Response to "The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12" and "Corestandards.org"

There are many ways to look at Common Core State Standards.  It is easy to look at them and feel resentment for someone telling me how to do my job, especially after surviving all of these classes.  I am old, and have a life time of experiences that tell me that I am already a good teacher.  Then...I come across articles like this.

I am not saying that I am a total and complete discuple of the CCSS, for I honestly believe that, in about six years, when the mucky-mucks in DC and P21 (The Partnership for21st Century Skills) realize that, either the CCSS aren't working, or need a re-tooling.  If I am proclaiming such a thing, that I am not totally converted, then in what am I focussed?  This question is easy: in teaching.  If I am so focussed on making professional teaching a part of my future, then I need to ask myself--the children I have taught, have they all ended up perfecr?  The answer is no, so I must admit that I need help.  For now, I have the CCSS, so I will use it to the best of my ability.

But, is using the CCSS the best way to use it?  Them?  "The hope of the Common Core State Standards is that, this time, a more consistent set of goals across states will make standards-based reform more effective."  It is designed to make education fair for everyone, and "is consistent with the demands of learning and living in the 21st Century."  The needs and abilities of today's students, wired far differently and wildly then I was when I slouched my way through school,  I am the proud parent of two ADHD students, and what I can not deny is one thing: "Whether [my] implementation of the Common Core State Standards will meet...high expectations depends on [my] passionate commitment to making higher standards meaningful."  It is not my job, especially for kids whose wiring needs some tender and deliberate attention, to just dispense information and stay in the rut of being the "traditional...conveyor of knowledge."  It is my job to entertain, entertain with purpose and to avoid standardization.  And remember that, even though it might be easy to pigeonhole students with labels, each one of them must be taught differently, and give different levels of my attention.

Teaching is/will be difficult.  Why in the world would I want to subject myself to such punishment and potential dissapointment?  There is one, among many, reasons that make answering that easy: "standards alone will not suffice to remedy their needs."  Teaching well requires me/us to be flexible, constantly adjusting.  I have had many "jobs" over the years, many of them stuck into a rut of stangnancy that would make a rock fall asleep. I am learning that teaching will not put me to sleep (except from exhaustion.)