what this teacher hates about the common core

When I was in elementary school and middle school my siblings and I would sit down at the kitchen table, after the dinner dishes had been cleared, to work on our nightly homework.  Mom or dad would be in the kitchen with us cleaning up the dishes from dinner and were always able and ready to help us with our work, should we need it.  I don't have much of a brain for numbers.  I easily mix my numbers (similar to dyslexia), and my spacial and numerical reasoning is, I am sure, below standard levels.  I vividly remember on several occasions sitting down and working some math problems with my dad who has an engineering degree from a reputable state university.  No matter how many different ways he would try to explain how to do a problem to me, I wouldn't get it.  And, because I was being taught by my teachers the latest and greatest "method" of doing math, he didn't understand the way I was taught.  This resulted in, on more than one occasion, his yelling, my crying, and at least once a pencil being stabbed through a single subject notebook and making a lead mark on the wooden kitchen table.  It was ugly.

The frustration was born out of his knowledge of how he was taught how to do math, and my knowledge of how I was learning to do math.  And the fact that they were not the same.  Let me clarify, the methods were not the same, however, the mathematics were the same.

As an educator, and as a person with friends who have children of elementary school age, I frequently hear "I hate the Common Core" and "Common Core math is so confusing."  And really, what I think they're talking about in this moment isn't the Common Core State Standards, but rather the tool that their school district has adopted to best implement the Common Core.

I would venture to guess that most of the people who complain about the Common Core have never actually looked at the documents. Shocking, I know.  I'm sure that many of them have relied on getting their information from biased news articles, upset neighbors and family members, and my favorite of all, social media.  If only there was some way that the average American parent could access these documents, because certainly they're not widely available.  Oh wait, yes they are.

And this right here is what I hate about the Common Core.  The lack of understanding on the part of the public, and their seeming insistence on not educating themselves on the matter.

Because if the public did educate themselves on the Common Core, they would know that they are a set of standards.  The Common Core State Standards aren't redefining math or reading or writing.  They're redefining the standards our students need to reach to.  And yes, they are more challenging.

I can only speak about my knowledge of the English Language Arts standards, for these are the standards I know quite intimately, as I took some graduate level courses pertaining to the standards.  I am also being held accountable for helping my students reach these standards.

To me, the English Language Arts standards are smart, realistic, and relevant to today's kids.  I am sure that the Math standards are very similar.

So here's my suggestion: read.the.standards.  Read the standards for the grade your kid is in, plus the grade band up and below theirs.  These standards build on one another.  And here's another suggestion: understand what a standard is.  A standard is a goal, an end result, not the way of doing something.

When you're frustrated helping your kid do their math homework, instead of complaining to them that "Common core math is hard," (oh my goodness, I pray you are not saying this to any child within earshot) try learning the way they are learning to do math.  (That 10s system is WAY intuitive, and I wish I had been taught that method when I was in school).

When we tell our kids that the math their doing is too hard this is so terrifyingly damaging to them.  In the kid's brain, if their parent, who they idolize, can't do or understand the math, how in the heck are their little 3rd grade minds supposed to get it? And they shut down.

Another misconception is that Common Core = a test.  This is not the case.  A few tests have been developed to assess how well your student has learned these standards.  PARCC is the test that Ohio has adopted. It's certainly a different beast when it comes to the English portion.  They're asking questions in ways that kids aren't used to answering.  Each question has two parts, the first is along the lines of something like "what is the theme of this story." And the second is "which line shows this theme." You know, making a student "show their work" so to speak.  Not a bad thing.  In fact, it's a good thing.  But, if you get the first answer wrong you will automatically get the second answer wrong.  Tricky tricky!

Please don't be mad at your student's teacher.  They're only doing their job of implementing these standards, which are not, in my opinion, terrible, awful, and horrible. Instead, allow me to offer some places for you to direct your misdirected frustration.

Instead of being mad at the Common Core, be mad at:

1. Politicians.  People who have never been in a classroom before are making decisions about what your kids should know, and by when. Might I suggest, that instead of voting down a party line in November, research your candidates to see who supports education.  And by supports education I mean doesn't want to test the crap out of your kid.

2. Pearson.  Who the heck is Pearson, you ask? If you're outside of education you might not have heard of them, but you should be aware of this company.  Pearson is more or less taking over education.  The majority of my textbooks for graduate school have been published by Pearson. The materials I've read about the Common Core? Yep, published by Pearson. The online grade book my district uses? Pearson.  Oh, and that PARCC test I was talking about above? Pearson again.  I recently read an article about a student getting a basic math problem wrong on a unit test.  This unit and its test was prepared by Pearson.  The parent wrote to the teacher and asked why the daughter got the problem wrong.  And the reason? It was because Pearson marked down the wrong answer in the answer key.  And this is a test that teachers, students, and parents could look over.  The PARCC test your kid has to take at the end of the year? Pearson isn't letting anyone see that test before or after your kid takes it.  So there's no way of knowing if Pearson didn't get the answers right on its own test, you know, when it really counts.

3. The Implementation.  In an ideal world, if someone had been using their noggin, the Common Core would have rolled out gradually.  Something like, this year's kindergarteners would be the first group to be under the Common Core. And then the next year's kindergartners and first graders would work under them, and so on. So by the time they get to me in 10th grade they've built upon their knowledge and are good to go.  Not the case.  My 10th graders are being held responsible for standards that are, at this point, much more rigorous than what they are accustomed to, due to the fact that the Common Core is meant to be built upon.  If you look at the kindergarten standards and the 10th grade standards, each strand builds upon itself as the grades go by.  It is frustrating and unfair to hold kids accountable for something that they're seeing for the first time, when really the standard is meant to be enhanced over a period of time.

So there.  I hope that was helpful.  As a refresher:  Common Core are standards.  They are NOT a method of doing Math or English and they are NOT a test.  They're actually not that bad.  Google 'em.  Look at the actual document.  And go forth and freakout not!

nine lives

Toward the end of my student teaching, and nearing graduation, I interviewed with three school districts.  One was in the district where I currently teach, one was in Charleston, South Carolina, and one was in Phoenix, Arizona.  Surprisingly, I didn't take the job where I currently teach (that's a different story for a different day), but I ended up in Phoenix.

I was 2000 miles away from home and initially only knew one person.  I was lucky enough to have all of my immediate family members visit me at some point during my one year out there. My mom was kind enough to help me with the two and a half day drive out to Arizona, and to help me get settled into my temporary housing situation.  A few months later my brother and his then-girlfriend-now-wife made Phoenix (and my house and my washing machine and my pool) a stop on their cross country journey.  My sister flew out just before my Spring Break to hang out and then we flew back together to CLE so I could co-host her baby shower.

My dad came out in February with his then girlfriend.  They spent the majority of their time in Sedona, where dad cashed in on some timeshare condo points.  It was Presidents Day weekend, so I had a nice three days to drive up into the red rocks with them and enjoy a bit of less-sweltering Arizona.  While we were up there I fell in love with a simple pair of turquoise button earrings. I saw them in a gift shop on the main drag and I himmed and hawed about purchasing them and ultimately decided not to at that point (which, I can't be certain why.  They couldn't have been that expensive, but alas, I didn't buy them).  I left Sedona on Monday earringless and headed back to Phoenix.  Dad was still in Sedona for the remainder of the week and I couldn't get these earrings out of my mind.  I had to have them.  So I called him and kindly asked if he would return to the gift shop where I saw them and pick me up a pair, preferably with as little veining as possible. 

Later that week they drove back down to Phoenix from Sedona and dad gave me the most perfect pair of turquoise earrings right there in the Tempe In-n-Out Burger parking lot.  Since that day I have more or less exclusively worn those earrings.  

And since that day I have lost one of those earrings in very wacky places at various times; all places where one would never expect to recover a missing item, and yet, these earrings have nine lives and they find their way back to me each time.

The first time I lost on was the summer that my now 4 year old nephew was an infant.  My sister and I would pack the boys up and head out to the community pool at least once a week.  One day during the rest period I decided to try my hand at dive off of the diving board (as any self respecting 30 something woman would do).  Several hours later when my sister and I were in the grocery store parking lot debating what to get for dinner I realized an earring was missing.  I was devastated.  Katie called the pool the next morning and even went to search the pool deck for the missing earring.  She asked if they had run the pool vacuum that night, and they had, and the pool worker said that it was possible that it didn't get picked up, it might have been too big.  

We returned to the pool the next day, as we were wont to do, and again, we went over to the diving well during rest period.  Some teenaged boys were doing flips and dives off the board to the amusement of the little kids around.  One of these boys lost a gage from his ear and was swimming down to the bottom to try to retrieve it.  I asked him if, while he was down there, he might look for a small earring that is roughly the same color as the bottom of the pool, please and thank you.  Much to my delight he found it! And earring and I were reunited for the first time!

The second occurrence was this past winter.  I needed to attend a masters class down on campus on Thursday nights.  It was the bane of my existence. I dreaded going and hated every second of being there.  I digress.  My car was parked in a poorly kept city lot, which was much cheaper than a campus lot.  I walked myself back to my car after a long day at work, followed by a long night in class, and took my cross-body purse off of my shoulder and immediately knew my right earring was gone.  And the probability of it being in the poorly plowed city lot was good.  So I got on my hands and knees and looked in the driver side of my car and under my car and in the snowy parking lot. Not luck.  And then something told me to look in my back seat.  I reached my hand through the space between the driver door and the back seat and felt something roundish with my fingers.  With excitement in my heart I opened the back door to see the earring sitting there on the floor of my car.

The most recent time I lost an earring was just a few weeks ago.  It was a particularly busy Wednesday.  I was at work, briefly came home to change clothes and head to CrossFit, came home with just enough time to microwave something for dinner and then head out the door to a union meeting back in the town I teach in, which is about 25 minutes away.  It was during that meeting, at about 8pm that I realized my right earring was once again missing.  In my gut I knew I had not lost it at the meeting.  I searched around me but knew it was gone.  I wasn't hopeful in the slightest considering all of the places I had been that day, and the number of places where the earring could possibly be.  I sent a plea out to my CrossFit's Facebook group to see if anyone had stumbled upon it.  I searched the clothes I wore that day to school to see if it had fallen out when I was changing clothes.  Not there.  I went in to school the next day and prayed that a custodian had found it on the ground near my desk.  No luck.  I had resolved that I would never see it again.  

I had a brilliant idea to go to the local jeweler, whom I had worked with on a few other occasions, to see if they could order a stone to match and make me a new earring.  The owner more or less dismissed my request and said that it was hardly worth it to even attempt that route and that I should pretty much give up.  

Fast-forward to today.  I got a bee in my bonnet this morning to get some real Spring Autumn Cleaning done around my place.  My bedroom is severely inadequate in size and I've never really found a way for it to work for me, which is to all say that my room is routinely in a state of "roach coach."  It's not fit for company.  But today I was going to tackle my Mount Everest.  I through away 4 bags of trash, I donated 5 bags of clothing, I dusted the heck out of my baseboards, and I rearranged some of my furniture.  At one point during my cleaning I looked down and saw something sort of shiny.  I bent down to pick it up, and lo and behold, it was my earring.  The post was slightly bent and there was no back on it, but there it was!  

I need to find a better way to secure these suckers to my ears, but somehow they have magical powers.  We were always meant to be together, those earrings and me.