Storytelling around the Globe

Rationale

The rationale for this curriculum unit is twofold: to address both the academic standards in respect to immigration as well as to provide support, access, and equity for the students as they adapt to their new lives. The vehicle for the instruction will include short stories, poetry, and film.

My school district, San Francisco Unified School District, has developed a new Strategic Plan³ which places equity, social justice, and accountability at the forefront. Fundamentally, it affirms that every child has the right to be well educated and that the transformative power of access and equity will ensure that each student is provided a rich and rewarding education—regardless of race, ethnicity, class, language, or economic status. Our strategic plan has three major goals:

1. Access and Equity—Each child has access to quality teaching and learning regardless of background, neighborhood, and income level. All students have the right to respect, to be treated with dignity, to have access to all school resources and the right to a 2121^st century curriculum.
2. Achievement—Every student graduates from high school ready for college and/or career with the tools necessary to succeed.d.
3. Accountability—We will keep our promises to students and families.s.
4. he immigrant English Language Learner students are, as a group, part of the achievement gap that persists in the San Francisco Unified School District—- the gap which we educators are trying to close or at least narrow. The rationale for this unit addresses the strategic plan of San Francisco Unified by providing the needed support and curriculum mandated by SFUSD.USD.

The school district is also under court mandate, the Lau Decree, to provide equal educational opportunity for English Language Learners. In 1974, the Supreme Court found that San Francisco Unified School District had erred in not providing equal educational opportunities for English Language Learners thereby violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Newcomer High School is one of the schools established to target the needs of ELL students in San Francisco. It is one of the schools that can provide bilingual education because the passage of Proposition 227⁴ virtually banned bilingual education in California schools except for a one—year sheltered immersion program, such as the one offered at Newcomer.