| Curriculum decisions in New Jersey schools are governed by the New Jersey Cross Content Curriculum Standards, which are tested during the administration of yearly state tests. The discipline called "English" is regulated by the Standards for Language Arts Literacy. At this research site, a suburban Bergen County high school, typically English teachers attempt to meet the Language Arts Literacy Standards using literature from the canon, constructing reading, writing, viewing, listening and speaking opportunities based on world literature (9th and 12th grades), American literature (10th grade), and British literature (11 th grade). Seniors at this research site often complained and questioned the relevance of world literature taught in traditional ways. This researcher proposed an alternative to world literature, and this study thus traces and examines one teacher's journey as she constructed and taught a course called English IV: Current Issues and Texts to replace English IV: World Literature .; The journey is represented as a qualitative study incorporating authoethnographic methods and Critical Discourse Analysis. The study analyzes discourse choices utilized to propose the new course to the members of the local board of education, details discourse choices made to promote the course to the incoming seniors, and narrates discourses employed to gain parent approval. In addition, the narrative retells events of the classroom during the first semester of the new course, examining relationships between students and teacher and content not typically studied at this research site. During the retelling and examining of all stories, the researcher situates present day events in past memories of family, school, and perceived traditions of teaching.; Although the new course was successfully implemented, the researcher poses a dilemma at the conclusion of the study. Legislation, such as No Child Left Behind, potentially stunts teacher development, limits the construction of courses whose assessments of exactly what is learned are not measurable by standardized tests, and reduces the complexity of teaching and learning to only what is quantifiable. Therefore, the researcher analyzed ways in which teachers interested in making small changes need to look within the structures of school and dominant school discourses that potentially open local sites to alternatives. |
