Shea was the last Cookie cutter staduim, so why not lose the cookie cutter curriculum

Among all the readings we have done, a lot of them have had to do with diversifying the curriculum, because everyone learns differently; why do cook cutter curricula still exist?

Embrace diversity, use alternative methods, every child is different… these are the things that I hear in my education classes each day. If I am being trained not to teach from to book and to use multiple methods to teach literacy, then why are my counterparts in the class room still using cookie cutter curriculums? The standardization of our schools is great for the sake of quantifying and rating schools against each other. However, that does not mean that schools and teachers need to teach in the same mechanical way.
Cookie-cutter curriculums exist is almost every level and context area of our curriculum, even though it isn’t the most effective teaching methods. Often the result of a standardized cookie cutter curriculum is the mass production and manufacturing of grades. When so much pressure is put on producing grades, there is little left for creativity and helping students that may need differentiated instruction. So in turn the student most hurt by standardized curriculums are the ones that most need the help, ELL for example. These teaching methods also forget to consider students of different races and social backgrounds.
Although many of us can agree that the current system isn’t the best, finding something better isn’t easy. Clearly the system has shown that it works (on paper), and how do you turn a standardized system into something that isn’t but that can still be held accountable and quantified? Perhaps this is why the rules of the game haven’t changed, we know that they aren’t great but aren’t quite sure as to how to go about changing it. Well like MLB, instead of throwing the whole book out how about we start with just small changes. MLB now has homerun review to help them make better calls, let us in the education business make a great call and reviews to create homeruns for our students.

Sweet 16

Even though ELL students are given special attention/instruction in learning English, their literacy curricula are significantly "dumbed down" (p.111 in Snake Oil) What will be the impact of this on their future success? Might this be intentional to keep them on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum?

As seen in Literacy as Snake Oil, while English language learners are given special attention to help them learn English and integrate into their new environments. However when it comes to literacy, ELL students receive a watered down curriculum. Many teachers believe that by doing this they are making it easier for the students to pass and succeed, when in reality they are failing their students, by not challenging them. It has been proven time and time again that student do best when they are challenged. By not providing the ELL students with a challenged curriculum it makes the students feel like the school doesn’t think that they can do better. Just because a student has a language barrier, it does not mean that they aren’t smart. In a course on differentiating instruction, I learned that any students in special education classes are also ELL/ESL students.
This “dumbed down” curricula can have a devastating impact on the success of ELL students. Some critics of watering down instruction even say that this is done intentionally to keep ELL students on a lower socio-economic spectrum. This can also be compared to the backwards reasoning of NCLB. A school that performs below standards, loses its much needed funding, meanwhile schools that are already achieving their goals are granted extra aid to further widen the success gap. Shouldn’t the underperforming school receive the extra funding so that they can succeed? Shouldn’t the ELL student receive the maximum support and best efforts in education to grant them success?
While this issue is a problem in our school systems, teachers need to provide all that they can to help in the development of their ELL students, so that they can receive the appropriate education. This can be done by bringing real life examples into the classroom, to help student bridge the gaps caused by the language or cultural barrier. Students could also benefit from textbooks printed in their own language to help them stay on track in their content classes. There is no reason that teachers of ELL students should take shortcuts and skim out on the content of a lesson simply because of language issues.