At the same time that the School Reform Commission voted in February 2005 to mandate an African American history course in all high schools, the commissioners approved a provision calling for “the infusion of African and African American history and culture in the total curriculum, grades preK-12.”
School District commitments to infuse African American history and culture have been made before, as far back as 1968.
What is different today, according to Cecilia Cannon, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction, is that the School District now has a standardized core curriculum that “directs teachers around expectations for instructional practice.”
Cannon describes how the core curriculum, backed up by instructional materials and professional development for staff, has become the District’s vehicle for ensuring the infusion of African and African American history and culture across subject areas and grade levels.
The number of central office staff devoted to African American studies has declined from its peak in the 1990s when the District was expanding its “African American Studies Resource Center.” In 2001, the Resource Center still had a staff of three, while now there is a single African and African American Studies Lead Academic Coach, Dana King.
But Cannon recalls as a former teacher that curriculum materials produced by the Resource Center were just treated as suggestions. “I don’t think there was an expectation,” she explained. “What you did with them was pretty much up to what you did with them ... it was pretty much your choice.”
Now the materials developed by the curriculum office to infuse African American studies have a different status, Cannon says. “These lessons and modules and texts are expected to be used and delivered in a certain way.”
Cannon pointed to the elementary grades science curriculum as an example of this approach: “We put a cultural perspective piece right into the beginning of each one of the science units” in the core curriculum document, she said.
For example, the seventh grade science curriculum document used by teachers is interspersed with more than a dozen pages devoted to “science cultural perspectives.” Typically these are informational rather than specific lessons, and provide several paragraphs of historical and cross-cultural context for the particular topic, with examples of scientists of color connected to nearly every topic and with some website references.
A similar approach is used to include multicultural content in the math curriculum.
In social studies, the District’s ninth grade world history course this year incorporates two modules focused on Africa: “The Passage” and African movements for liberation from the 19th century to present.
For the elementary grades, the District has developed K-8 African and African American history modules (see Review: new history modules provide package of lessons) as well as “Community Voice” modules that explore Philadelphia history through the perspectives of several of the city’s ethnic groups. These new materials are now incorporated in the core curriculum.
District curriculum staff note that they gather teacher feedback through focus groups and make revisions after first year implementation.
Developing new content on African Americans and others that have been absent from the curriculum is only part of the challenge. Schools and central office staff also must address how the content is delivered to students.
A real obstacle facing the District in delivering new content is that many teachers describe themselves as already stretched to keep to the fast pace of the mandated curriculum.
Cannon said her staff’s focus is to “build capacity” by working with teachers and teacher leaders to provide support.
