Adapting to Change: Social Needs Meet Curriculum in New York City Public Schools
by Focussing on the need to meet both the social and curricular needs of inner city students in the New York public school system.
New York City is known for diversity. This multicultural melting pot does not exist only on the streets; it exists in the classroom as well. The past decade has seen an exponential growth in classroom diversity requiring even greater degrees of differentiated instruction.
I once taught at a New York public school that was 97% African American. Books by local as well as nationally known black authors are included in the canon alongside traditional texts. The local authors visit to show students that it is possible for them to become writers even if they began life in a poor neighborhood.
Other books, such as Ben Carson’s Gifted Hands, which traces the life of a black surgeon, also provide motivation for these teens to step beyond preconceived limitations that they believe have been imposed upon them by society. It is easy to blame the outside world for keeping you down when you live in poverty. This is a reality of life in New York for many children, but the need to find ways to help children use education to move beyond this situation is directly tied to the development of curriculum that meets these needs.
The addition of programs such as Read 180 give struggling students a chance to read the same ideas on an easier level, thereby differentiating instruction in such a way as to facilitate full inclusion. Students who are working at higher than grade level also have a program, AVID, that allows them to advance more quickly, keeping them interested, motivated and focused on achieving their educational goals.
Because of the pressures these teenagers face from gangs, drugs and assorted street violence in their neighborhood, educators have responded to the need to create a safe haven in the schools that becomes a place where these teenagers feel that they can succeed. These programs and others like them have all been developed in the past decade in order to continue to tailor curriculum in response to changes in society as a whole.
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