California Educator

May 2013

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LISTEN IN! Common Core Cynthia López Elwell, Ontario-Montclair Teachers Association, and James Norwood, Moreno Valley Educators Association, met at a CTA Common Core State Standards conference. Both are middle school language arts teachers. P H O T O S A N D C O M P I L AT I O N B Y F R A N K W E L L S Cynthia: The move to the Common Core is a double-edged sword. It is delivered through teachers, and before it gets to us it has to come through districts. Some districts are being prescriptive, while others are pretty looseygoosey about the whole thing. There's a lot of interpretation going on about what the standards say, and that can be a little scary. James: If done right there will be real benefit to students who will have the opportunity to work with higher-level text to develop college and career-ready literacy. The problem is not having much of a transition. It might make sense to start fully with elementary students and transition them, rather than have middle and high school students have such a jarring shift from one year to the next. Cynthia: There's also a huge issue with access: Students already performing at level in schools with adequate resources will have an easier time with the transition. It's harder for students who are already behind to catch up. James: One of the focuses of the new standards is cross-curricular literacy. Although I meet with teachers in other disciplines once a month to talk about IEPs and things like that, we don't get into course content or coordinate lessons. The transition may be I have infrastructure concerns though, not only about hardware, but about bandwidth. Many districts may not meet the requirements or have the resources to meet them without cutting somewhere else. There needs to be enough funding so that all students are on a level playing field when it comes to testing as well as learning content. James: One challenge is getting students used to the depth of the new assessment questions. Instead of choosing A, B, C, or D, they'll be asked how or why they came up with an answer. more difficult for subjects other than English where they may have the reading content already, but they're not used to doing the kind of writing and analysis the new standards demand. Cynthia: If it's a translation from paper to computers, I think our kids will struggle with the same issues they have now. But if the assessments are as interactive as they are supposed to be, I'm looking forward to Cynthia: Collaboration in it. I saw students working with computerits current form might not adapted problem solving as part of a science be all that helpful. In my and technology pilot, and it's the first time district, collaboration is I've ever seen students smiling ear to ear durcentered on raising test scores. ing a test as they worked their way through I'd love the opportunity to a problem. They were so engaged. work with colleagues and discuss curriculum and approaches geared to James: Districts know it's coming, and specific students. some are on top of it. I know there are teachers who don't know what the James: That would be great. Common Core is, and it's only We'll be dealing with coma year away. And that's not puter-adapted testing. We their fault. don't have computers for every student, so I assume Cynthia: There's kind of the testing window is going a hierarchical structure. to be wide enough that we Superintendents and district can get to every student. And office administrators may many of our students don't know about it, others are gethave the computer skills necessary ting information from CTA and to perform well. If they have to keycoming to conferences like this, but the board an essay answer and don't know overwhelming majority are probably just how to keyboard, they're at a disadvantage. getting a glimmer at this point, and without more information it will be a little scary. Cynthia: I'm not as concerned about that as I used to be. My students know the James: Knowledge is power. That's why QWERTY keyboard layout from texting I'm here, and I wish more teachers could each other. Of course, that's with their come to a conference like this. thumbs, so they may not know how to type, but it takes the hunt out of hunt-and-peck. May 2013 www.cta.org 43

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