below in this 1-minute, student-friendly video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViDtnfQ9FHc&t=3s
While the term intersectionality did not arise until the 1990s, the concept of intersecting identities and oppressions has existed in Black feminism and women of color feminisms for a long time. Black feminist scholar bell hooks preferred the term " imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy." hooks saw that intersectionality could sometimes be used to refer just to intersecting identities and not the associated power dynamics. With "imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy," the intersecting oppressions are hard to ignore.

Intersectionality is one way to understand the structures of our society. Race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability (to name a few) are all connected, so the discriminations and oppressions connected to each of these identity groups are also connected. For instance, Asian women have been much more likely to experience anti-Asian violence than Asian men. This is in part because they exist at the intersection of both racial discrimination directed at Asian people and gender discrimination that marks women as more vulnerable than men.

Intersectionality also helps us understand how our students experience power and privilege. Some students may not have access to privilege because of intersecting marginalized identities and knowing that can help us as instructors guide them to appropriate resources.

Identity and Intersectionality Begins with You

Are you wondering how to incorporate the concept of intersectionality into your teaching? Intersectionality can be a helpful addition to any teaching praxis, and the process begins with you.

Consider writing a journal entry or doing a mind map where you list and describe all the different aspects of your identity. Then, journal or think about the following questions: How do these pieces of you intersect in your life? What are some of the ways you have privilege (or not)? How do your identities and life experiences contribute to how you view people of other identities and life experiences?

The last question in that journal prompt encourages you to engage with your implicit biases. Identifying and reducing biases you might have toward your students will help you create a safe classroom space and facilitate learning for all your students.

Feminist pedagogy emphasizes that an instructor's values and identities contribute to how they think about teaching and learning. By identifying your relationship to power and privilege and reducing implicit bias, you can shape your ideas about teaching and learning in ways that allow you to effectively teach diverse groups of students.

Identity and Intersectionality in the Classroom

Once you have acknowledged your identities and your relationship to power and privilege, you can start to think about how to bring intersectionality into your classroom.

Here are three activities you can incorporate into your classroom to get to know your students' identities better.

Large lecture class: Exit cards are an excellent way to conduct a formative assessment for students. You can also use them to ask students to share about themselves. First, come up with an identity-based question to ask. You can keep it general like, "What's one thing you'd like me to know about you?" Or you might choose something more specific. Then, you might give students an index card or generate a QR code that leads to a Google Form where students can answer the question.

Medium-sized class: Icebreakers are a great way to build community at any point in the semester and allow students to get to know each other as you get to know them. One fun icebreaker for a medium-sized class is bingo. Create a bingo table with some fun facts that might apply to your students (and you). You might include some UConn-specific bingo squares, like "Rubbed Jonathan's nose" or "Had ice cream from the Dairy Bar." This allows students to reveal things about themselves in a fun, low-stakes way that is not inherently attached to their oppressions.

Small seminar class: After you have already built trust and worked to build a safe/brave space, consider guiding your students through a privilege walk. With a privilege walk, all students start the activity in a single line. Then, as the instructor reads out statements, students step forward or backward depending on whether the statement pertains to them. It is a strikingly visual way to understand the different kinds of privilege your students have access to. You can find detailed instructions for a privilege walk through the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

How does this translate to bringing intersectionality into the classroom?

You may not be able to shield your students from racism and sexism. Still, as you get to know your students better, you can start to see how their overlapping identities impact their access to your course material and the necessary materials. You can direct them to specific resources on campus. You can adjust assignments or materials to be more accessible to your specific group of students. So, keep getting to know your students. Do icebreakers in the middle of the semester, not just at the beginning.

Moreover, learning more about anti-racist pedagogy and accessibility in the classroom will also give you more concrete strategies for how to be more inclusive in your teaching.

Resources

More on Intersectionality

" Teaching at the Intersections " by Learning for Justice

The Urgency of Intersectionality by Kimberlé Crenshaw (TED Talk)

Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality by The Institute of Art and Ideas

Intersectionality 101 by Learning for Justice

Bibliography

Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. "From private violence to mass incarceration: thinking intersectionally about women, race, and social control." UCLA Law Review 59, no. 6 (2012): 1420-1472.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241-1299.

Kwak, Jessie. "Promoting Equity in the Classroom with Intersectional Pedagogy." Every Learner Everywhere. https://www.everylearnereverywhere.org/blog/promoting-equity-in-the-classroom-with-intersectional-pedagogy/.

Liu, Helena. "All about bell hooks: A Visionary Feminist." Disorient. https://disorient.co/bell-hooks/#relationship-to-intersectionality-theory.

King, Deborah K. "Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14, no. 1 (1988): 42-72.

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Recognizing Identity and Intersectionality in the Classroom | Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

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Some of our students experience racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and other oppressions every day. Sometimes, they experience more than one of those oppres ...

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Theoretical Essay, Published in January 1, 1987, in "The Borderlands," How to Tame a Wild Tongue

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Theoretical Essay, Published in January 1, 1987, in "The Borderlands," How to Tame a Wild Tongue

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"For a people who are neither Spanish nor live in a country in which Spanish is the first language; for a people who live in a
country in which English is the reigning tongue but who are not Anglo; for a people who cannot entirely identify with either
standard (formal, Castillian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language?"

With the idea of intersectionality we know that every person has unique make up of characteristics that make up their identity. Some groups and some cultures have been forced to forget and lose some of the identities. It is important for us in education to honor these identities that have been forgotten and give students ways to connect to that lost identity.

“I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”

Identities need to be spoken, represented and celebrated, not silenced. In education we need to amplify silenced voices and give a place for them speak comfortably.

"In the 1960s, I read my first Chicano novel. It was City of Night by John Rechy…For days I walked around in stunned amazement that a Chicano could write and could get published. When I read 'I Am Joaquin' I was surprised to see a bilingual book by a Chicano in print. When I saw poetry written in Tex-Mex for the first time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like we really existed as a people.”

Literature, especially in classrooms, needs to give students windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors. Students need to see themselves in what they read.

"We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue, we've kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant real American culture. But more than we count the blows, we count the days, the weeks, the years, the centuries, the eons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they've created, lie bleached.”

A lot of communities have been silenced throughout American history, but they are using their unique voices and “wild tongues” to keep their cultures alive and revive their identities.  We need to honor this and amplify this education.

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Social justice is about distributing resources fairly and treating all students equitably so that they feel safe and secure-physically and psychologically. Sadly, a look at schools across the nation makes it clear that fair distribution of resources and equitable treatment don't always happen. Students in poorly-funded schools don't have the technology, new books, or art and music programs that create a well-rounded education, while students in affluent areas have the latest academic resources, school counselors, librarians, and more to help them succeed. Bringing social justice into schools shines a spotlight on all sorts of important societal issues-from the myriad reasons that lie beneath the deep disparity between the suspension rates of black and white students to how current U.S. immigration policy separates families and violates student rights. Meet five educators who determined to make a difference in the lives of their students and within their profession by ensuring social justice is a topic that is addressed in their schools.
Audrey Murph-Brown
Springfield, Massachusetts

Audrey Murph-Brown is a member of the Springfield Education Association (SEA) in Massachusetts. She has been a school social worker for 26 years. She describes events that happened during the 2017 - 2018 school year as "a perfect storm at the perfect time."The storm swirled with nepotism, favoritism, and institutional biases that prevented highly qualified educators of color from becoming lead teachers or being offered lateral promotions. "Rarely were those opportunities given to educators of color," says Murph-Brown. The Massachusetts Teachers Association offered training that led to the establishment of ALANA (African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American) Educators and Allies, an arm of SEA. The group focused on building a diverse and culturally proficient environment for educators of color, and when the opportunity arose to speak to school board members during a public meeting, they did.

"They've never had a collective raised voice before and we were bold," recalls Murph-Brown, referring to the school committee. Educators and their allies filled a school board meeting with signs that read, "Fair Hiring for Everyone" and "No More Nepotism." After powerful testimony from Murph-Brown and other educators, the door to communication was cracked open, and efforts have been made to level the playing field. For example, principals must add an applicant's ethnicity to the hiring application as a way to keep track of who's applying for teaching positions. The school committee's human resource department is looking into better practices within its hiring process, too. It's been slow going, "but it's more than what's ever happened before," says Murph-Brown.

Jesse Hagopian
Seattle, Washington

Jesse Hagopian teaches ethnic studies and is the adviser to the Black Student Union at Garfield High School in Seattle. Hagopian established the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award after he sued the City of Seattle for being pepper sprayed in the face by a police officer on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2015. Recipients of the award demonstrate exceptional leadership in struggles against racism-especially with an understanding of the intersections between sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, class exploitation, and other forms of oppression-within their school or community. Since 2015, nine Seattle Public Schools students and one youth organization have been honored with the award.

"The bold and courageous work of standing up to racism is hard, and this award gives recognition for those with the courage to do it," says Hagopian. "I wanted to create a space and an awareness that if you step forward for social justice, you will be lifted up in the community and by mentors who will support your work."

Activism is at the heart of this award, Hagopian says, and "the examples are breathtaking."

He points to seven black Seattle high school students who formed "New Generation," a school activist group that led a walkout at Garfield High School to raise awareness about Charleena Lyles, a pregnant 30-year-old black woman who was fatally shot by two white Seattle police officers at home as her three young children looked on. One student organized a city-wide movement to get free bus passes for students from low-income families.

Another student started an Islamophobia global awareness day. One group got the Seattle School Board to endorse "Black Lives Matters at School," which included a week of action. The movement has spread to other cities and districts. Another group of students fought for the addition of an Ethnic Studies program that is transforming Seattle's schools.

"None of this would have been possible without student activism," says Hagopian. "I wanted to find a way to recognize this critical work of young people who see that they are the changemakers-the ones who will have to bring about the changes they want to see."

Angie Powers
Olathe, Kansas

Angie Powers, a high school English teacher in Olathe, Kan., says she defines success according to her ability to make school a place where students feel welcome and receive the tools that will help them navigate the complexities of the world with compassion and empathy. That's why Powers sponsors the Olathe Northwest High School Gender Sexuality Alliance and mentors students in the areas of civic engagement, social justice, and advocacy. The latter draws on her training from the NEA, GLSEN, and the Human Rights Campaign. As co-chair of the Kansas NEA Social Justice Taskforce, and the Olathe NEA Social Justice Cadre, Powers leads her state affiliate's social justice efforts. She has spoken to pre-service teachers in every college in Kansas about the challenges LGBTQ+ students face and how new educators can create welcoming schools for their future students. Powers also serves on THRIVE, an organization in the Kansas City area that creates LGBTQ+-specific policy recommendations for local districts.

Powers is committed to ensuring that every student has equitable access to a quality public school, and says, "Education and equity are inseparable. One cannot exist without the other. When inequity plagues the educational system, [the system] fails to serve the needs of each child. It is our most important work to battle inequity in each classroom across the nation, [and within] our educational institutions as a whole. Our children are worth this fight."

Elizabeth Villanueva
Sacramento, California

"I had never thought of myself as an activist just by doing what I love: serving students, their families, and the community I work with," says Sacramento Spanish teacher Elizabeth Villanueva, who has changed the lives of her students by fostering social justice in her classroom and in the community. "Getting to know my students and their families and building meaningful relationships with them motivated me to become an activist. I was deeply moved to look for resources outside the classroom and to provide a meaningful and excellent education for them."

With that goal in mind, Villanueva began an after-school class for Latina students when she was in her second year as a teacher. The goal of the effort was gang prevention, and most of the students enrolled in the class had some affiliation with gangs. But by the time the second cohort had enrolled, the group changed its name to New Age Latinas-NAL, for short-and focused on leadership skills, college readiness, community service, personal growth, and networking with other Latina college students and professionals.

With today's uncertainty over immigration policy, NAL participants and many students in Villanueva's classes share their fears and anxieties about the increase in ICE raids and deportations in their communities. To create a safe haven for her students, Villanueva reached out to the community, colleagues, and other students and started a group called the Luther Burbank High School DREAMers. The group meets weekly and features guest speakers, such as immigration lawyers, who provide "Know Your Rights" workshops, and college counselors, who share information on how to enroll in college and access financial resources.

"Providing good quality, transformative education to the underserved and underrepresented is an essential component of social justice. Every student is part of our collective society, and part of that which makes us all who we are," says Villanueva. "Each one deserves the dignity, respect, and opportunity that is provided for every other member of our collective society. Education has the power to transform our collective consciousness and improve the well-being of us all."

Erica Viray Santos
San Leandro, California

About a decade ago, educator and activist Erica Viray Santos drew upon her personal experiences-growing up in a poor working class, immigrant household, where her mother worked multiple jobs and her father turned to substance abuse and was in and out of the criminal justice system-to help develop San Leandro High School's Social Justice Academy, a cohort that gives students the opportunity to explore their identities and cultural strengths and use them to transform their communities for a more socially just world.

As a teacher and program director for the academy, Viray Santos serves more than a hundred sophomores, juniors, and seniors with a team of teachers. Student projects and actions range from supporting undocumented students to challenging the rape culture. All of the projects, events, pieces of writing, and the curriculum reflect topics that interest and impact the students.

"I think it is essential that we not only give our students content knowledge and hard skills, but we also instill compassion and a sense of accountability to their local and global communities. As educators, we have the responsibility to help young people realize their value and power. It is our responsibility to teach them how to look at the world critically, challenge systems of oppression and discrimination, understand how they can be agents of transformation, and inspire them to take action."

Last year, students addressed the gun violence in school. Viray Santos explains that they developed a new comprehensive discipline plan based on restorative and transformative justice. The goal was to improve relationships between marginalized students and the wider school community. The plan runs counter to the trend of discipline that punishes and pushes young people out of school. Ultimately, students presented their plan to the San Leandro School Board. "These types of lessons and experiences grant students the ability to navigate a landscape that places underserved youth at a disadvantage within the education system," Viray Santos says.

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Why Social Justice in School Matters | NEA

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Meet five educators who are determined to help young people realize their value and power.

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Professional & Executive Development | Harvard DCE

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What is Social Justice Education and Why Does It Matter? - Professional & Executive Development | Harvard DCE

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Learn about the role social justice and DEI education plays in ensuring equity and access for everyone.

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Journal Article, Published in Summer of 1990, in "Perspectives: Choosing and Using Book for the Classroom" Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors

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Journal Article, Published in Summer of 1990, in "Perspectives: Choosing and Using Book for the Classroom" Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors

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“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror”

This theory is what my entire project is based on. Books are powerful and can transform a student's educational experience and life.

“Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as a part of the larger human experience.”

Community is so important to me, especially in the classroom. I believe we need to understand that we are all people and can learn from one another, that comes from recognizing our intersecting identities.

“Children from dominant social groups have always found their mirrors in books, but they, too, have suffered from the lack of availability of books about others.”

Everyone needs to be shown representations of people who are not like them because everyone in the world is not like them. Similarly in education every student needs equitable education, not just the ones who have historically struggled.

“Books can also introduce readers to the history and traditions that are important to any one culture, and which invite comparisons to their own.”

The best learning comes from comparison and adding onto background knowledge. We should be integrating this into curriculums and encouraging this amongst students.

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Curriculum decisions have far-reaching consequences for students and teachers in K-12 schools. The decisions made in public schools are often hotly debated. The triggers for controversy include societal issues and agendas, the goals and effectiveness of the education, and funding. These debates underscore the importance of curriculum development in enhancing teaching and learning.

Put another way, curriculum decisions impact how we shape our society through the way we mold our future adults. Curriculum decisions include technical and policy components, covering everything from the best ways to teach multiplication or the parts of speech to the philosophical frameworks for teaching history and science.

Understanding the context of curriculum development can help educators who want to become more influential in the development of educational policy and practice. This post begins by defining some terms, then considers the stakeholders involved in approving curricula in U.S. public schools and the importance of curriculum development in enhancing teaching and learning.

Defining Terms: Curriculum

Dictionaries define "curriculum" as a course of study. Educators and those concerned with educational policy have a more nuanced, comprehensive view of the word's meaning, as definitions from an international organization and a state-level agency illustrate.

The International Bureau of Education at UNESCO, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, says, "In the simplest terms, 'curriculum' is a description of what, why, how and how well students should learn in a systematic and intentional way." ¹

The state of Rhode Island defines curriculum as "a standards-based sequence of planned experiences where students practice and achieve proficiency in content and applied learning skills." Rhode Island's definition also says, "The structure, organization, and considerations in a curriculum are created in order to enhance student learning and facilitate instruction. Curriculum must include the necessary goals, methods, materials and assessments to effectively support instruction and learning." ²

Both the above definitions can apply to the learning plan for a single class, for a grade level, or for the entire span of a K-12 educational journey. One writer used the metaphor of a puzzle, in which the learning from individual courses connects to and builds on that of others to create the final picture of the students' education. ³

Another way to conceptualize the term is to think of curriculum as an operations manual for the school system, designed to help educators transport students from one intellectual state to another. To summarize key concepts in the above definitions, a curriculum answers the following questions about a subject of any scope:

What is covered

In what order

To what purpose

How it's framed or contextualized

What materials to use

How to measure success

Defining Terms: Curriculum Development

As global change continues to accelerate, the importance of curriculum development in enhancing teaching and learning grows. The world is changing, and how we prepare students to take up their roles and responsibilities must change apace. In its "Education 2030" position paper, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) asserts, "The concept of 'curriculum' should be developed from 'predetermined and static' to 'adaptable and dynamic.' Schools and teachers should be able to update and align the curriculum to reflect evolving societal requirements as well as individual learning needs." ⁴

So curriculum development is an ongoing, dynamic process with a focus on the individual student's success and a scope broad enough to accommodate progress in basic science and technology as well as changes in culture, politics and the environment. In the iterative process of curriculum development, the design and implementation of the curriculum are preceded by the analysis of current conditions and followed by evaluation.

Analysis and evaluation are critical to the success of curriculum development. Analysis helps connect education to current events and connect teaching across disciplines to deepen student learning. Evaluation informs future cycles of development and provides feedback to administrators and policymakers as well as students, parents and teachers.

Given the dynamics of global change and the importance of curriculum development in enhancing teaching and learning, a systematic approach to managing development is central to creating desired outcomes. ⁵

In summary, curriculum development is:

Systematic

Iterative

Evolutionary

Evidence-based

Comprehensive in scope

A tool to improve learning outcomes

The importance of curriculum development in enhancing teaching and learning outcomes comes into focus as the term is defined. Considering the many players involved in setting curriculum sharpens the focus.

Who Determines K-12 Curriculum?

In the United States, responsibility for setting educational policy rests with the states, with the federal government influencing policy through funding and judicial oversight. The U.S. Department of Education has estimated that federal money makes up 8% of elementary and secondary school funding. Federal courts also hear cases related to education and curriculum. For example, in the 1963 case, School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp, the Supreme Court ruled that a Pennsylvania law requiring the reading of bible verses at the opening of the school day violated the First Amendment. 6, 7

States supervise the work of their public school districts and have "the authority to impose limits and obligations on both local school districts and parents." Locally elected boards typically manage school districts and delegate direct responsibility for curriculum development, among other administrative functions, to their school superintendents. The school board approves curriculum as part of its responsibility to set policy. ⁸

Government entities are not the only stakeholders in K-12 education. Students, parents, and teachers all have a direct interest in the process. Stakeholders with a less direct but still keen interest include community members and businesses who help fund the schools and interact with students. Advocates for various issues also seek to influence elementary and secondary school curricula.

Such widespread interest in the process is proof of education's importance to society and the importance of curriculum development in enhancing teaching and learning.

Curriculum as a Reflection of Culture and Values

Curriculum requires careful thought because education reflects and shapes the values of a society. We teach our children what is important to us and that education shapes their worldview. The distributed structure of U.S. education oversight, with several stakeholders influencing locally elected boards of education, is an excellent example of how culture and values affect curriculum. The system encourages the intense interest of disparate stakeholders because people who valued a pluralistic approach to policy-making designed it. ⁸

Other examples of cultural influence on curriculum abound. Countries or school districts placing a high value on volunteerism may codify that value in high school graduation requirements. Likewise, societies or schools valuing science and technology, or social justice and equity, encode those values in specific curriculum requirements.

We can think of the impact of curriculum and curriculum development as flexibly as the terms themselves can be defined. A curriculum can cover a narrowly focused subject for a grade level or be a comprehensive educational plan spanning K-12. Similarly, curriculum impacts both the broader culture and individual students' learning through the work of individual teachers.

The Importance of Curriculum Development in Enhancing Teaching and Learning

A well-developed, current curriculum provides several benefits for students and teachers. A curriculum that lays out course objectives and content sequencing lets the teacher focus on designing specific lessons and assessments to teach individual students effectively.
See The Importance of Lesson Planning for Student Success for more on this topic.
A regularly reviewed curriculum benefits from teacher feedback and incorporates new topics, technologies, and issues. A well-developed curriculum enhances teaching and learning in myriad ways.

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The Importance of Curriculum Development in Enhancing Teaching and Learning

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Learn about the importance of curriculum development in enhancing teaching and learning. Explore the context in which curriculum development occurs.

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Journal Article, Published on January 20, 2017 in The Elsevier, Teacher-driven curriculum development at the classroom level: Implications for curriculum, pedagogy and teacher training

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Journal Article, Published on January 20, 2017 in The Elsevier, Teacher-driven curriculum development at the classroom level: Implications for curriculum, pedagogy and teacher training

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"Individual teacher interpretations of the same (formal) curriculum drive teachers to transform a single curriculum into multiple (taught) curricula through teacher and student experiences in different contexts."

Teachers are incredibly creative and know what is best for students, we need to allow them to create their own good curricula.

"The results further indicate work pressures drive teachers to the negative end of the curriculum implementation continuum."

Teaching is a hard job and we need to support our teachers so they can support their students to the best of their ability.

"The findings show learner-centered and improvising-teaching styles instigate curriculum development, whereas teacher centered and systematic-teaching styles encourage curriculum transmission"

The reason we teach is because of students. They should be centered in our core curriculum. We are not there for us, we are there for them.

"Although teaching styles have been over researched, the literature seems to have ignored its relationship with curriculum development"

Every teacher is different and they can each bring a new perspective to teaching. We need to utilize these differing teaching styles in order to create the most equitable curriculums possible.

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I say that Democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil,until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of arts, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.