THE INITIATIVE
WELCOME to Elevated Educator. The purpose is to make publicly available a limited number of examples of culturally relevant and responsive teaching materials that have been used at East and could be used by others. Our intention, while not being averse to stand-alone CRRP materials, is to provide real life, teacher created or adapted artifacts of activities, materials, lesson plans, or whole unit plans, around topics as they are typically taught in various content areas at the secondary level across New York State. All materials on this site have been used with students at East. These plans have not been "prettied up" for outside consumption. You'll notice parts that are left blank or you may not understand. In our effort to provide what we believe are much needed examples of curriculum materials that are culturally relevant and responsive, we've prioritized authenticity and immediacy over polish.
"Teachers at East have been diligently overhauling their curriculum since 2015"
STORY CONTINUES
Teachers at East have been diligently overhauling their curriculum since 2015. "East" is actually a pair of secondary schools consisting of a Lower School, grades 6-8, and an Upper School, grades 9-12. The curriculum work began as part of a partnership between the Rochester City School District and the University of Rochester to enable East to remain open as it entered into receivership. This mission-driven curriculum undertaking follows the Understanding by Design (Wiggins, McTighe, Kiernan, & Frost, 1998) model. Our work consists of curriculum that is adapted, adopted, or created from a wide variety of sources. While only a sampling of materials is presented here, East has written curriculum for all content areas grades 6-12.
Curriculum that is culturally relevant and rigorous is a strong area of interest now. To be maximally useful to practitioners, the teaching materials provided here are intended to be downloadabe as documents that can be modified. Care has been taken to provide attribution for non-original materials to the extent that we are able.
Attribution of the phrase 'culturally relevant and responsive' cannot be limited to a single author but is closely associated with, among others, Ladson-Billings (1994) and Gay (2010).
This website is being developed in collaboration with Rochester City School District East Educational Partnership Organization and the University of Rochester Center for Urban Education Success.
References
Gay, Geneva (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (2nd ed.). New York, New York: Teachers College Press. ISBN 9780807750780.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishing.
Wiggins, G. P., McTighe, J., Kiernan, L. J., Frost, F., & Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.