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"I can't help but feel that, to achieve education-

al equality, districts are willing to allow what could
be hundreds of students to fall through the cracks
rather than give them the time and personal atten-
tion they need to succeed."
-Julie Summers
 "As educators, our responsibility is to stay up on best
practices and how students learn. If our curriculum today
teaches the same information, through the same means,
we are ignoring the fact that our children learn differently
than their parents, and so on. This perspective on cur-
riculum may be sufficient in the upper grades, but my 4th
graders need more of an opportunity to go deeper and
not just sit and be the receivers of transmitted knowledge
year after year. I think that kids need the opportunity for
exploration."--Jenn Fox
"I feel strongly that current government policies
and standards that are set on a chronological timeline
are not in the best interests of our students. We need
to remember that everyone is different and cannot
conform to a simple table of expected goals. Students
work at different paces, have different abilities, and
relate to varying topics based on their own interests. If
we want children to grow up to be responsible citizens
that make conscientious decisions in our society, we
need to emphasize mastery and not simple coverage of
important topics."-Sarah Davis
"In my own personal experiences in my classroom,
my personality greatly influences my curriculum. If I am
not excited about what I am going to teach, I will tend to
skip over a particular lesson or use it only if I have time.
On the other hand, if I am excited about a lesson, I can
barely wait until I get to teach it."-Tyra Bowling
"Teachers always will have to use creativity and their
own ideas to supplement curriculum and text because the
needs of our students are always changing."
-Mary Wessling
"Being able to bring real-life situations into the
classroom is one aspect that students love about my
classes. Sometimes we will stop working so that I
can tell them a personal story that applies to what
we are working on in class. The students also get to
see me not just as a math nerd, but as someone that
had to struggle with math myself in high school and
overcome difficulties to achieve my level of educa-
tion. I guess the bottom line is to keep it real for the
students."--Greg Beherns
"While the students genuinely enjoyed working
on computers, I also sensed that they wanted more
personalized instruction than that of simply com-
pleting computer work out of a textbook. So I be-
gan to integrate the computer work into concepts,
ideas, and projects that related more to real-world
experiences and items that we could discuss in
class. We spent time together organizing an end-of-
the-year banquet, which required a comprehensive
PowerPoint® presentation, printed invitations and
programs, awards and certificates, and a revolving
budget that included fund-raisers to help support
the project. I found the end result to be truly grati-
fying; the students sincerely enjoyed the work and
generally had a sense of pride that they were able
to apply the skills they had learned in class to real-
world experiences outside the classroom."
-Drew McKnight
"I constantly have to change teaching strate-
gies to find a way that works for the students.
Sometimes I let a student that has a good grasp on
a specific concept teach for the day, just to break
things up. My statistics and programming class
definitely reflects an experiential perspective. The
students work on many projects to make sense of
the information put forth in the text; they learn by
doing. In my college prep geometry class, I take a
constructivist approach. The students come up with
their own definitions for terms and learn to apply
the concepts by working in groups, discussing, and
comparing different approaches to problems. I ob-
serve and only step in when I see that they are really
in trouble."-Greg Beherns
 "1 received a lot of positive feedback (from teach-
ers, administrators, and parents) about the art pro-
gram I was carrying out. However, it did not even
occur to me until about halfway through the year
that I had failed to get feedback from the people that
mattered most-my students! One child, Sammy, had
expressed interest in rockets, planets, and all aspects of
outer space. Another student, Jessica, talked about the
ballet all the time. How could I throw in a project about
space or ballet when we were studying Aboriginal cave
art? Why had I not built into my curriculum time for
free drawing or allowed my students to come up with
ideas on their own? I never stopped to ask, 'How can
I make it better?' I was sticking strictly to my original
plan and had not left any flexibility to account for my
students' interests and needs."-Sarah Davis
"This focus on standards and accountability has
spilled over to students as well. The upper-level stu-
dents in my school are so focused on the percentage
and grade earned that they are failing to learn. Yet,
students who can play by the rules of school excel
and earn high grades and top honors. Students who
are unable to conform end up falling behind, and
sometimes are tracked into remedial or vocational
programs."
-Lucinda Roberts
"No test can be determined to be fair for all
students. Curriculum must be adapted to take into
account students' cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Students from different socioeconomic and cultural
backgrounds learn best when teachers use strategies
that are in harmony with those backgrounds. The
standardized tests are not written from a multicultural
perspective. Lewis Meriam (in Posner 2004, 208), as
far back as 1928, wrote concerning Native American
Indians, 'The curriculum must not be uniform and
standardized. The textbooks must not be prescribed.
The teacher must be free to gather material from the
life of Indians about her, so that the little children may
proceed from the known to the unknowns and not be
plunged at once into a world where all is unknown
and unfamiliar.' In essence, the community leaders,
business people, and politicians in the state legislatures
need to let the students, parents, and teachers decide
what is best for our students."--Barrett Swope
"The authors of Best Practice(Zemelman et al. 1998)
suggested that principals work for disapproval of basal
readers and align standardized testing programs with the
holistic approach to reading. This is an excellent argu-
ment, considering the comprehension expected on our
current state achievement tests. However, the difficulty in
this approach is for the students who don't read at grade
level and are required to take their grade-level achieve-
ment test. If no child is to be left behind, then teachers
should be given the authority to choose curriculum that
will help bridge the gap for these students."
-Mary Wessling
"The accountability issues for teachers have such a
stranglehold on education that we cannot stop. There is
no time. We have to be at standard number 15 by Febru-
ary, and the 'remedial' kids are not going to slow the rest
of us down."-Lucinda Roberts
"No Child Left Behind set forth some excellent, al-
beit impractical, principles and then provided very little
funding for school districts to implement these drastic
changes. Almost weekly, our superintendent sends us
updates on the governor's budget cuts and how they
will affect us. These state and federal officials always are
saying things like 'do more with less' when in reality
they are asking us to 'do more with nothing!"'
-Shane Estep
 "An intense push for standards-based education includes environments and create a positive relationship between differ-
an increased focus on standardized testing. We are becoming ent cultures."-Jonathan Hamilton
boxed in by these issues, unable to see or look for curriculum
beyond the given parameters. We are so focused on covering
all of the standards and teaching so that students can pass
tests that it seems as if nothing else matters. Because of this, I
say that we are failing students."--Lucinda Roberts

"Personally, I do not believe that schools can effectively

create and implement a multicultural curriculum, especially
if the teaching staff does not show or resemble that curricu-
lum. Of course, many schools try the generic route by having
teachers illuminate key points of instruction with content
reflecting diversity. I believe that if schools really want to
effectively adapt and transform their mainstream curriculum
to a more reflective multicultural one, then they need to
hire more diverse individuals who come from many different
backgrounds (races, cultures, languages, and religious affilia-
tions)."--Jonathan Hamilton

"My school is very homogeneous. It is difficult for me

to teach my students about other cultures simply from a
photograph, textbook, or video. While students are getting
exposure to people other than themselves, the experience is
not real for them because this type of learning is so discon-
nected.", Sarah Davis

"The issues of minorities and the achievement gap in

today's public schools have gotten worse. Avariety of curricula
"should be used to attempt to shorten or eliminate the achieve-
ment gap between whites and minorities, especially African-
American males. Ifthe educational system does not make a
significant attempt to solve this problem, more minorities will
be led into drugs, gangs, violence, prison, and ultimately to
their death. I believe that structuring a curriculum to alleviate
this catastrophic problem will lead to more productive school
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Teachers Critique the Curriculum: Frame Factors at Play

SOURCE: Kappa Delta Pi Record 43 no2 Wint 2007
PAGE(S): 82-7

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