Cultural Literacy in English Enrichment

The English Enrichment courses at Muncie Community Schools were designed to provide students with extra exposure and practice in key English/Language Arts skills. As an entirely new class, this meant developing a course from nothing. I hired on to teach this course last year, and decided immediately to turn it into a cultural literacy course that focused specifically on social awareness and the development of world experience within the classroom. I knew field trips were not practical, nor likely possible, so I gathered resources that could provide students with some type of cultural experience. Additionally, my students are members of the group we might argue face test bias on standardized examinations. They are members of a group who do not have the opportunity to experience things other students take for granted, and can face penalties when test questions reflect this lack of experience.

At the beginning of the year, the class was a rough group. My students were angry because English Enrichment would be counted as an additional grade on their report cards, and it meant they would no longer be given a study hall in their daily schedule. This was a severe disruption to their planned nap each day, and they resented me for their situation. However, as I continued to implement new experiences, and really worked at providing them with unique content and projects, my students started to expect an entirely different situation from my classroom. For starters, they began asking questions. Not questions like, “Why are we doing this?” but questions that sought to delve into the content we were discussing. Questions that had tough answers.

We studied the situation in the Middle East, and tracked our reading and writing across a world map, adding the name of each country to a sticky note on a world map stuck to the chalkboard. Each day, students would enter the classroom and check the map. Eventually, they started requesting a discussion of specific places in the world. Places we had yet to discuss, and they had never before heard mentioned. Places like Bosnia and Rwanda. Tough places with tough topics. We talked about them. They studied them. They researched and wrote and composed and fought with me about them. But. They learned. They grew, and they started to seek knowledge outside of my classroom on their own.

Challenges or Obstacles:

• The biggest challenge I faced in developing this course was finding and compiling materials in a timely fashion. This occurred because it was necessary to edit materials to create suitable content for the age group with whom I was engaging. However, I have taught similar content at the high school level with little editing.
• Additionally, I had to leave out key topics that are very important, but not entirely developmentally appropriate for eighth grade students. We discussed human trafficking, but did not delve into the idea of inter-generational prostitution or the prevalent use of sex slaves. This would likely have caused an uproar among our parent population.
• However, one of the best ways I determined to communicate with parents regarding classroom content was a weekly overview and forewarning notice. Each Friday, I sent a short email to all parents who opted into my class email list. I included information on what had been discussed, created, and graded for the week, and provided an overview of what would be discussed in the upcoming week. I always ended my emails with a welcome to parents who had ideas on what their student might like to discuss, or were interested in further discussion of class content or student progress. I even had a few parents who responded with ideas for discussion, or sent me videos or news articles they felt their child should see. Of course, I checked all of these materials for suitability, and they were often added to the curriculum or offered as an extension to what was being discussed. I also provided parents with additional resources on the topics we discussed. Typically, these were more mature pieces that I encouraged them to view. In this way, I hoped to educate both parents and students as to the content under discussion in the classroom.

Benefits and Successes:

• One positive outcome of this best practice was that student grades increased between grading periods. As students became engaged in classroom material, more assignments were submitted, more students participated, and fewer discipline problems arose.
• Additionally, students began to research topics that were of interest to them without prompting, and brought ideas to the classroom that were not previously discussed. This included knowledge of current events, as well as articles, books, and documentaries that were not included in the classroom curriculum.

Submitted by: Brittany Snyder, Northside Middle School