The next few blog posts in this series cover how we introduced more diverse, current and challenging texts into our English curriculum.
One of my main intentions when taking on a new role as Head of English at a British Curriculum school in SE Asia was to make the English curriculum more relevant to our students.
This quickly became a bigger job than I had anticipated.
When this was broached in one of our department meetings prior to my post officially beginning, I had more feedback, recommendations and advice than I could ever hope to include in one KS3/4/5 curriculum. These ranged from useful nods of, ‘we could look at the homework extracts first…’ to ‘cut it all out, start again!’
In short, it’s a massive job and, arguably, one of the most important decisions to undertake in building a curriculum that seeks to:
Reflect the backgrounds and perspectives of the student body
Stimulates thought and aligns with wider values of empathy, kindness and criticality.
Poses breadth and challenge
I am incredibly lucky to work with a team who were so keen to make drastic changes to - and the consensus agreed - a somewhat stale (harsher critics may have said uninspired) set of text choices that while well resourced, were not generating the enthusiasm in our student body that we would hope to see.
The chance for students to connect with texts that have more reference or ‘buy-in’ points for them cannot be overlooked in an international context. Trying to empathise with a character placed thousands of miles away in a climate and culture far removed is a tough ask. It’s difficult enough when trying to get students to empathise with someone in the same room, as anyone with a pastoral responsibility will know only too well.
The Runnymede Report has documented the importance of a diverse curriculum and the need to include texts and plan lessons that does not just roadmap to IGCSE but to, hopefully, make students consider their position in the world, the action they could take and consider their place and privilege within their context.
We decided on a phased approach to text changes, taking into account the department’s responsibilities and time commitments, many of whom hold leadership roles. Key Stage 3, it became quickly apparent, needed the most attention. The team were asked to carry out some initial research and reconvene later in the month to ‘pitch’ replacement text choices.
It transpired fairly quickly that the most popular text choice for the Year 8 novel was Manjeet Mann’s 'The Crossing.' It is the story of two young people living through incredibly difficult circumstances beyond their control. It is a two-voice story told in verse about an Eritrean refugee and a British teenager mourning the death of her mother. As the text is written in an unusual form and highlights specific, global issues (displaced peoples and the refugee crisis). We felt our students would benefit from studying modern literature, written in experimental ways, which encourage empathy, discussion and exploration of the writer's craft.
With the above in mind, it also meshed nicely with the overall theme for the year, which encourages students to make connections to the presentation of conflicts in texts. This thematic approach to our curriculum will be covered in more depth in a future blog post.
To make things even more interesting (and knotty), we were also looking to make connections with the secondary school’s new Service Learning Programme, which aims to promote student engagement with Global Goals. Handily, the Assistant Head in charge of this role is a member of Team English.
The next post in this series will focus on unit planning and implementation.
Comments