Educators examine and discuss their relationship with mandated, or “boxed,” curriculum.

Educators describe some of the reasons they need to spend time modifying boxed curriculum, with many exploring the offerings of prepared curriculum through an equity lens.

Sample Educator Conversations:

  • Educators respond to an article titled “Should teachers customize their lessons or just stick to the ‘script’?” in which a kindergarten teacher referenced in the article said she often has to spend her own money to make the curriculum come alive for her students.
    • Teachers connected with the teacher in the article who “spends her own time & money modifying the curriculum to make it more accurate, more inclusive and more meaningful for her students” when curriculum providers should be paid to do this work.
    • A teacher notes that it’s “teachers’ core work to plan lessons” and that curriculum should provide guidance on what to teach but not impose requirements about how to teach it. 
    • Several teachers note the lack of autonomy as undermining their professionalism, with one saying that “the district cracking down on teachers for not using the curriculum as it is scripted is one of the major reasons why I left.”
  • Teachers discuss the lack of culturally responsive curriculum available. 
    • A teacher asks if anyone knows of a culturally relevant math curriculum, and someone answers: “Only big scale one I know of is Open Up Resources,” and that all other curriculum they’ve encountered center whiteness and “de-center indigenous ways of knowing, learning and showing learning.”
    • Several teachers note that lack of diversity among curriculum writers and advisors precludes the creation of a curriculum that can be “be truly culturally relevant and/or anti-racist.” 
  • When one teacher wonders if boxed curriculum, such as HMH Into Reading, might help decrease their workload, many jump in to describe the work they still must do to make boxed curriculum usable:
    • Several teachers say the highly scripted curriculum is boring, and they must invest time to “make it more engaging” and culturally responsive. 
    • Some teachers describe how using boxed curriculum cuts down on the time they must spend “researching topics and hunting for pieces,” so they are instead spending time thinking through the curriculum sequence and supplementing. 
    • A teacher describes how ELA curriculum fails to provide necessary scaffolds for ELLs, which only “pre-teach vocabulary” and don’t provide writing scaffolds or differentiation practices to make the text accessible.

Sentiment analysis of approximately 23k educators on “curriculum” on X over the last 12 months (October 2023 – October 2024)