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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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? 

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.

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.

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.