The principal walks in with stacks of copies, books and a smile on their face. They neatly set everything out maintaining the smile despite the fact that the grumbling has begun. “Great. I wonder what we are going to have to do this time,” Sally whispers to her cohort Jill. “I don’t know, but ten bucks says that it involves more paperwork,” pipes in Dan as he pulls out his IPad to take notes on. Everyone knows, though, that he’s really playing Words with Friends with Pete who is in a faculty meeting at their sister school across town.“Ladies and gentlemen,” the principal begins, again, maintaining that smile. “I have something for you and I know that you are going to just love it.” The word love is emphasized as if that is going to ease the teachers into yet another strategy, piece of paper or requirement that has been passed to them to give to the teachers. The principal knows that it is going to cause an uproar so they are bound and determined to make it the best it can be. “We are going to begin using something new this year,” they continue just as the grumbling really sets in from the teachers and they know, then, that it is going to be a long year.
Ever been there? Have you ever sat and wondered, “And whose
grand idea was it to add on another piece of paper or change my methods of
teaching for the seventh year in a row?” As teachers, we have all been there,
done that. I am going into my ninth year teaching and I know that every year
something new comes down the pipe for us to learn or to implement into our
classroom. A new strategy to teach, another manual to read on how to teach something
even better than we ever have before or even a new video series to watch from a
teacher who is doing amazing things, but with a very different make up of students, a larger budget and a community which supports them. While all of those are great, it seems to discredit what we have accomplished over our career thus far.
And now we have something that not only are we going to
implement, but so are 45 other states; The Common Core State Standards. I hear
your grumbles and believe me, I have my own. There is an element of fear
connected to that phrase, I believe, because we are all worried that our
creativity will be stifled and we will be unable to bring the one of a kind
lessons to our classroom because they won’t fit in with these standards. Let me
give you some reassurance right here and now… that is not true at all and never
will be.
We are teachers. I truly believe that when you look up the word
teacher you see the following as synonyms:
Unique Creative Planner
Flexible Giver
There are many more that go with those (including tired!),
but those are some that encompass who we are as teachers. We pride ourselves in
creating lessons that shine light on our students and show them just how cool
it is to read an article on how an increase in lobsters of all colors are being
caught and be able to pull from that to back up our opinion on how cell phones
and other technology are making it easier to show these lobsters and that is
why we are hearing more about it. (This is the article I read, by the way, that
got me thinking about that lesson plan )
We want to be able to be creative in our approach to teaching various concepts
and the idea of changing how we teach
to implement these standards is scary.
It’s okay to admit you are scared. I did… and I survived.
But there is really no reason to be scared. Yes, things are
going to change. But they are not going to be life altering changes. What I
love about the CCSS is that they are calling for us to use our creativeness in
new ways. Instead of teaching things in isolation (i.e. having one unit on
poetry, testing our students on it and then reviewing it right before
standardized testing) we now are going to spiral everything. For instance, we
will start with an essential question or it could be a piece of poetry that
will be our fulcrum text and then have multiple pieces of literature that we
teach with throughout the unit (these will be our context texts and texture
texts). I will post more about planning later though. I love that we will be
able to show our students the relationships between the pieces and use them to
teach. Some of us are not as confident when it comes to teaching certain things
(for me, it is poetry) and this will alleviate some of that stress. We will be
able to use many pieces to teach one concept and show our creativity through
those texts. How great is that?!
While there are numerous posts that I will be writing on
many things concerning the Common Core State Standards, I want to assure you
first and foremost that your creativity is not going to go anyway. In fact, it
is going to be utilized in ways that you have yet to imagine. Some of your best
lessons are yet to come with these standards, and I can’t wait to hear about
them.
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