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Monthly Archives: October 2013
Great Expectations is what Parents Should Hear!
September 23, 2013
Great Expectations: What I’ll Tell Parents About the Common Core
Ilana Garon
I first learned about Common Core State Standards at a professional-development seminar in the summer of 2010. At the time, the standards seemed relatively innocuous—yet another of the top-down mandates, I figured, that would be embraced momentarily as the “silver bullet” for myriad education problems before being thrown aside for the next big thing. I enjoyed the seminar, not because I thought the common core itself was so life-changing, but because I loved having the opportunity to collaborate meaningfully with my colleagues at other schools and share best practices.
Some three years later, the common standards factor into everything I do in the classroom—every single unit plan I create, and every single lesson therein, is designed to contain tasks that align with the standards. Do my assignments ask kids to cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis (RL 9-10.1)? Sure they do. Will my students analyze a theme as presented by two different artistic mediums (RL 9-10.7)? You bet they will. Will they be analyzing how an author draws on source materials like the Bible in a later work (RL 9-10.9)? Yup—within the next three weeks. They’re reading Lord of the Flies, and we’ll be discussing how the island is like the Garden of Eden, how Simon is the Christ-figure, and how the titular Lord of the Flies is another name for . . . well, I’ll let you figure that one out.
In my experience, the parents of our students have limited familiarity with the standards, taking it as a given that the curricula we teach our students contain the things they need to know. They’re less concerned with the specifics than with graduation requirements being met. In truth, the few who do know about the common core may be laboring under the same misconception that I was during the summer seminar: That the common core was merely a framework by which I could design more rigorous lessons, rather than a set of expectations about what students would already know and would be able to do in a certain grade—expectations upon which subsequent standardized tests would be based.
At the high school level, this has taken a while to materialize; the past couple of years, my students have still been cowering in the face of the New York state Regents examinations. This year, in addition to Regents, a new set of “assessments” is materializing based on the common core. As is the typical M.O. of the common core (wherein apparently a one-week seminar is expected to be sufficient preparation for a complete overhaul of one’s entire teaching style and body of materials), teachers haven’t even seen the format of this exam. Hey, on the bright side, at least we won’t be teaching to the test!
The thing about the common standards is that they are optimistic at best. However capable my students may be of making those types of connections and intellectual leaps under the guidance of a teacher, they are—for the most part—unable to do so on their own without significant scaffolding. And the test, presumably, will require them to do just that. In a more general sense, the common core operate under the premise that the kids have background knowledge and literary experience that they simply don’t. While I do not dismiss the goals of the common standards, and am happy to continue working with the students towards deeper comprehension, a broader knowledge base, and more lucid writing, to take for granted that all students will possess these same skills is naïve.
In the public schools, particularly, we work with students who are often several grades behind where the standards prescribe them to be due to interrupted formal education or language barriers; we also work with special-needs students, whose strengths and weaknesses are diverse. One mainstay of good pedagogy is “differentiation,” the act of tailoring lessons to individual students, or groups of students, in ways that address their individual needs and offer them challenges at their respective levels. The implementation of the common core as a set of intellectual requirements for students, as opposed to an instructional lodestar for teachers (as I’d initially understood them), seems to fly in the face of that—and to the extent that they inform standardized testing, even more so.
So what will I tell the parents of our students, should they ask me about the common core at parent-teacher night in October? I’m unsure. I certainly cannot imagine our parents exerting overthostility towards the standards—I think confusion and concern about how this will affect their children’s chances of graduation are more likely. And if that is the case, I’ll tell them to continue monitoring their child, and keep in touch with me—the same as I always do.
Ilana Garon is an English teacher at a high school in the Bronx, N.Y. She recently published her first book, ‘Why Do Only White People Get Abducted by Aliens?’: Teaching Lessons From the Bronx.
Posted by Ilana Garon at 12:18 AM | Permalink | 6 Comments | 1 Recommendation
Give Parents a Clear Window for Common Core
September 26, 2013
Creating Greater Classroom Transparency Around the Common Core
Rod Powell
Mystical, dark, malevolent, ominous, pornographic. Glancing at my Twitter streams (#commoncore, #nced, #ncpol), I’ve seen each of these words applied to the new Common Core State Standards. But I’ve been teaching for 26 years, and guess what? I’ve embraced these standards in my classroom practice. What’s the big deal?
A simple question for me, I guess. I understand and work in the classroom of today. The value of these standards is crystal clear to me: They are simply things that a thinking student should be able to do.
Those lacking a ground-level view of the classroom seem to be the ones leveling complaints. Let me briefly run through them.
The common standrards are a overreaching imposition of federal authority into the classroom.(Nope. They are a set of complex skills that are used to supplement and inform local curriculum. And they were adopted by states.)
Controversial topics and texts are mandated. No texts are mandated. They are sometimes suggested as examples, but teachers are free to use whatever texts and topics they see fit.
Student privacy will be undermined. I’ll be honest, I don’t know a lot about this one. But I’m not sure those who raise it do, either.
The standards themselves are weak. They are as rigorous as a teacher needs them to be to challenge his or her students.
Again, all of this is easy enough for me to see. I work with the standards every day in the classroom with real, live, energetic 9th graders.
But why are common so misunderstood by parents and other stakeholders? They all have the best interests of students at heart. Is it that they’re too busy to delve into our complex classroom world? Too intimidated by our educational bureaucracy? So concerned about testing that they miss what is being taught?
As teachers, we need to be able to communicate the true value of the common standards: They speak to skills that students should have, things they should be able to do, as thoughtful individuals operating in an increasingly complex world.
An idea comes to mind:
Let’s increase the transparency of our classrooms. Give parents a clear window into what goes on in our common core world every day, our vision of a 21st-century classroom. The tools to help do this are there: Remind 101, Twitter, Facebook, class blogs (student and teacher), Google Docs. Why not a quick text sent to parents using Remind 101 giving a brief parent friendly description of a common-core-related activity that students took part in that day? How about a quick tweet to Twitter-hip parents with an essential question addressed with children? Couldn’t students rotate blogging about class activities on the teacher’s webpage?
And I like this question that we might pose to hostile parents (and there are a few): How would you teach your child if you were their teacher?
Would you go with the traditional “good-enough-for-me, good-enough-for-them” approach? In other words, would you use decades-old worksheets; push your child to memorize lists of dates, people, and formulas; test all this learning via multiple-choice tests; and throw in some jump-through-the-hoop projects that don’t actually teach anything?
OR…
Would you energize your child by presenting authentic scenarios to explore; finding and creating personalized and relevant learning materials and texts; developing activities that would challenge them as writers and oral communicators; all the while measuring their progress with thorough assessments?
Seems to me that would be a pretty good starting point for explaining the common core.
Rod Powell, a National Board-certified teacher (social studies), has been teaching for 26 years. ACTQ Collaboratory member, Rod loves the challenges of teaching in a 1:1 digital classroom environment at Mooresville High School in Mooresville, N.C.
Posted by Rod Powell at 7:44 AM | Permalink | 8 Comments | 1 Recommendation
Help Parents to Understand Common Core Standards
September 25, 2013
Parent-Teacher Collaboration Key for Common Core
Alison Wright
Fortunately, it has been my experience as a classroom teacher that parents in my community trust that teachers—as well as district and state administrators—are making the best decisions possible when it comes to student learning. Personally, I have not once been questioned about the math standards or curriculum that I am teaching. That being said, since Kentucky adopted the Common Core standards three years ago, I know that there have been more questions than ever regarding the new standards and what changes are in store in terms of assessments and curriculum.
When I asked a parent at my school what her thoughts are about the new standards, this is what she had to say:
“As a parent, I welcome any and all new information about what my children should know at school, and be able to do. I feel that in order for them to compete in tomorrow’s job market, I owe it to them to stay informed, and help in any way I’m able—and that includes knowing the expectations. From what I know of the common core thus far, I feel these standards provide more meaningful problem-solving skills, and that is a change I welcome.”
Her statement solidifies to me the importance of parent-teacher collaboration when it comes to improving student learning, and implementing the common standards well will require a team effort.
Here’s what teachers can (and should) do to communicate standards with parents:
1) Post the standards, or at the very least make sure that they are readily accessible to students and parents. Students should know everyday what they are learning, and what we expect of them. In this Teaching Channel video, Katie Novak explains the power of communicating with students about the common standards. In addition, she asks her students to grade her on the how well she teaches the standards every week. If the students are well-versed on the standards, then the parents will be also.
2) Use available resources (and there are many!). Just last week, Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday sent an email to all state teachers that contained a great resource for communicating the common standards to parents. Other resources like these from the New York State Department of Education are also useful when beginning conversations, or responding to questions or concerns.
3) Collaborate with education groups that specialize in parent communication—such as your local Parent Teacher Association. In Kentucky, the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence works to engage parents and to empower them as education leaders. They offer a variety of trainings through the Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership to help parents become better-informed education partners. As one past attendee noted, “We know that when parents are well informed, the effects on school success are magnified.”
4) Speak out! As Commissioner Holliday is quoted as saying in this Time magazine article, “Teachers are your best voice in the community.” Sometimes we forget this. Teachers are second only to firefighters as the most trusted profession in the country, and it is crucial that teachers use this platform to communicate with stakeholders. Tweet about those awesome “aha!” that happen everyday in your classroom, or email a newsletter home to parents, highlighting the standards that students are learning- and what they are achieving.
What else can teachers do to help parents understand the new standards and become classroom partners?
Ali Wright teaches Algebra 2 and AP Calculus at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Ky. A National Board-certified teacher with 11 years of experience, she is also a member of the Center for Teaching Quality‘s Implementing Common Core Standards team.
Posted by Alison Wright at 9:20 AM | Permalink | 6 Comments | 1 Recommendation
