By: Christian Guerrero
August 27, 2014
Category: America | common | core | education | inwood | middle | nyc
www.inwoodacademy.org
Common (adjective) – occurring, found, or done often; prevalent.
Core (noun) – the central or most important part of something.
It is hard to think of two more basic words than common and core. As a young student in Ms. Lozinski’s English class I would have been asked to be more creative and imaginative in my language usage to avoid boring the reader in my writing. Yet, when placed together, no two words are more emotional in recent education conversation.
Since its inception, the Common Core has been criticized from all fronts. Teachers say the goals are unrealistic and unreasonable. Parents preach that schools are removing the fun and making learning environments too results-driven. Politicians are suggesting changes and government action against the list of standards. Most recently, a report stated that colleges need to start making changes in preparation for students educated in this “new era.”
I am going to share an uncommon view: the common core is not all that different from what great teachers have done for decades.
Common is exactly what the expectations in the Common Core are; common in classroom across this country and others. It is common in the classrooms of rural and urban communities where students are instructed to not just do, but think : in elementary school classrooms where children bake to learn what math actually is instead of memorizing facts, in middle school classrooms where students explain reasoning to understand how to learn and not what to learn, and in the high school classrooms where deep research is required to make an argument. These skills and lessons were taught long before the Common Core was in the news and will continue to be taught long after it disappears. Classrooms that encourage students to think differently and deeply will always be the most successful.
As parents, educators, and politicians argue about the Common Core and debate about its effectiveness, I encourage my teachers to continue doing what they got into this profession to do: teach students in the best way possible. Sure, the language around the standards has changed and students are now expected to learn different concepts in younger grades, but weren’t they always learning that in the best class? Didn’t great teachers always try to teach more than what was expected? I know that the great teachers who made me the man I am did.
The best part of the Common Core is that it assumes that every student in America can succeed. Whether you live in the suburbs of Chicago, the rural areas in the South, or on Dyckman Street, a fifth grade student prepared for success should be able to do the same thing. At Inwood Middle School, we aren’t scared or angry about the Common Core. It is the confirmation that good teaching encourages all students to read thoughtfully, write convincingly, think critically, speak up and speak well. At Inwood we will continue to make following the standards common, so that our children won’t be.
By Ryan McCabe, ryan.mccabe@inwoodacademy.org
www.inwoodacademy.org
