As Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman put it in their book Pathways to the Common Core, "There is a way of talking about hard work as if it is a fascinating challenge," (2012, p.72), and I must say, I am suddenly fascinated by the challenge of doing the hard work of embracing the Common Core. I feel amazingly energized as these authors help the concepts unfold in my mind and my new understanding of these controversial standards begins to blossom. I'm not a curmudgeon anymore. I'm extremely excited to get started.
That being said, I am also utterly panicked. Since when is Text-to-Self out? Was I not just last week lauding the "connections" my readers were making during our read aloud and encouraging them to identify things they could connect to their own lives? Was that this humble teacher saying something like "Does this remind you of yourself? Wonderful! You are making the kinds of connections strong readers make!" I want to slap my forehead. Little did I know I was leading them AWAY from the type of deeper analysis the Common Core is trying to push them towards, as “the Common Core deemphasizes reading as a personal act and emphasizes textual analysis” (Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman, 2012, p.25). Those poor misled souls!
Luckily I'm the kind of teacher who can put the breaks on, reverse, and swerve the other way when we reach a dead end. I'm already seeing the kids rising to the challenge as I raise the bar even higher. The other day as I began our read aloud, I gave them a pep talk not unlike the one I alluded to from Pathways, where the authors suggest “you may want to consider the overall tone and approach you’ll use as a community. There is a way of talking about hard work as if it is a fascinating challenge, and there is an alternate tone that makes it seem as if hard work is put on us by outside forces, which is deadly”(Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman, 2012, p.72). I told them how they have clearly mastered Text-to-Self connections and were ready for a higher level of thinking. I told them they had to turn their brains way on, and I saw kids licking their lips, readjusting themselves at the carpet, sitting up straighter, ready to take on whatever challenge I was about to throw at them.
Something else the book emphasizes that made my stomach sink a bit was the sheer volume of time students need to be spending reading. The authors assert that “In order for students to make the necessary progress, they need at least forty-five minutes in school and more time at home to read books that they can read with 96% accuracy, fluency, and comprehension”(Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman, 2012, p.18). We definitely don't do this. Yet. One issue I have seen developing is that students only read during transitions after lunch or fruit break. That means slow eaters are getting less time than their peers. Those who do read, don't spend time in the same books to completion. They leisurely float between books, and while I like to see them socially engaged and excited about a book, they spend too much time three heads to a Captain Underpants book laughing over the same pages every day. Now that I see this, what do I do? Calkins et. al. offer some practical suggestions to drum up productive reading time. They share, “We have found that it helps if classroom teachers have a hypothetical plan for how each student will advance, and it helps if that plan is written (perhaps onto a calendar) and shared with the student and is public so that each student (and sometimes the student’s parents, too) can work with resolve toward these clear goals” (Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman, 2012, p.44). I like the sound of this, but it's somewhat intimidating to imagine doing this for each student, and I only have 10 of them! I can only imagine the challenge this individualized planning would pose for teachers with 20 or more kids.
Some of what the authors point out is familiar and seems like common sense at this point, like that students need choice and interesting texts to choose from. I was already convinced of this, but hadn't quite made this same connection to their nonfiction reading lives. It seems so obvious now that they need lots of high quality nonfiction texts to choose from as well as coaching in the strategies necessary to read them. It's all too familiar the image of a nonfiction article turned neon by a heavy highlighter hand. The authors of Pathways describe another scene I recognize, explaining that “students may accomplish only limited amounts of expository reading because they may be reading with pen in hand, taking notes about information they could look up with ease or that they don’t even know yet will be significant once they read more. They are recording ‘the facts,’ as soon as they encounter them…” (Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman, 2012, p.90). It's clear that they need more time and more targeted instruction on how to tackle nonfiction and monitor their comprehension, but even more importantly, that they are interested in the work. I want so badly to provide students with all the texts that will ignite their passions, but it's not that easy to get these books. Calkins et. al. understand this difficulty well, saying, “The first challenge is to supply students with the high-interest, just-right informational texts that will be necessary if they are going to develop CCSS skills in informational reading” (Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman, 2012, p.91).
One of my major questions, briefly touched on by the authors, is how to interpret these standards for students with cognitive difference. I'm thinking in particular about students on the spectrum for Autism, who typically occupy a very concrete space in their thinking and struggle with subtleties and abstractness, the "reading between the lines" skill necessary for navigating many social situations as well as critical thinking. I really resonated with the warning “We caution that it is not enough to simply do this work in shared experiences such as through read-aloud or whole-class novel discussions-- too many kids hide during that work, and you don’t know if they can really do the high-level work on their own, in independent reading” (Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman, 2012, p.68). As I have worked to collect anecdotal notes during these discussions, I see the same kids talking and the same kids floating away in their minds. I can only spend so much of this group time reeling the floaters back in, and often this inattentiveness is not disruptive, but it does make me cringe wondering if they are getting anything at all out of these group literacy experiences. I worry about students on the spectrum measuring up in the Common Core and that their other wonderful skills and multiple intelligences will not be appreciated. What if I can't get a student with Autism to infer and synthesize and embrace the idea of hidden messages beyond the plot of a text? Is that child then not on grade level? Assuming the Common Core measures college preparedness, is that child technically never going to be University ready if he or she cannot master these deep thinking skills? I'm worried the individual strengths of these children are not being honored if we over-emphasize abstractness for very concretely wired brains. I hope that in the next few years of getting settled into the Common Core, more research will be done on how to support different types of thinkers in reaching these standards.
It's no secret, as the opening of the book playfully relays, that the Common Core has some ways to go before anyone can call it perfect. There may be some things that have me questioning, but questioning is part of thinking as the Common Core emphasizes only too well! Despite my questions, I can get behind the overall message of the giant leap these new standards are attempting to make, and am excited about the progress in the right direction. Calkins and friends put it best when they say, “Instead of continuing to provide the vast majority of students with a skill and drill education, the United States needs to provide all students with a thinking curriculum, with writing workshops, reading clubs, research projects, debates, think tanks, Model UN, and the like. The Common Core Standards offer an absolutely crucial wake-up call” (Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman, 2012, p.9). Well I am awake, and I am ready for the hard but fascinating work that lies ahead as I guide my kids to the next level of thinking that awaits them.
