25: An Issues-Centered Elementary Curriculum

Charlene, a kindergartner, lives in a homeless shelter with her mother and sister. Kenya, a happy African American second grader, hears the epithet “nigger” as his bus pulls away from school. Roscoe, a fourth grader, watches a drug deal go down from the front steps of his home in the projects and wonders if his family will ever be able to live in a better neighborhood. Rachel watches the news each night in her rural home, but does not understand why there is fighting in Bosnia or Rwanda; they do not talk about it in her fifth-grade class. Angela, with her sixthgrade class, takes pictures of the pollution that a chemical company left in a lot around the corner from her school.