For years I resisted joining the Twitter nation. Twitter was a way to follow professional athletes, movie stars, etc. who talked about their every move and thought because what they thought and did really changed the world. I always asked myself, who really cares what they do or think? I know I don't. "I will never join the Twitter Nation." Well, one should never say never...
As most of you know, I have a new job as a STEM teacher in my school district and I joined the Twitter nation. To my surprise, there are some great ideas and thoughts on Twitter if you are selective about who you follow. There are some very interesting articles, blogs and comments about education reform and innovation. I have spent a number of hours reading and getting ideas from others in education about reform and innovation. For those of you that know me personally, you know all this information has lead to questions. How do the Common Core Standards fit with innovation in the classroom? How much project-based learning can a teacher accomplish with a sundry list of standards to meet? What are we doing as a District to help teachers understand and prioritize the new standards in order to create these innovative lessons? As a teacher, I am required to teach the standards the State of California has adopted and I don't have a choice about that. Giving teachers additional tools "in their toolbox" to teach creative and innovative lessons is great, but we need to start with understanding the standards. This process of understanding the standards takes time and conversations and work needs to begin soon since the new assessments for Common Core begin in 2014-2015.
So, where do we begin? How about unwrapping the standards themselves and creating priority standards? How about using staff meeting time and District meetings to accomplish this task? How about creating a subcommittee to help the process? How about more collaboration time for teaching teams and cross grade level discussions? Unwrapping a standard gives each member of the teaching team a clear understanding of the learning outcome and it allows each teacher to teach that standard their own way. This is where the innovation and art of teaching comes into play.
As a parent, I would want to know the grade level standards for my child. What is my child going to learn in this grade level and how does it tie into the next grade level? How will I know that my child has met this standard? How is my school preparing my child in terms of college and career readiness?What can I do to help my child be successful in this quest?
I hope we are going to start to have these conversations with all the stakeholders in the District because right now it feels really fragmented to me.
