The Bilingual/ESOL Curriculum Framework of the Denver Public Schools

Abstract

0 Today a major concern of educators working with linguistically diverse students centers on how to address the specific academic, linguistic, cognitive, and social needs of these students on a day-to-day basis in the classroom. Unfortunately, our limited English proficient (LEP) students' needs are rarely addressed in the development of the typical, mainstream curriculum. Instead, curriculum is usually developed with the generic average student in the generic average classroom in mind. To make matters worse, the specific content and the mass of detailed objectives, lessons, procedures, and evaluations that are the product of this curriculum development process leave little room for individual teachers to interpret and/or modify the curriculum to take into account their LEP learners. With these concerns in mind, the Director and staff of the newly enlarged Bilingual/ESOL Education Program of the Denver Public Schools (DPS) set out to devise a curriculum that would provide teachers in the program with a common focus and instructional goals but that would also allow them to develop, organize, and refine their own individual methods and techniques in order to meet the specific and changing needs of the students in their classrooms. The result was a curriculum framework that (a) utilizes all four language processes (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and the cognitive process as vehicles for promoting academic achievement; (b) is interdisciplinary, with the teacher as the overall manager, organizer, facilitator, and classroom developer of the various curricula; (c) is student centered and experience based, with students as active participants in the development and implementation of learning activities; and (d) is flexible and responsive to each student's individual learning style, language proficiency, and cognitive development.