"What happens to a dream deferred?... Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" Langston Hughes, A Dream Deferred

This famous line from the Langston Hughes poem serves as the epigraph to Lorraine Hansberry's classic play, A Raisin in the Sun. The theme of a dream deferred is not an unfamiliar one among the students in the ASE (Adult Sec-ondary Education) Department at SCALE (Somerville Center for Adult Learning Experiences) where I have been teaching an intensive GED Reading/Writing class for the past five years. Though students in this class range in age and represent a diversity of racial, ethnic, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, they are bound by the goal of obtaining a GED or credential from an adult diploma program. Their dreams have been deferred in numerous ways for varying lengths of time; however, at SCALE, they are working toward realizing at least one their goals: becoming a high-school level graduate.

In an effort to assist their pursuit, SCALE's ASE Department developed an interdisciplinary curriculum unit based on the theme of personal finances and the economic impact of obtaining a high-school equivalency diploma. The objective of this unit was to teach the content in reading, writing, math, social studies, and science while relating it to the economics of their own lives. To satisfy some of the requirements in reading, writing, and social studies, I chose Hansberry's play as a work of literature that illustrates a family's struggle to improve their quality of life individually and collectively while facing racism, sexism, and economic hardship. This type of struggle is, indeed, familiar to many of our students.

Integration with ABE Frameworks
Serendipitously, the ABE Curriculum Frameworks were emerging, and we were asked to begin integrating them concretely into our classroom planning. As I was developing my Raisin in the Sun curriculum, however, I first focused on what content I needed to address along with the related skills learners needed to develop. With the edition of the play we were using, we could cover a number of genres: drama (the play), poetry (the Langston Hughes poem), and non-fiction prose (the introductory essay by Robert Nemiroff and the biographical essay to close the book). At the same time, I created appropriate writing assignments so students could strengthen paragraph and essay development. Students had opportunities to demonstrate and improve their comprehension, application, analysis, and synthesis skills through writing or discussion.

Once the curriculum was underway in mid-October 2005, the most current version of the ABE Frame-works was taking shape and became finalized just after our completion of the unit. Since I already had begun to utilize earlier drafts of the Frame-works, I had some familiarity with its consistency. This intricate blend of strands, standards, and benchmarks could be an overwhelming document, perhaps even unwelcome amid the mandates for so many "accountable" numbers practitioners need to document daily. At the same time, as I began to digest the Frameworks earnestly, I appreciated its depth, breadth, and clarity. Once I had applied the ELA Frameworks to each portion of my curriculum, I also began to appreciate it as a validation of my own classroom teaching; this official DOE document was echoing, in some fashion, what I have been doing these past 12 years both as an ESOL and GED instructor. The partial chart on the next page is an example of how I was able to match my original outline to the most current version of the Frameworks.

In addition to validating and helping to structure ABE practitioners' work, the ABE Frameworks raises the status of the ABE profession as a whole. As practitioners, I believe we can utilize the ABE Curriculum Frameworks to inform us rather than dictate to us, describe rather than prescribe curricula, and further illuminate the successes of our classrooms for our communities to see.

Vicki Halal has been with SCALE for 12 years. She can be reached at: vhalal@somerville.mec.edu