What comes to mind when you hear the word “hero”? What experiences or people shaped the way you view this word? Our students in Grade 5 at Dharavi Transit Camp School will instantly say, “Shivaji!” or “Ronaldo!” or “Shah Rukh Khan!” but will seldom call out people from within their community. When asked where they wanted to be growing up, 80% of students in the class shared that they wanted to be away from the community.
On a broader note, most students view their community negatively. In many ways, students have begun to think in line with the dominant narrative around their community. For context, Dharavi is Asia’s largest slum. It is often featured in the news for violence, pollution and inequality.
But what does the news seldom capture? – Dharavi’s vibrant festivals, the upcoming creative industries, and most importantly; the people. People from the community who are putting their sweat and blood into making it a better place for generations to come. People who will not hesitate to give you their entire “roti” even if they have not eaten dinner. People whose hearts are made of gold.
How may we enable a shift in students’ thinking? How may we expose them to alternate narratives where local people are viewed as “heroes?” How may we leverage this cultural capital to increase academic rigor and accelerate learning outcomes?
This project is close to my heart because I spent six years serving within this community in my home city, Mumbai. My students were English as second or third language learners. Most of them were two to three years behind grade level in Literacy. They had enormous potential and worked hard to bridge this gap. When I was teaching, I noticed that my students displayed different amounts of engagement based on the level and content of the material presented to them. The more the material aligned to their level of readiness and was relevant to their lives, the higher their investment. Unfortunately, the prescribed curriculum was standardized and not very contextual to student backgrounds or reading levels. I found myself struggling to balance requirements from the state, students’ interests and student needs while designing curricula. In addition, I believed that a “technically sound” lesson plan would not cater to the interests of my students and vice versa. A few of my prior beliefs/questions:
“Making an accurate phonics drill interesting and relevant is too difficult!”
“How is it possible to integrate all the pillars of reading into a single lesson while ALSO tapping into student backgrounds, interests and their actual academic needs?”
“ My students are behind grade level and the instructional time I have is low. I need to prioritize what is most important.”
…But what is most important?
The idea for this project stemmed from my work at another class at HGSE. In my Literacy Practicum class, I am serving a student who struggles with reading at a Cambridge Public School. In this class, I have been exposed to “the pillars of effective reading instruction” and designing lesson plans aligned to the same. At the start, we (my student and I) experienced behavior breakdowns often and she did not really engage in the material presented to her. After being exposed to “culturally-sustaining pedagogy” through the Practicum, I tried something new. I selected texts and activities that leveraged her cultural capital. We are doing a series of African- American literature books. At the same time, we are preserving the “technical elements” of the lesson; for example, we still have a phonics section, but we select words for this based on the text. We still have a “vocabulary” section, but we learn words using sentences relevant to her life. We make connections between the character and her life. Over time, I have been noticing a shift in her approach to reading. This has translated into her effort, focus, and outcomes. Something I realized, and what I hope my project teaches us about learning design is that a lesson plan or curriculum can be “technically sound” and “culturally sustaining” at the same time. In fact, a designer can leverage a student’s background as a means to accelerate academic outcomes instead of looking at it as a choice between academic rigor and student interests/backgrounds. There are also ways to modify and contextualize state curricula, even when it is rigid, to incorporate relevance and meaning.
This Literacy unit plan “Our Community Heroes” serves the Indian context and is rooted in a.) The Pillars of “effective reading instruction” and b.) “culturally sustaining pedagogy”. It strives to accelerate student growth in literacy while simultaneously enabling a shift in their thinking around people within their communities. Through this unit plan, students will explore an “essential question” each week. They will be exposed to a variety of texts and activities that introduce them to different ways of thinking. Students will have the space to draw conclusions while going through these activities/texts instead of enforcing one on them. For example, students begin the unit by exploring the question “Who is my hero?” Through week one of the unit plan, they read about different “heroes”; stereotypical heroes (like what the media or their textbooks portray), as well as “hidden heroes” (people within their community). They will conduct interviews with the “hidden heroes” in their communities such as the “rag pickers” who clean the community dumping ground at sunrise every day. They will keep revisiting the big question of the week to deepen or challenge their previous ways of thinking.
The second thing I hope this project helps us understand about learning design is that design is transferable and contextual. I am currently executing a whole new curriculum progression for Literacy in the Cambridge Public School than the one I used in India. Here, I am serving one student. In India, I was serving 47 students at first and then 385 over time. The school I am working at in Cambridge is a high-income school by U.S. Standards whereas the school I served at in India was a low-income school. Both contexts are starkly different. However, every day I work with my students here, I am able to think of ways I could leverage the knowledge and skills around literacy and teaching while designing for students in India. Yes, contexts are different, but there is so much to learn from each one! In this Literacy unit plan, I have used the “Massachusetts Curriculum Framework” for standards and objectives. I have also used the same phonics and vocabulary approach that I use here and contextualized it to suit the Indian context. A learning designer, then, can often be fueled by a different context, towards continuously strengthening another. Best of both worlds!
