Saturday, February 11, 2012

New Answers to Old Questions--Transition to Common Core


By Mary Hendricks-Harris, PLC at Work™ associate Posted on February 8, 2012
“One of the things I am most excited about is planning for the transition to common core state standards. At the same time, this shift keeps me up at night. How will we get it done? How will we fund the transition? Professional development? Bandwidth? While I am not sure if these are the right standards or if the process for determining these standards was perfect, I do know it is time to embrace change in both curriculum and instruction.

“How do we respond when students learn more?

“During this shift, we can depend on the PLC process to provide a foundational structure.


Your posting was also timely for me.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  I know this process will take planning, and it’ll take time.  I just hope not too much time.  I feel that we’ve needed this focus for quite some time, and I hope no one drags their feet hoping that it’ll go away.  I remember when I was a first year teacher, and we started to examine course objectives.  Some of my colleagues said “didn’t we already do this like 10 years ago?”  About five years later, we began forming PLCs, and some of my colleagues said, “don’t worry the pendulum has swung with NCLB.”  Overall, most of my colleagues are on board, but it’s just interesting to see how far we’ve come. I really like the 4th question “How do we respond when student learn more?”.  I feel that question is missing from our core questions, so that should definitely be added to our core questions.  Sometimes I feel like those students fly under the radar and are not pushed as much as they should be because our focus is on those who are not learning.

No comments:

Post a Comment