Closing the Gap- Our Way!

Caitlyn Furnier, Alicia Hirnikel, Kristen Hurt, Ashley Parkinson

We have designed a school that focuses on providing enrichment opportunities to the students
and their families. Through community-based outreach, our schools main focus, students will
be provided opportunities to continue learning outside of the classroom and gain proficiencies
that they may not have otherwise experienced.

Guiding Questions
When creating our school, we first looked at the questions we researched earlier in the
semester. As we made decisions about what we wanted to have in our school, we looked back
to our questions as a reference point. Below we have included all of the questions that each of
us investigated earlier this year.
Alicia: How does being a white teacher in a school of mixed races, with a majority not being
white, affect how you act in and out of the classroom? And how to students of different races
respond to having a white adult teach them and tell them what to do on a daily basis?
Ashley: Are children understanding what typical cultural norms are at an early age and how
does it affect the way in which they are interacting with various people in school (teachers,
administrators, fellow classmates, etc.)
Caitlyn: How can I balance understanding my students personal life struggles while still
pushing them to succeed?
Kristen: Does race,ethnicity, or socioeconomic status affect the achievement gap and ability to
close it?

Our Tensions

Through our research and personal field experiences, we have found tensions that we
see present in schools. These include explicit, implicit, and null areas of the curriculum that we
wanted to address as we developed our school. The explicit curriculum is the areas that are
being directly taught to the students. The implicit curriculum refers to the topics that are
indirectly taught through the actions and words of the teacher and school. The null curriculum is
what is not taught in school. The following tensions built the foundation for our school.
Consistency (moving): We see students moving as a tension, because they have breaks in
their learning from switching schools. The students also miss out on content due to schools
having different schedules for teaching the curriculum.
Summer Learning Loss: According to the National Summer Learning Association, students
lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over
summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading,
achievement. All students lose knowledge over the summer, but there is an increasing amount
of loss in lower income students.
Transportation: A lot of families do not have access to transportation to take their students to
after school events and rely on busing to get the students to school.
Lack of Resources (school supplies): Students who live in poverty do not always have the
money to buy school supplies to complete their assignments at home.

Consistent Role Model: Some students do not have consistent adult (e.g. parents in prison,
changes in custody) support in the school.
Hygiene (e.g. lice): Some students do not have consistent access to personal hygiene (e.g.
clean clothes, access to shower, soap) supplies.
Lack of Food: Some students come to school hungry, because there families are unable to buy
enough food, especially on weekends and breaks. We see this as a problem for their basic
needs, but also the implications to their learning.
Insufficient amount of weather appropriate clothing: Students sometimes have to go out in
the winter without warm clothes, which is a safety concern.
Limitations of Food Stamps (e.g. laundry detergent): There are certain items that you
cannot purchase with food stamps that are still necessary to meet basic needs.
Dental/Physical Care: Many families cannot afford to go to the doctor or dentist for medical
care. This is a concern for their general health.
Lack of Childcare for Younger Siblings: Families are not always able to go to after school
functions or parent teacher conferences, because they do not have someone to care for their
children.
Lack of Safe Places to Play: Some communities do not have places where it is safe for
children to play outside.
Cultural Biases in the Curriculum: Winkler states, There has been a myth/stereotype in our
current culture that discusses how young children arent able to notice race aka being colorblind. Curriculum is designed in such a way that perpetuates cultural biases.
Lack of Internet Access: Some families do not have computers, or computers with computer
access for them to use at their homes.

Our Curriculum
After looking at our guiding questions and tensions, we created a curriculum writ large to
address such needs. Curriculum writ large encompasses all aspects of curriculum (explicit,
implicit, and null) and incorporates all aspects of our students lives. We decided to focus our
school on creating enrichment opportunities for our students academically, socially, and
culturally. Below we will explain all the different aspects of our school and how they provide
enrichment to our community, families, and students.
Democratization of Opportunity: Our school understands and accepts the fact that students
all come from different backgrounds and bring different experiences. The enrichment programs
that we offer are to unite their experiences and provide opportunities that they may not get
elsewhere.
School Breakdown: Our school will have preschool through eighth grade. Each classroom will
have an aide in every classroom with a max of 20 students per class. There will be three
teachers per grade level. We will also have a librarian, music, art, gym, and foreign language
teacher. The students will go to their foreign language teacher every day. The students would go
to library on Monday and Friday; all other specials will be once a week. Our school will be built
on the local bus route, so that it is accessible at all times.

School Community Forum: At the beginning of the year, our school will host a forum to learn
what is important to our families. There will be a dinner at the school and all of the classrooms
will be open to allow families to meet their teacher. At the forum, we will discuss what kinds of
enrichment they would like to see at our camps. There would be opportunities for anonymous
suggestions as to what the families want their students to get out of the school year.
Part way through the year, we will host another forum to see if our camps are meeting
the needs/wants of the families. This will provide another opportunity for suggestions and it will
provide feedback to the school to see what we are doing well and what needs to be changed.
At the end of the year, there will be a final forum to see if the enrichment camps met the needs
of the families and get more suggestions for the next years programs.
Project Based Learning: Our schools curriculum will be based off of student interest. The core
subjects will be combined in a project based learning style where projects are created through
students input. An example of a project based learning assignment that the students in our
school would complete would be a Mini-Society that could be either classroom wide or school
wide. In this project, students would be tasked with the goal of creating a product or service that
other people in their classroom/school community want or need. They would have to create the
product or service, come up with a budget for making it, a price to sell it (based off of how much
it cost to make and what they thought their income should be), and a way to advertise it. At the
end of the project, we would create a store for the students to buy and sell their products. family
Family Center: The Family Center will be attached to the school, but can be accessed without
going through the school. It will be open from 5am to 11pm with family volunteers running the
center. There will be computers with internet access available for families to use. Students can
go with their family after school if they need the internet for their homework. Families can use
the computers during all hours to meet various needs such as checking email, applying or
looking for jobs, completing homework for classes (e.g. GED), and general research for
whatever they need. There will be laundry machines with detergent provided at no charge for
the families to use. A local dentist and doctor will have an office set up in the Family Center
once a week. They will work pro bono for our school. We will accept all insurances and provide
reduced costs to families without insurance. There will be no record kept of who uses the center,
anyone who needs it can have access as needed. Our Family Center will also have a locker
room with showers and bathroom facilities that have toiletries provided. There will be a kitchen
in the family center that has appliances and utensils where families can bring their own food to
cook. Throughout the year, we would have events at the Family Center to encourage usage like
healthy, inexpensive cooking classes. Professional as well as families will be brought in to teach
these classes to learn about different cuisines from other cultures. The Family Center is
available for all families at our school regardless of their current economic status.
Culture Education: Families will have the opportunity to come to their students classroom to
talk about their culture. We will use the families as a source of cultural information to share to
the students. Issues of culture and race will be acknowledged and freely talked about in our
classroom in an age appropriate way. Teachers are expected to have cultural awareness of their
students and provide meaningful ways for them to share their culture with others.

Adult Education: There will be a classroom within the Family Center to provide GED and
career development classes. There will be low cost for the courses that will depend on the
familys ability to pay. The courses will be offered in the evenings to accommodate working
families.
Childcare: During parent teacher conferences, we will provide childcare for families at no
charge. There will also be childcare options during the adult education classes for a small fee
depending on what the family can pay. The childcare will be provided by local high school
students who are looking for service hours.
Resources: Every morning, our students will be provided breakfast for free. There will be a
variety of food options that the children can choose from in the morning, including cereal,
bagels, toast, fruit, yogurt, juice, milk, etc. For lunch, children will also receive a free meal. Each
day the students will have at least three different lunch options to choose from. Weekend bags
of food will also be provided to any family that wants it. There will always be enough bags for
each student if they were to need it. All school supplies will be provided to the students at the
beginning of the year. Any resources needed for projects throughout the year will be offered to
the students to work on at home. Additional supplies that cannot be purchased with food
stamps will be provided for those families that need them. We will partner with businesses (i.e.
Procter and Gamble) for donations.
Playground Access: The playground at our school will be open after school until 8:00pm every
night. On the weekends, the playground will be open from 9:00am to 9:00pm. The playground
would be visible from the Family Center, so the family volunteers would be around for safety
purposes. There would also be security cameras around the playground to ensure the childrens
safety after school hours. We want our playground to be a safe place for children to play after
school.
Partnership with Recreational Center: Students at our school will have access to a local
recreational center. This will provide students with further enrichment by having access to a
swimming pool, gyms, workout facilities, and become members of sports teams. The Recreation
Center will be on the bus route, so families can access it as they wish.
Year Long School: Our school is going to be a year long school. The school year begins in
mid-July. There will be a two week fall break at the end of September. The students will have a
full week off for Thanksgiving. At the end of December going into January, they will have three
weeks off of school for winter break. The students will have two weeks off in early march for
spring break. The students will have a five week summer starting at the beginning of June.
Looping: Our students will stay with the same classroom teacher for two years. This will help
provide a stable adult figure in our students lives as well as providing the opportunity to build a
strong community between the students.

Transportation: There will be free busing to school for all of the students. We will also provide
transportation to families who need transportation to after school events to ensure that all
families have the same opportunity to experience all that the school offers.
Open Enrollment: Students will be able to go to our school even if they move during the school
year. As long as the student moves within the district, they will still be able to attend our school.

Camps During Breaks:

The activities in the camp will be run by community members volunteering their expertise.
These breaks are where the teachers will have professional development.
The families will be asked to pay for the camp in relationship to what they can afford. There will
be scholarship opportunities for our students.
These are examples of the types of activities that we would do at the camps. We would plan the
first couple weeks and then plan the rest of the year based off what we learn in our School
Community Forum. The end of the year School Community Forum would inform how the
programs for the following year would be planned. The camps would change every year to
provide a variety of enrichment opportunities for the students.
Fall break
Week 1: The students will have the opportunity to go on a camping trip. They will learn survival
skills, outdoor cooking, fire making, tent building, and various team working activities. The
students will learn the skills throughout the week and have an optional one overnight experience
at a nearby camp ground.
Week 2: Different athletes from the community will come and teach various sports, such as
football, soccer, and lacrosse. The students would play in teams of people in the same grade.
Thanksgiving Break
Week 1: Restaurant owner will come to our school and teach students how to cook. On
Thanksgiving, the students will help create a meal for a community dinner. In preparation, the
students will be able to decorate the school. The ages will be mixed for all activities, so that the
older students can assist the younger students.
Winter Break
Week 1: Athletes from the community would come and teach students winter sports such as
skiing and snowboarding. The students would be grouped with same aged peers.
Week 2: Each day this week, students will do a different outreach program to help the
community. The groups will be mixed age groups.
Week 3: This week will be all about Hollywood. The students will watch movies, write scripts,
and put a play on at the end of the week.
Spring Break
Week 1: Athletes from the community would come to teach sports such as volleyball, basketball,
and baseball to our students. The students would play in teams of the same grade level.
Week 2: The students will learn all about vegetables and flowers. The students will work on
creating a garden for our school led by a local gardener.
Summer Break
Each week during the summer, students will be able to access a pool for swimming and/or
lessons.

Week 1: This week is going to be all about water. The students will have water balloon fights,
use a slip n slide, and other fun water games. The students will work with students in the same
age group.
Week 2: We would partner with the local art museum to teach the students about art. The
students would get to learn techniques from different various artists. Students will work with
students of various ages.
Week 3: Our students would learn all about animals this week. We would partner with the local
zoo to allow our students to engage with real animals. The students will work with students of
the same age.
Week 4: This week our students will become inventors. A local business owner will come in and
teach about creating products. The students will work with students of various ages to invent
something.
Week 5: Students would research and learn information about a local politician like a city council
member. A lunch would be provided for students to meet the local politician they learned about.

Rationale
All of the aspects that we developed in our school came from our research, field experiences,
and tensions that we discussed above. Below we will discuss our reasoning behind those
decisions, including how the implicit, explicit, or null curriculum are incorporated in each
component.
Democratization of Opportunity: The democratization of opportunities is part of our implicit
curriculum. We wanted to incorporate many chances for students to be enriched by their
experiences at school. Students who live in poverty are often systematically prevented from
taking part in enriching opportunities through school.
School Breakdown: We decided to have preschool through eighth grade in our school to allow
there to be a variety of learners in our school. It was important to us to keep families together in
one community for a long time. Our small classrooms with an aide are a result of our implicit
curriculum that is a value of ours to create tight knit communities. We feel that students learn
best in smaller groups and having an aide allows the students to have more individualized
attention. The presence of daily foreign language instruction shows our value in making
communication accessible to people of different cultural backgrounds.
School Community Forum: We wanted to have a forum for our families to have an active
voice in our how things run in our school. While we are open to feedback at any times during the
year, we wanted an opportunity to explicitly tell our families that their opinions are important to
us. Families are more knowledgeable than we are about what types of enrichment are valuable
and relevant to the students lives. This is part of our implicit curriculum that we consider families
to be a valuable resource for our students education. As a school, we do not make assumptions
about the needs and wants about our families, rather we use our families as the source for
information.
Project Based Learning: At our school, we believe on a hands on, active approach to
teaching. Children are learners with great insights and curiosity, which we want to honor with
our curriculum. We want our instruction to be project based with the students leading where the

projects go. It is part of our implicit curriculum that we value learning with our students about
topics that have value to their lives. Project based learning integrates all subjects, which we
believe is the most effective way of learning. In everyday life subjects are not separated, they
overlap and connect, which is how we aim for our instruction to be as well.
Family Center: Our school will have an attached family center to create a place for families to
come together and get the resources they need to be successful. It is important to us that all
students at our school have access to clean clothes, showers, healthy food, medical care, and a
place to interact with others. This is a part of our implicit curriculum because it focuses on the
health and well being of our students and their families and making sure they are prepared to
learn.
Culture Education: Cultural education will be a major part of the curriculum at our school. We
think it is important for students to learn about their culture as well as the cultures of those
around them and people all over the world. There will be both implicit and explicit cultural
instruction. There will be foreign languages classes that teach students languages of cultures
other than their own. Teachers will teach explicitly about culture through mini-lessons. Parents
will also come into the classrooms and into the Family Resource Center to teach about their
culture. The implicit aspect of cultural education will come into place just by being in the
classroom and around students from other cultures. We believe it is important to expose
students to as many cultures as possible so they have a better understanding of the world
around them.
Adult Education: We believe that it is important for families to be good role models for their
children. By offering adult education classes, we are implicitly teaching students that education
is valuable and that it is not just something that they are required to do until a certain age. The
adult education classes are going to be explicit instruction for family members who are trying to
get their GED or learn specific skills through career development classes.
Childcare: We decided to to provide childcare to give parents the opportunity to come to school
events and receive an education. Our childcare services show implicit curriculum as we want
parents to be involved and interact within our school.
Resources: We decided to provide resources for our families to supply them with the basic
necessities. These resources give light to implicit curriculum as we value taking care of the
needs of families in order to provide an effective learning environment.
Playground Access: We wanted to provide our students with a safe environment to play and
interact with others outside of the school day. The open playground access goes further into our
implicit curriculum as we wanted children to have a safe place to play when school is not in
session. Family volunteers fall into our implicit curriculum in which we want to maintain the
connection with the community with family interaction.

Partnership with Recreational Center: We want our schools to have a partnership with the
local Recreational Center because we value the idea of students having expanded enrichment
outside of the classroom. This recreational center is a place where students can be provided
with various services and equipment such as: swimming pools, gyms, workout facilities, and
having the opportunity to become members of sports teams. Our partnership is a part of the
implicit curriculum because we value the idea of students getting the chance to become
physically fit, and get the chance to socially learn about working as a team.
Year Long School: Our year-long school is a part of the implicit curriculum because we believe
that students shouldnt have to lose all of those learning opportunities just because they have
long breaks during different parts of the year. We want to close the enrichment gap by allowing
students to be in school for longer periods of time in which they will continue to have
enrichment, and they will be involved in numerous learning opportunities.
Looping: We believe that looping is a part of our implicit curriculum because we value the idea
of our students getting the chance to continue with building their strong classroom community
between them and their teacher. Students can also get the sense of trust and guidance because
they have an adult figure who believes in them and will continue to help them grow on their
learning journey.
Transportation: If our school offers many enrichment activities but there is no one there to
attend them, then they are pointless. We decided that it is important to provide transportation
for students and families to all of our schools functions including regular classes, camps, parent
teacher meetings, community forums, etc. It is part of our implicit curriculum to provide the
opportunity for every member of our school community to have access to transportation to be
able to attend every function offered so they are taking full advantage of what our school is
about.
Open Enrollment: We decided to provide students with the opportunity to continue their
education through our school as long as they were within our district. This would prevent the
loss of education as the child was pulled out of our school. Our implicit curriculum shines
through as we value the education of our students and want to make sure they receive an
enriching education.
Camps During Breaks: We wanted to provide students with opportunities they have not had
the chance to experience. Our programs provide enrichment for our students and incorporate
family feedback from the forums that are conducted throughout the year. The programs
provided show our implicit curriculum as we value community involvement and providing
opportunities for all students.

Concept Map
Enrichment is the foundation of our school, so we included that at the middle of our
concept map. We then have the three main focuses of our school; academic, family, and social
as branches off of the foundation and they are in the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue). We
then created boxes in between the main focuses to show how they are all connected, and we

put these in the secondary colors that are built using the primary colors surrounding it. The box
in between the red- Academic branch and yellow- Family branch is orange to show the
overlapping of those two sections of our school. The box in between the yellow- Family branch
and blue- Social branch is green to show the overlapping of those two sections of our school.
And the box in between the red- Academic branch and blue- Social branch is purple to show the
overlapping of those two sections of our school.