Common Core — Creating Experts in Our Field

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

By Deia Sanders
Master Teacher and Instructional Coach

Yes, we are seeing great teaching and new methods in the classroom thanks to the challenge of meeting the rigor of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and students are able to not only answer questions, but also discuss and communicate deeply on the process. But as an instructional coach, one of the most exciting changes I’m seeing is the improvement in our teachers.

I am in a district where we are currently teaching and writing units of study for ELA and mathematics. For anyone who has tackled this task, you know it’s a long road of pouring your heart, mind, and energy into creating something that almost immediately needs to be changed again. While it may be a daunting and frustrating task to some, it truly is inspiring to others. The growth we’ve seen in our teacher teams tasked with writing these units is unbelievable. They’ve become experts at teaching, merging, researching, and developing ideas, practices, and lessons. We’ve gone from a culture that simply taught the curriculum handed to them on a pacing guide they were forced to keep, to one in which we not only let kids explore and guide the pace of learning, but the methods we use to teach are ones that we’ve had conversations with grade levels below and above to know the level to begin and end the content on.

We no longer make a lesson plan from a guide in a book. We are sitting down with the standards, the Model Content Frameworks, viewing videos, looking at practices, pulling resources, looking at prototypes, writing tasks based on prototypes, talking to other grade levels, creating our own materials, etc.—each lesson is a research project that although may be exhausting, the process creates a true expert that stands in front of kids to teach and facilitate the learning.

When I entered a class last year and the teacher said “we’re just reading today,” it was always just that. This year when I enter a class and they are “just reading,” it’s amazing. The kids are reading alright, but they are charting characters and their traits, making inferences and notes as they read, and coming together on deep discussions on anything from the plot of the book or chapter to if “grandpa” is a character or not because they haven’t had interaction with him yet. Yes, 11-year-olds using the word “interact” to describe a personal experience with a text—and this is “just reading.” In math, the kids are exploring, teaching, developing methods, sharing, and discovering unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The lessons differentiate themselves because almost everything they do is a visual or conversational formative assessment that drives their next step.

I’m thankful for the CCSS and excited about what it’s doing for our students. But the process of digging into the CCSS and expectations of the assessment has created unmatched job-embedded professional development. This experience has taken my colleagues and me from teachers to experts in our field, and that is going to have an unmatched impact on our students!

Common Core and Teacher Evaluations: The Beginning of the End?

The Common Core Standards are finally sinking into the depths of education, for better or for worse. Upon the heels of another wave of controversial standards comes legislation passed throughout the US that went largely unnoticed in the brouhaha surrounding the Common Core but has now burst into the spotlight in full operatic tenor with the Chicago Teacher Union strikes.

Here are some of the opinions swirling around:

1. Educators already know how to handle education—and everyone else can leave the same way they came in, please.

It’s a strong argument. You certainly don’t see as much legislation around how doctors perform their work (though there are certainly plenty of laws, rules, and regulations to account for); at least, there have yet to be surgeon strikes on how their surgeries are evaluated.

Now the Common Core Standards dictate what students need to be able to do. It is a departure from simply what they should be able to know (read: regurgitate) to what skills students can demonstrate, the latter implying a change in how the information is maintained. Followed on the heels of the Common Core Standards are the new InTASC Standards, aligned to the Common Core. The InTASC Standards are for teachers what the Common Core is for students, with one great exception: if students fail to meet the Common Core Standards, teachers are worried that they will be fired, and if teachers fail to meet the InTASC Standards, teachers still worry that they will be fired.

So it’s hardly a wonder that educators want to take education back, so to speak. Everywhere we look, there are sticks to beat us into compliance with few carrots in sight.

2. Educators aren’t cutting it, so legislation has to step in.

At the risk of sounding biased, I’m going to say that this very opposite opinion is tenuous at best. The definitions of “success” and “cutting it” vary, and simply being better than the rest of the world is actually (in my opinion) a poor measure of performance. Being better than someone else has little to do with how well your personal best may be; by the same argument, the only thing we need to do to improve our current “success” rate is wait for Finland to dumb down their curriculum. Of course that won’t happen, but the target should be greater than simply beating out the next guy.

Besides, I know of a few senators and representatives that I would love to evaluate and list as “subpar.” So why should their largely uninformed (and potentially well funded) opinions on education hold sway on my job?

Here’s the good news: legislators may not be on our side, but the Common Core Standards are—or can be.

The media (liberal and conservative alike) has done a curious job with the Common Core Standards, first by adoring our president and then by smearing the Common Core Standards as government overreach and pointing the finger at Mr. Obama. But the Common Core Standards offer us another shot at our classroom. We need to help students create skills—however we choose to do that. There are recommendations to aid our lesson planning, but these are standards, not curricula.

Evaluations, many based on the Common Core Standards, are also prominently displayed as a means to thin the ranks, so to speak. But when evaluations are done correctly, we use them as classrooms to help teachers learn rather than courtrooms where teachers must stand trial. The funny thing about an evaluation is that we are too often looking for faults. And we always find what we’re looking for.

If the Common Core Standards and teacher evaluations are handled the right way, then this could be the beginning of the end: the end of low teacher support, the end of untrained educators, the end of poor education. And it could be the start of something much, much greater for every teacher in America.

Crickets in the Common Core Standards

Barbara Hollenbeck is a fourth grade teacher who has already begun to implement the Common Core Standards. In the following video, newly released from the Common Core 360 library, Hollenbeck demonstrates Common Core ELA Standards SL.4.1, W.4.8, W.4.10.

Click here to watch the video on the Weekly Video Blog.


In this segment, Barbara Hollenbeck, a fourth grade teacher at Kerrick Elementary in Louisville, Kentucky, facilitates a science lesson in which her students classify crickets as insects. Barbara aligns her lesson with Common Core ELA Standards Speaking and Listening 4.1, Writing 4.8, and Writing 4.10.

Hollenbeck explains, "We are beginning to do the food chain. We have explored soil. We have explored plants and seeds, and we’re creating our own terrarium."

Barbara’s morning message invites students to review and discuss the life science concepts they have learned. Today, the students explore new concepts as they add crickets to their terrariums.

Save your seat at the free webinar and Q&A session featuring Barbara Hollenbeck on Sept 25!

Hollenbeck continues, "Through their discussion in groups and as a class, Barbara’s students progress towards Speaking and Listening standard 4.1 by building on others’ ideas and clearly expressing their own. They now move to the hypothesis-­‐testing phase of the activity by gathering and recording evidence of the crickets’ anatomy."

Now you’ve told me that this is an insect and you told me why. You told me that it had three body parts. What was one of the body parts that you noticed? Skylar, can you identify another body part that we haven’t mentioned? We’ve said the head and the thorax, we’ve said the wings and the antenna.

Their observations of the crickets have prepared students for two simple experiments. One involves gently touching the antennae eye with a pencil eraser and recording the cricket’s response. In the second experiment, students place a tent-­‐shaped piece of paper in the container with the cricket. The students predict how the cricket will respond to the tent, then observe and compare their predictions to its behavior.

Master Teacher Speaks Out on Common Core

Deia Sanders is a master teacher in Mendenhall, Mississippi. In this blog post, Deia talks about her experience with the Common Core Standards as both a master teacher and a member of PARCC Educator Leader Cadre.

When I was in college I decided to take physics classes as my electives so that I could find out exactly what a black hole was. I took space science for an entire semester in anticipation of finding the answer. The last chapter, the final week of class, covered black holes. After learning more than I ever anticipated about physics and space I only felt as if there was so much more to learn. For every answer I now had, I also had even more follow-up questions. It began a cycle of learning, finding more I wanted to learn about, and feeling as if it was impossible to know it all… but the cycle lead to growth and knowledge that were previously outside my reach.

This scenario parallels my current status in the search for knowledge and best practice as it relates to Common Core. I am currently questioning practices I didn’t previously know existed, and the more I learn, the more I want to learn, and I am caught in a cycle of growth and knowledge as I reach for what is so much bigger than myself.

I am currently writing units for both language and math, and I am serving on PARCC’s Educator Leader Cadre. From being in the fortunate position of liaison between administration and what is happening in the classroom, I feel like I can see what the future holds in terms of disconnects between administration and the common core classrooms. Administrators, please heed my warnings.

Obviously, you have to know the Common Core State Standards. You’ve got to know the progressions from grade level to grade level. Bill McCallum, lead writer to CCSS Math, said that looking at a standard at a particular grade level wasn’t that valuable. You have to look at the standards in the grade level below and above to know at what level you should engage your students with the standard. For an administrator this is valuable because we are reprogramming our teachers to not re-teach previous standards, and to let go of standards no longer in their grade level. An administrator will need to know what this looks like at all levels to know its appropriate performance and appearance in each grade level and classroom.

We are a PARCC State, thus we have the Model Content Frameworks to use as a guide to the CCSS and assessment. It’s long, less than exciting, and probably wasn’t on anyone’s “beach reading list” this summer. I’ve read it several times, and like space, when I finish I have more questions than answers. One question I had for a long time was where exactly the value in a document that’s so large. It wasn’t until we were writing units and deep in to the CCSS that I began to find value in the materials put out as “guides.” It’s not that the guiding documents weren’t valuable before, but to have a document as a guide when you’re not sure where you’re going, made it difficult for me personally to find value in it. I see this in administration as they read these documents with little impact or meaning because there is a strong disconnect between the document and the process… if you’re not knee deep in the process.

We are seeing that the curriculum directors and teachers are the ones with the true knowledge of the changes CCSS are bringing, and because principals aren’t typically in the planning and writing phases, they are now the least knowledgeable about the changes to come. From my unique perspective I can see that administrators are going to have to go deeper in to the journey of Common Core to remain true academic leaders. As an administrator, of course you have to be familiar with all things Common Core. But as with studying astronomy, it was great information, it left me with growth and questions, but I bet if I traveled to space my knowledge would bring clarity.

The questions that developed from that journey would be deeper than the ones developed from simply reading and studying. To know the Common Core, to find the value in everything that supports it you are going to have to take part in all parts of the journey. If there is a group of teachers meeting to write a unit, you need to be there asking questions. If there is a presentation on classroom practices, you need to be involved. Join your staff in ALL parts of the journey, or else they will reach the destination without you. The more involved in the journey, they more clarity you will find in the process.

Math, Science, and History Standards in the Common Core

Join us on Tuesday, September 11, at 2:00 p.m. EDT for a special webinar Q&A session with Yvonne Copprue-McLeod, a 5th grade teacher at Harriet Tubman Elementary School in Newark, NJ. During this session, Copprue-McLeod will answer your questions about the Common Core Standards as she details her experience with the Common Core ELA Standards Writing and Speaking & Listening.

Unbelievably poor reporting abounds vis-à-vis the Common Core Standards. But you’re a highly intelligent individual, and you can spot the differences, I’m sure.

Something that has not been reported about the Common Core is the standards clearly spelled out for history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Have you heard about these yet? It’s nothing new at all—this image is from the eighth page of the PDF I downloaded will all of the Common Core Standards inside:

Probably never heard of those, have you? It makes you start to wonder what else is in these standards that you haven't heard of--like how they could help you and your students.

Of course these are standards that relate to English language arts, but we’re kidding ourselves if we think that clear communication is not essential in absolutely everything that we do. Take it from someone who gets paid for his knowledge of the English language—everyone, from teachers to executives, has to have a better understanding of the most basic principles of grammar. There is no field, no career, and (if I may wax poetic) no life that does not stand to be enriched by stronger skills in the English language arts.

When I was in high school (or really at any grade), I had a very difficult time understanding directions in my math class. I’m not unintelligent—I just don’t mix the numbers the right way. Reading a math problem is much different than reading East of Eden, but we still call it “reading.” Though highly skilled at discerning plot, character development, and literary themes and criticism, I was woefully behind in working through those accursed word problems.

The Common Core Standards help us—I repeat, they help us—to guide students toward building their skills and defining their lives by what they can achieve rather than what they can’t seem to hack. Common Core 360 is full of teacher and classroom videos that show how educators have been able to build capacity and confidence in their students through these standards. Education is no longer about being weeded out, sorted, and graded—it’s about learning.

Have you been able to read through the Common Core Standards? Have you put any to the test here at the beginning of the school year? What was your experience? Let’s sound off in the comments.

Job-Embedded Professional Development Critical for Successful Implementation of the Common Core

People can be encouraged to change, but if the structure of the system in which the individuals work does not support them or allow enough flexibility, improvement efforts will fail.”  Todnem & Warner (1994)

A guest post by Bobby Moore,  Senior Director of Effective Practices at Battelle for Kids

Recently, I co-presented to a group of about 100 administrators during an Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators’ “Hot Topics” workshop.  The hot topic was “Transitioning to the Common Core,” but the theme of our presentation was job-embedded professional development. Ohio has evolved through proficiency tests, achievement tests, and now is transitioning to the Common Core. Historically with every new set of standards and accountability measures our students, teachers, schools, and districts have struggled. Then, after a few years, many would adapt and eventually become efficient and proficient. With today’s tumultuous environment in education, we cannot afford to adjust “after” the standards become implemented. We must be ready immediately to perform tasks and answer questions at proficient levels when the new Common Core Standards take effect in 2014. Teachers and schools will only be truly prepared through job-embedded professional development. 

As a former principal, superintendent, and now in my role at Battelle for Kids, where I lead a school-improvement collaborative of 122 Ohio districts, I have found that the key to this work is not about multiple initiatives; it’s about taking a focused approach. From my personal experience and research, the three strategies with the highest impact in accelerating student progress and achievement are:

1.    Building capacity around formative instructional practices system wide;

2.    Adopting a systematic approach to struggling (and advanced) students; and

3.    Embedding purposeful collaboration or job-embedded professional development.

Job-embedded professional development is much more than hosting one-day workshops, conferences, or inviting guest speakers to meet with your staff. This should be the time in which the adults in the building come together for purposeful learning and collaboration to improve student growth. I believe there is enough talent and expertise in every school in America that can be shared and developed. We do not have to fire our way to Finland or hire only graduates who are cum laude to create excellent schools. As a new principal and a new superintendent, our district focused on these three key strategies and as a result, we created schools that produced the top 4 percent of value-added results in the state and received the highest state ranking by committing to the three previously mentioned initiates with the teachers already employed in the district.

How do teachers become better at applying effective formative instructional practices? Through job-embedded professional development.

When do teachers share information about struggling students? This is also achieved through job-embedded professional development. 

School leaders must create structures and build in time and procedures for teachers to come together during the school day to learn and grow. School leaders should also participate as active team members sharing and growing. During this time, teachers can share best practices, develop learning targets, create common assessments, participate in online learning opportunities, and support each other in their work. 

Job-embedded professional development is a critical way to not only help teachers and school leaders prepare for the Common Core, but also to create a culture of learning, collaboration, and improvement in our schools, and most importantly, prepare our students for success in college, in their careers, and in life.

Bobby Moore is the Senior Director of Effective Practices at Battelle for Kids, a not-for-profit organization that works with states and school districts and across the country to improve educator effectiveness and accelerate student growth. He can be reached at bmoore@BattelleforKids.org.

From the Source: A High School Student Speaks Out

High school senior Haylee Wilkes of Brighton High School, Utah, joined the content department here at School Improvement Network in a job shadowing event this morning. While she was here, she wrote a blog post for you, dear readers. I'll be honest--I was impressed with how quickly she understood and applied the principles my colleague and I gave her. She seemed like an astute young lady with a bright future.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when I read her post. Though not vindictive (despite a rather provocative title), Haylee's post spells out the failure she felt as she confesses to having received (or earned?) a 22 on the ACT. "Average" and "mediocre" were how she described herself. I remember well the days that my own perception of a person was largely--and wrongly--dependent on their GPA and ACT. My perception changed when I found out that my wife, a person much more intelligent than I am, has an ACT score 8 points below mine. But we don't all have the benefit of such a changed perspective.

Did Haylee earn a 22, or did she receive it? We talk about college and career ready, but do we help our students feel college and career capable? And though education is not about "feeling good," what obligation do we have to help students build a self-perception and self-confidence to do what they can obviously do well?

Haylee is a bright young lady, though her standardized test scores don't reflect her view of "smart." Learn more over on our Common Core 360 blog where Haylee posted her experience.

Part 2: "Our Best Shot at Creating [a] Common Vision"

Follow up from Monday's post:

"This process should ensure that students reach success," Karen Kidwell explains.

But ensuring success is difficult--almost as difficult as helping teachers throughout the system buy into such a romantic view of education. Ensure? How can we really ensure success? Karen continues: 

"Of course, woven through all of that is, what does effective practice look like on a day-to-day basis? And so, we have been working for some years in our state to develop the set of characteristics that really define highly effective teaching in learning practices. We needed a venue where we could bring people together in larger groups and give them time to work with their peers in their own districts.

“This system of networks is going to be our best shot at creating this common vision,” says Kidwell, “but also sharing the wealth of learning that we have in our state and the wealth of expertise that we have at every level, from the teacher leader to the superintendent. You can see this occurring in the following clip of Seth Hunter presiding over a leadership meeting.”

“So,” Hunter says to his math leadership network, “welcome to the March, OVEC math leader meeting. This is actually our last meeting for year one. Your feedback has told us that you wanted to spend more time looking at the Standards. So, we have blocked out essentially the first two hours of today to spend time looking at some more standards.”

“This video depicts the content leadership network, which met eight times over the course of year one and this was our wrap-up meeting for that year,” he describes. “During the meeting we spent a big chunk in the morning looking at the Standards and asking ourselves, what, within a grade or within a course, would be a reasonable sequence to put into place.”

“Leaders like Seth are the specialists that come in to us and want our expertise as teachers,” says Megan Hearn, an algebra teacher. “They know the Standards, they know what they’re looking for. They’re there and then they come to us and they want to know: “You being a classroom teacher who’s going to be teaching this, tell me what you think. It’s been wonderful.”

“These initial meetings also represent a brainstorming stage,” Hunter says. “At this point, we get it all out. So this is where the districts get to adjust what’s happening and at the state level, through the networks, to meet the needs within their context, and this is where I think that Kentucky is really getting it right in terms of scaling this work up.”

                                   

“It’s really beneficial,” says algebra teacher Michelle Hawkins, “in that you get a network of teachers yourself to look at the Standards, to bounce ideas off of one another, to talk about the struggles that your district’s facing. I feel very comfortable with what we’ve done, with the deconstruction. I feel very comfortable with the help that we’ve gotten and the feedback that we’ve gotten.” 

Watch the entire video--entirely FREE--on our website. School Improvement Network is releasing videos every week from its vast library for public consumption. No catch. No gimmicks. Just quality, differentiated PD. Find out more by visiting www.schoolimprovement.com/pd360-free-pd.

Part 1: Content Leaders Network

Watch the Common Core 360 video "Content Leaders Network" FREE on our website! Every week, we are releasing one free video from our on-demand PD library of differentiated training. No catch. No gimmicks. Just free PD.

Stay tuned for more FREE professional development resources from your #1 source of on-demand training, School Improvement Network.

The following is an excerpt from a Common Core 360 video.

We have established a strong system for helping teachers and educators get familiar with the new Common Core Standards here in Kentucky,” says Felicia Cumings Smith, associate commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Education. Our system will also help them understand the Standards deeply so that we can translate that to teaching and learning in the classroom.

“Senate Bill l really required us to look at this whole system between assessment, instruction and new standards,” adds Karen Kidwell, project manager for Kentucky’s System of Leadership Networks. “We knew that we really needed a very systemic model that would involve all the key players. We really have to take our time because as much as you would like for things to just happen, you have to give people processing time, you have to give them struggle time so that we can learn from that and make adjustments.

“The goal of our leadership networks,” explains Smith, “is indeed to build capacity at the district level because we know they need to take ownership.”

“We decided when we started the work with our leadership networks that we really needed to find the best facilitators possible to make these conversations happen, to share strategies,” says Kidwell.

“Through a very careful screening and interviewing process, we got sixteen of probably the best and brightest mathematics and English language arts educators in the state,” Kidwell continues. “They work with clusters of about twenty to maybe twenty-five districts each and so they run the networks for the teacher leaders, but they also spend their time in between network meetings working directly in the districts. This is the critical work that will move implementation of the core academic standards across our state.”

Seth Hunter, Math Specialist for the Kentucky Department of Education explains how the subject specialists went about directing their leadership networks.

“Once a month,” says Hunter, “all of the math specialists and language arts specialists come together under the facilitation of Karen Kidwell. Karen, together with the specialists, interprets the broad goals laid out in Senate Bill I into actionable items for the network meetings. So, we’re all a part of the planning team and it’s really a very empowering process for me personally.

“We established, basically, a large goal for the work of the networks,” Karen remarks. “We see it as at least a three-year process. The first goal was to really interpret the Standards to make sure that everyone is really clear what do these standards really imply for both teaching and learning and assessment purposes.”

“Our next goal is then, if you understand those standards how you try to translate those into targets that students can see and begin to reach,” Karen continues to explain. “After that, we want to develop materials and resources teachers already have, and we want them to ask themselves, “do these truly align to and support the new Standards?” and if not, “where can we go to find resources and tools that really do support the new Standards?” With these decisions made, teachers will then develop local assessments that they can use daily based on those learning targets for kids around these Standards so that they know, on a day-to-day basis, that their kids are on track to be successful with the Standards. If they’re not, they can intervene right away in a meaningful way to keep the kids motivated and continuing to learn.”

Save a seat at Dr. Lisa Leith's webinar TOMORROW entitled "Common Core Standards: Equity and Opportunity." Register here!

Common Core Standards - The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

 ***Don’t miss Dr. Lisa Leith’s webinar, “Common Core Standards: Equity and Opportunities” on January 31^st!***

In regards to the Common Core Standards, the good news is great, the bad news is terrible, and the ugly . . . well, it’s unthinkable. Whether good, bad, or ugly, the Common Core Standards are exactly what we make of them, and the Standards depend entirely on how we map them. 

Allow me to explain.

 The Good

Our first charge vis-à-vis the Common Core is to redefine the connotations behind the word “standards.” Do we have a common purpose? Are we working toward the same goal? If so, then we have a standard. Gone are days where we live from class period to class period, praying that enough of our students pass. If we are measuring students on a pass/fail rubric, then we are intentionally labeling some students as failing.

The Common Core Standards give us an opportunity—a choice—to reclaim the classroom and the learning process and do what we are so passionately involved in doing. But the Common Core Standards as they are written on paper are useless—I repeat, useless—without a breathing, customizable plan or map that changes year by year or even day by day to answer the needs of our students.

The good news is that teachers have more authority and power to mold a classroom around what they know they need to teach rather than following mandates. With effective curriculum mapping, teachers are using the Standards to turn classrooms around. For many it will require a different kind of pedagogy, philosophy, and strategy, but we have already seen enormous benefits from it.

The Bad

The bad news is not that students will be assessed according to the Common Core. The bad news is that teachers work in isolation, or at least they do not collaborate effectively and frequently. Teachers working in isolation cannot use the Standards or their curriculum maps to the fullest potential, and teachers are not using assessments to improve teaching methods.

The irony is that teachers work together across grades, subjects, and departments every day, whether they do so intentionally or not. The constant flow of students necessarily carries enormous implications, and teachers are not capitalizing on one of the greatest opportunities to intentionally impact student learning. The Common Core Standards—and sustained student learning—require teacher collaboration to survive.

The Ugly

The most unthinkable thing that we can do to our students is to simply comply with the Standards instead of embracing them. 

Compliance alone is indicative of not understanding how closely the purposes of the Standards are aligned with your own—to prepare students for college and a career. Issuing a book labeled with “Common Core” is not enough, because it will never answer the needs of each student. Love or hate the Standards as you will, but do not let your students’ education pass them by.

***Don’t miss Dr. Lisa Leith’s webinar, “Common Core Standards: Equity and Opportunities” on January 31^st!***

Two Worlds, One Book

The Common Core Standards are designed to ensure every student is prepared to go on to a post-secondary education or a career. The Standards do more than provide a quality education across states; it promotes providing a quality education among all students from every neighborhood and every school.

Children don’t control where they come from, who their teachers are, or even what information they are taught in the classroom every day. They can control, however, if they will learn or progress in the class. Bringing the best of education to each classroom is the only way the playing field is evened. Where a student comes from should be an asset, not a liability.

In New Jersey, two eighth grade classes are recognizing the value of studying the same book, but with two separate approaches. Just as the Common Core Standards emphasize, strategies used by the teachers in this NY Times article are sharing how race and wealth doesn’t have to play a part in the quality of education students receive.

How have you been able to bridge the divide of race and wealth in your classroom?