Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/229155
CTA &You Lennox teachers and administrators plan for the transition to the Common Core State Standards. Photo by Frank Wells. LENNOX TEACHERS ASSOCIATION: DETERMINING HOW CCSS IS IMPLEMENTED COMPILED BY FRANK WELLS has taken a leadership role on Common Core State Standards (CSSS) implementation in the Lennox School District. Just weeks after negotiating a memorandum of understanding that gives LTA a powerful voice in determining how Common Core funds allocated in the state budget are spent, LTA invited CTA Instruction and Professional Development (IPD) staff in for a planning session on the transition to the new standards. At that session, we sat down with LTA President Brian Guerrero and first vice president and bargaining chair Polo Marquez to discuss their association's efforts to have a strong teacher core. We started off by asking them about the MOU, which establishes a teacher member majority to oversee the CCSS rollout and determine funding expenditures for the district. T H E L E N N O X T E A C H E R S A S S O C I AT I O N P OLO: The district was pretty receptive to our initial proposal — they had four minor changes, but the overall concepts were agreed to pretty easily. We're going to be able to keep these decisions teacher-driven, including making sure our charter school LTA members are included in discussions around Common Core. B R I A N: It really is a fantastic opportunity for Lennox teachers. CTA's been great on this. Some of our members went to the IPD Common Core Strand at Summer Institute, and we were able to learn from other chapters like San Juan that have been out in front of this issue. P OLO: We also surveyed our members, asking them how they would like to see teachers involved, what support they think they need to implement the Common Core effectively, and whether they would be interested in optional paid in-services over winter or summer breaks. We left it pretty open, as we want to hear all the ideas out there. Polo Marquez B R I A N: This is part of a larger organizing plan that includes building internal and external capacity. We're going to be holding site visits at every school on the Common Core and the Local Control Funding Formula. We also feel it's important that parents are informed about the new standards, so we're going to be holding small group meetings for parents to talk about this and the whole LCFF starting in January. This is part of an ongoing parent involvement effort; we've already had house meetings around other issues. P OLO: We have a lot going on. The member education piece comes first. I'm not sure everyone knows enough about this yet, and the site visits will partly be about making sure members understand what's different about student expectations and thinking skills under the new standards. Also, many of our students come from limited-income families. A lot of them have cellphones, but access to computers and the Internet is limited, and technology is an essential part of the new assessments. B R I A N: The district has already started working on infrastructure using some prior federal funding. The committee will be looking at those issues, but also focusing on the best way to utilize funding. There are textbook companies with prepackaged trainings around Common Core, but there may be better ways to prepare. We want to take a look at what we already have, how it fits with Common Core, and then have our members lead the way on training and implementation that make sense. Having teachers driving reform makes sense. The success of the QEIA program here in Lennox and across the state has demonstrated that teacher-driven professional development and regular teacher-led collaboration are hugely effective in bringing about better instruction and higher student achievement. I think this can be a model for us all as we shift to the Common Core and LCFF. D ECEMBER 201 3 | JANUARY 2014 Educator 12 Dec 2013 v2.0 int.indd 47 Brian Guerrero www.cta.org 47 12/14/13 3:33 PM