Curriculum Responsibilities

As an English Language Arts teacher for 10th grade students, I strive to teach literature from a variety of genres, cultures, and perspectives that align with both the identities and communities that my students belong to. This year, I designed units around Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X, Sandra Cisnero’s The House on Mango Street, and Alan Gratz’s Refugee. Through our reading of these novels we explored a mosaic of themes– Home and Immigration, Coming of Age, Deviating from Cultural Norms, Poverty and Survival. As we explored these themes, students engaged in a lot of narrative, persuasive, and analytical writing to prepare for the 2-day English Language Arts MCAS test in March. Passing the MCAS is a graduation requirement at South High and across Massachusetts Public Schools. When I was not helping students prepare for the test with my own curriculum, I was following South High’s 10th grade team’s test-prep curriculum which was pre-designed for me and all other English teachers to follow.