The Fight Against Common Core Irrelevance

We've been told again and again that the Common Core Standards are being put into place to prepare our students to be ready for college & career when they graduate high school.  These standards are supposed to better prepare students for life.

So why are schools buying textbooks to implement them?  If these standards are supposed to prepare our kids for life, wouldn't it make sense that the best way to teach them would be through life simulations?

Shouldn't every one of these standards have a real-world application?  And if so, why aren't we giving students the opportunity to use them in real-world settings?

The more we make a separation between the "real world" and the "fake world" of school, the more students will realize that we are irrelevant.  And they'll be right.

Happy World Teacher Day!

Today is World Teacher Day.  I placed this Thank You Card on the Faculty Room table in my school to tell the teachers I work with how appreciative I am for all that they do for both me and my children.

I also appreciate all of you in my PLNs:  in the blogosphere, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Plurk, and everywhere else that you all share and collaborate.  You help me become a better teacher.

Thank You!

Want Great Schools? Start Simple.

No teacher ever became great by being the best at following the textbook, being the best at reading from a script, or being the best at passing out multiple choice tests from the back of an assessment guide.

No school ever became great by having the best textbook programs from which their teachers read, the best benchmark tests, or the best canned lesson scripts for their teachers.

No country ever became great by having schools that were the best at selecting textbook programs for their teachers to use and the best test-prep programs.

A great national education system starts by having excellent public schools.  Public schools are excellent when they have excellent teachers facilitating learning.  Teachers can only be excellent when they have the autonomy to be.

If we want excellence, we need to start by thinking more simply. We need to start by allowing teachers to be great.  Then encourage them to share what they are doing to inspire others.

Because the current direction of demoralizing them and having them compete against each other simply isn't going to get us there.

The Slippery Slope to Irrelevance

About a week ago someone in my PLN on Plurk asked for opinions on the standardization of assessments among teachers in a school district.  I responded by referring to the post I wrote a few months back entitled "Standardization is the Death of Excellence."

You can't have both standardization and excellence.  The former prevents the latter.  And while excellence is something that all teachers should strive for, it's naive to think that we'll all reach that level.  Even if you do, there's always someone who does it better than you - someone from whom you can learn, someone you can collaborate with to get better, someone who can show you new ways to see problems that arise.  When we standardize teaching, a nasty side effect is that we discourage teachers from even striving for excellence.

Image:  FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Standardization, whether it be of assessments, teaching practices, curriculum goals, or anything else prevents those someones from being available to those trying to learn.  When everyone is the same, nobody is setting the bar higher.  Nobody is innovating.  Nobody is growing.  Nobody is learning to do it better.

Let's come right out and say it - the only purpose for standardization is to prevent inferiority.  And while it's great to try eliminate inferior assessment practices, our students deserve more than the mediocrity that is left in the wake of standardization.

The argument I often hear for the standardization of assessment practices is based on the need for grades in each classroom to mean the same thing.  As if grades meant anything meaningful now anyway.

Assessments should be done to provide students vital feedback so that they can learn.  When we assume that grades are that feedback we send the message to students that their learning means nothing more than a number in a gradebook.

Our students deserve more than that.

Not only should assessments not be standardized between classrooms, they shouldn't even be standardized inside classrooms.  Students should be free to express their learning in the best way they see fit.  If one student wants to demonstrate understanding of division by creating a video explaining how farmers use division to determine medication doses for animals, another by creating a slideshow showing how car companies use division in determining the effectiveness of their factories, and a third wants to write an letter to their congressman explaining how the states resources are not being divided equally among its citizens, shouldn't they be able to?  Shouldn't they be encouraged to?

None would be allowed if teachers were forced to use a district mandated multiple choice test.

It's time for teachers to stop this slippery slope to irrelevance.  After all, that's where we are headed if we keep letting others tell us how to teach and how to assess our students.  We are professionals.  We have certifications given to us claiming that we are experts in these decisions.

If we start giving up this control, we will be left following canned lesson plans and giving canned assessments that some corporate textbook company came up with.  When we give up that control we will turn teaching into a job that any schlep with a pulse can do.

And our kids will be left with an education that's the same quality as if any shlep with a pulse was teaching them.

About "Enrichment"

We use the term "enrichment" from time to time in schools, and I hate it.

Sometimes it refers to the opportunities that our "gifted" students have above the regular curriculum to pursue research and projects that they care about.  Sometimes, it refers to opportunities given to all students after they finish their regular classroom work.  This supposed "enrichment" is meant to give them a "richer" educational experience..

Why should kids have to wait for boring test-prep based seat work to be over before they get a rich education?  Why is this rich education often only available to our students who are labeled "gifted"?  Doesn't every kid deserve the opportunity to see relevance in what they learn?  Shouldn't we be striving to allow all children the opportunity to become passionate about learning?

If "enrichment" is that extra stuff we do, what is the normal stuff we do?  Maybe we should classify it as "unrichment". 

I hate the term because enrichment shouldn't be the extra opportunity we give kids in schools.  It should be the focus of what we do in schools.

Then, we wouldn't have to call it "enrichment".  We could just call it learning.

Closing the Parent Communication Gap

I try and communicate regularly with parents, post tons of student work online, provide study guides and videos on our class wiki, and open my classroom to parents who want to come in and see what we're learning.  Every year I still get questions from parents who still are unaware of why we are using certain technologies and what resources are available.

To help close this communication gap, I did a few things differently this year. 

First, I am using Edomodo, a education social networking site that allows parent access, for the first time.  I'm hoping that this allows parents to have more insight into what we are doing in the classroom.

Next, I used Screencast-o-Matic to create this short video explaining some of the websites we are going to be using this year and how they can be used at home.  It's a great tool because it's unblocked by my school's filter, and it does not require anything to be downloaded.  I uploaded the video to a site called MyBrainShark, which I've come to like more than TeacherTube, SchoolTube, and Voicethread for video hosting.



Finally, I am going to have students share the products of their learning on both our class wiki and personal blogs this year using Kidblog.  I'm hoping that having an individual space of their own to showcase their learning will make students want to share more than in the past.

Why Don't Parents Appreciate "Reforms"?

We keep hearing over and over again that recent education "reforms" are good for children.  Proponents of this "reform" movement will say, "Sure, selfish teachers and those nasty unions hate what we're doing, but it's good for students and their parents."

I find that a bit curious.  In my 16 years of teaching I've never had a parent say any of the following things:

• "I really wish my child had more students in their class.  She is getting too much attention from her teacher."
• "My child is too engaged in your class and has too much fun learning.  Please do more test prep with him."
• "I'm really upset that my child is becoming too well rounded.  I'd really appreciate if you stopped teaching her anything but reading and math."
• "My child's school has too many resources, the facilities are too nice, and I hate that it's so easy to learn in that environment.  I wish they would let the place get run down a bit."
• "Kindergarten was terrible for my child.  She would have been so much better off if it wasn't available.  My child would have been so much better prepared for first grade if there was no kindergarten."
• "It would be so much better for my child if they eliminated all of those extracurricular activities."
• "Instead of spending money on children, I wish the school would give more to companies that publish test-prep materials."
• "All that learning time is bad for my child.  I wish you would spend less time letting them learn, and more time testing how much they learned."
• "I love the stress my child feels during the three weeks the state tests are given."

You would think if these "reforms" were making our schools so much better that parents would be more aware of the great changes going on.  Maybe they just don't know what's good for their kids as well as legislators do.

I don't fight against high-stakes standardized testing, budget cuts, allowing for-profit charter school management companies to siphon public school funds, and the influence huge test-prep corporations have over legislators because I'm a member of a teacher's union or because I am worried about my job.  There's a much more important reason.

Like every other teacher I know, I chose my career because I wanted to help help kids find the potential inside themselves so that future generations are better than mine.  I want kids to love learning, and to develop their talents so that they have every opportunity to be successful in their lives.  Like every other parent I know, I want the same things for my own children. 

I fight because "reform" is stealing the future from our students and my children.