Equity in Curriculum and Instruction Voices

• In Event: We Don't Need No More Trouble: Reimagining the Educational System Using Perspectives of Black Teachers

Abstract

Objective/ Purpose
As an educator, I feel that curriculum and instruction along with standardized testing policies are of great importance. I have noticed that it can be difficult to articulate your opinion in relation to these things. When my students took their state administered standardized testing, I personally was disappointed with the scores my students received overall. My department chair and administration keyed in on my 6 students that fell below the threshold and what I needed to do better to improve their scores. I wanted to focus on curriculum and instruction and ways to improve ALL of my student’s scores, but again they focused on those failing six. I was told that the goal was to get all of my students over the threshold, and I would have done my job. I took that response as my administration purposefully rejecting the idea of getting the students to their highest potential. Also, not truly caring or valuing what I’m teaching, how I’m teaching and what the students are learning. This interaction (among several others) taught me that every individual doesn’t have the same ideas in relation to student success. It made me truly wish to seek a way of reimagining the ways in which we test our students and how we implement policies regarding these tests. Ultimately, the purpose of this paper is to utilize the Afrofuturism lens to rethink and imagine how and what we teach, and what the purpose of these tests could be.
Perspective or Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework represented here is Afrofuturism. Since 1994, when the phrase was coined (and most definitely beforehand), Black people have been trying to reimagine their place in the future. Dery (1994) wonders how a people so erased from history and has spent so much energy trying to reclaim their humanity and existence imagine a “possible future”. My group members and I plan to imagine these possible futures in the realm of education. In doing so, we hope more educators will recognize it takes a village to not only rear children and there is a multitude of ways to imagine the education of Black and Brown students.
Data Sources, evidences, objects, and materials
In relation to data sources, I will be calling on narrative inquiry. Through stories expressed by individuals in the literature and my own personal accounts, I will articulate the need for change within the educational space. I will further use these stories to illustrate a different future using the Afrofuturism lens.
Significance
The significance of this work lies in its ability to aid Black and Brown people in gaining another avenue to reimagine their liberation. Afrofuturism is a lens that allows for people of color to explore different futures in relation to societal issues that plague them. In relation to education, it allows for us as teachers, parents, and community to think of new, innovative, and unique ways to educate our children.

Author

• Marquis Baker, Georgia State University