My Take on Common Core and Why We Need It I have been a supporter of Common Core (CCSS) since I heard of the goal of the standards. Still am. Ive seen many tirades against it, most based on a lesson plucked from some teachers plan or from a published Common Core Aligned Curriculum. But Ive read the CCSS for math, (I admit I have never read all the way through the Literacy standards) and agree with what theyre trying to accomplish. Some of the posts with examples of math lessons I have seen, I truly believe are good for teaching kids to think and understand some basic properties of the number system. Some of the posts are examples of absolutely terrible attempts to implement CCSS. But the most important thing to understand is that no single problem or lesson embodies CCSS. For the most part, these examples are nothing more than one teachers or one textbooks attempt to implement the standards. The goal is to give kids a deeper understanding of the number system, an understanding that is essential for a foundation on which to build understanding of all higher math. I have known kids who go through advanced mathematics courses in high school and cannot pass College Algebra when they move on. Thats why something has to be done! Will CCSS be the solution? I hope so, but I cannot swear it will. But it certainly wont do as much harm as what we have been doing. Kids in advanced high school math classes do not even know their multiplication tables or how to do long division! The problem with CCSS will not be so much in the standards themselves, but in the implementation. Like I said before, many of the ridiculous examples Ive seen bandied about the internet come from published curricula. If we are going to succeed in what CCSS hopes to accomplish, each teacher will have to adapt every lesson to every class. There will be no cookie cutter lesson plan that fixes everything for everyone. Honestly, it was the implementation of NCLB that caused so much trouble with it in my opinion. The goals were good. A lot of it was good. But school districts became so focused on the tests, they sought and bought materials focused more on the tests than the subject to be taught. I went into education because I did not like the way my kids were being taught. One of the reasons CCSS never bothered me is because I believe I have been teaching to most of the standards since I started. I have to say I know several other teachers of whom I would say the same. It is my opinion, they are the best teachers in the field. Another math teacher friend of mine and I were talking the other day, and we agreed that CCSS seem to be an attempt to make teaching to National Board tandards universal throughout education. Most everyone at all levels seem to have great respect for National Board Certification, but this vitriolic assault on CCSS continues to gain steam. Regardless what happens, I will keep doing things the way I have. I judge my effectiveness by how ready my students are for college, especially compared to their classmates from other schools. Whenever my former students return to see me, or when I see them after they graduate, I always ask how prepared they were compared to their college classmates. The vast majority report back to me they feel more prepared than others on their campus. That is why I believe in CCSS, because I believe in my approach to education. I want to see higher expectations of students and I want to see real, thought provoking tests with results I can compare to students from all over. I actually look forward to the PARCC tests because I want to know what we are doing that works and what we are doing that does not. I want to know who is doing better so we can ALL figure out how to improve. As for the lessons that have been posted with hard left political slants, there is a simple explanation for those. These are lessons designed by teachers and other education professionals. Our field is dominated by liberals as most are aware. If a teacher is going to slant a lesson one way or another, it is most likely going to be slanted to support his or her own political beliefs. So most politically slanted problems will be slanted to the left. This problem is not a result CCSS, but the fact that too few conservatives enter the education field. That said, there are many good teachers, liberal and conservative, who give both sides of an issue, or at least allow both sides to be discussed in the classroom. I consider myself one of those teachers. However, if we want true balance in the public school system, WE NEED MORE CONSERVATIVE TEACHERS! Ive tried numerous times for months to share it in comments on others posts but the shrieking and screaming and railing against it have drowned me out every time. I have been called brainwashed and worse because I am not out trying to sabotage it before it starts. I hope we at least get an opportunity to try and implement it. We have spent the last 20+ years training kids to repeat steps with little or no understanding of why they do those steps or why they work. We train them in algorithms from which any variation shuts them down. Because they cannot understand the algorithms, they cannot adapt them when faced with even a slightly different problem. It is time to try something different. But if we never even give CCSS a chance, we will never know if it is effective. I want to see CCSS implemented. I want to see if it is going to work. I want reform. I want accountability. I want results. Not for me. Not for politicians. Not even for parents. I want it for these kids.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 09:37:01 +0000
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