Top 4 Reasons to Not Feel Panicked by the Common Core Writing Standards - A Reader's Response

If I were to pass on one word of advice to any other teacher or administrator faced with the challenges of the new Common Core State Writing Standards, it would be the same advice I gave to myself, penciled in the margins of Pathways to the Common Core by Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman: Don't panic! 

Perhaps this is easier advised than actually done, and easier still for a teacher in my progressive private school setting which is already structured to provide space for the type of critical thinking and extensive writing and reading demanded by the standards. Reading the degree of excellence mandated in the Common Core for any one grade will doubtlessly be overwhelming for even the most seasoned of writing teachers, but Calkins et. al. remind us that "implicit in the CCSS is the presence of a spiral curriculum. A child who has been learning narrative craft for thirteen years should, by the end of twelfth grade, be extraordinarily skilled..." (p.109). To understand the trajectory of this spiral, the authors advise reading across the curriculum rather than down your single grade, seeing how the writing expectations contain the same base that is added on to little by little as the student progresses through the grades.

Here are a few things to keep in mind about the CCSS in order to not panic:

1. The writing and reading standards are not intended to be demonstrated in the language arts setting alone. In fact, "authors of the CCSS often refer to the writing standards as a shared responsibility within the school that all subject areas support" (Calkins et. al., 2012, p.110). Science and Social Studies teachers must also embrace the Common Core standards in their classes, giving students the ample time and practice they need and reflecting the type of writing integral to success in this modern era. As Calkins et. al. put it, "Whether our students become scientists, engineers, activists, or analysts, they'll need to be able to write well to do well" (p.110). With this balance between nonfiction and narrative writing styles, the writing teacher need not panic knowing the students will be trying on writing standards across the content areas.

2. Not every single piece of writing produced by students needs to meet every standard. It may be intimidating to see the list of expectations lengthening as the grade level increases, and to see the impressive, thoughtful, and skilled narratives provided as sample pieces. It may lead a 4th grade teacher to weep, thinking, "how on Earth am I going to get my class writing like professional novelists by the end of the year?" but panic not. Calkins and friends soothe us with the reminder that "this is a list of skills that fourth graders should be able to demonstrate, but this doesn't mean that every narrative must contain all of these characteristics... no one piece does everything listed in the standards for that grade" (p. 117).

3. You are not alone! It can feel a little scary to be the ones at the front line of this revolution in reading and writing, suddenly having to serve students who ideally would have been instructed in the spiral from kindergarten but in reality are seeing this style of thinking and learning for the first time in your class. Take this with the consideration that the CCSS "detail what students should know and be able to do and do not specify practices that teachers should use to teach students the skills they need to meet those expectations" (p.108), and it's no wonder educators are feeling lost at sea! Know that life rafts exist. While the standards themselves do not detail methods, there are wonderful curriculums already written, such as the Lucy Calkins writer's workshop used at my own school. There are also some pragmatic steps to getting started detailed in the Pathways book, like on page 123. Additionally, the role of a strong community cannot be overemphasized when facing any kind of big change in a school's culture. The authors of Pathways advise again and again that teachers and administrators build a strong web of support and open communication, comparing notes and planning collaboratively as much as possible. Surround yourself with a support system of fellow educators embarking on the same journey, and you are sure to feel less like a lone rower up the creek without a paddle and more like an efficient member of a crew team.

4. Teaching the CCSS is going to make you a better teacher! And it's going to vastly improve the learning and future lives of your students! I know I sound like I'm really drinking the KoolAid now, but you can't fail to be impressed with the level of critical thinking implicit in the Common Core writing standards. Teaching the art of argument, for example, truly empowers students to think deeply about any topic that matters to them, and prepares them with the skills they need to think through problems and advocate for the solutions they believe in. In the writing standards, "there is a push for logical reasoning, analysis of claims, and reliance on clear evidence and evaluation of sources throughout the grades" (p.127). Compare this level of interacting with language and text to the traditional method of filling in a bubble from a provided list of answers, and it's clear which one will position students for the greatest success in University and in their adult lives. For teachers, this means raising the bar for themselves as well as for their students. In other words, they must "become accountable to teaching whatever they are already teaching in ways that accelerate achievement" (Calkins et. al., p. 121). This can be done by examining the learning progression within the standards, and "seeing ways in which a clear trajectory of progress can inform their plans for units of study, their minilessons, their choice of mentor texts, their feedback on student writing, their conferences, and their small-group work" (p.121). The Pathways book says again and again that to help elevate student writers to these new levels, teaching will need to include "explicit instruction, opportunities for practice, centrality of feedback, assessment-based instruction, and spiral curriculum that have all been hallmarks of rigorous writing workshop instruction" (p.112).

There are probably hundreds of more reasons to calm your worries within the pages of this trusty little guide, but hopefully this small sampling will be a good beginning to chipping away at those fears. Fresh from an educational system that honors the agency and judgment of teachers less and less, teachers who suddenly find themselves holding the reigns may be a little bewildered at first with how to proceed with all this newfound professional respect, but it is a respect we deserve and have fought for for years. It may be a bumpy and uncharted path ahead for our school systems and our children, but it's also a thrilling ride taking teachers and learners alike on the right path to higher achievement and higher quality thinkers and problem solvers. If you're still feeling panicked, or you'd just like to read more, pick up a copy (and maybe a few copies for colleagues and administrators), of Pathways to the Common Core. It's sure to help you feel ready to take on the challenges ahead and blaze a path to better education for all students!

Theory in Practice: Breaking Bread

This month's growth is marked by efforts in our community. Very fitting considering the upcoming Thanksgiving holidays which have a lot to do with coming together as a group. In history, the survival of Early colonies depended on good collaboration, and today, we collaborate by sharing a community meal and showing gratitude for each other. This month I worked hard to decenter myself as the holder of power and the knower of knowledge, and to support the students in relying more on each other and their work as a team. I know that to get students thinking critically, I have to get them thinking together, because “In classrooms that promote thinking, students and teachers co-construct meaning in large groups, small groups, and conferences; through discussions, book groups, and partner work. Everyone gets a chance to weigh in with meaning” (Harvey and Goudvis, 2007, p.35).

One of the ways this has been challenging, however, is that not all students care to "weigh in" in the manner I imagine when I read this picture-perfect quote. Many of my circling thoughts from my reflections this month focus on the quieter members in our group engagements and feature questions like, "how do I know if those kids are even getting anything out of this?" I was so excited to read aloud the book Stranded at Plimoth Plantation, but the discussion that followed was disappointingly dead. We were working to fill out a class anchor chart on text clues and inferences, and each time I stopped to pose a brilliantly phrased and probing question, I was met with a few answers and more glassy eyes crickets. Did they not feel responsible for thinking because another student would surely pick up the slack? Did they not find it interesting? Did they not understand what to do? Frank Smith argues that “The right to ignore anything that doesn’t make sense is a crucial element of any child’s learning—and the first right children are likely to lose when they get to the controlled learning environment of school” (Smith, 1998, p.19), but I struggle to know where to draw the line with this. I mean, if you ignore TOO many things that don't make sense, you will never get a chance to understand them, right? What about productive struggle? Clearly, something was lacking in the way I was presenting this activity or in the outcomes I was expecting. It wasn't until I had a heart to heart with one of my mentors, Dr. Fisher, that she reminded me of what I already know: not all kids are going to exhibit understanding in the same way. This has been drilled in us over and over again from the beginning of this grad program, but for some reason, I just needed to hear it from her in relation to this real in my community for it to click. Of course I want to see their understanding taking place in a verbal exchange because that's how MY brain is wired. The obvious problem with this expectation, though, is that it does not honor the myriad of other ways different types of learners may prefer to engage with their understanding. Verbosity does not come naturally to everyone. After this talk with Dr. F (and how fitting that I would make a revelation like this via talking), I've made it a point moving forward to provide other opportunities for kids to engage in these whole group settings beyond verbal response. I hope to open the floor to more students by letting them respond through drawing and using their bodies, and yes, talking, because “Critical thinking and dialog go hand in hand” (Cowhey, 2006, p.90).

Related to these reflections is another theme swirling in my mind, and it's what to do with this clear divide amongst the verbal and not-so-verbal personalities/learning preferences of my students. I would say about half of them are as jazzed up about talking as I am, eager to discuss their way to understanding and share their thinking with the group. But while these 5 are busy with this, the other 5 are like little lost ships at sea, floating further and further away, needing constant anchoring and reeling in to stay present, which naturally drags at the flow of the rest of the conversation. A clear solution, which I have seen results with this month, is doing things like this in smaller groups. But that requires doing everything twice, which obviously means things take twice as long, and by the end of the year, I have only been available to each group half as much and have only covered half as much ground as I could have by the end of the year. But then again, is there any point in moving full steam ahead as a whole group if half of the kids are going to get left behind? What good is that? Is that serving those kids drifting off in the life raft? It's become clear to me that I need to guide this group in finding each member's strengths and teaching them to support the community in the best way they can. But that requires each individual student to see his or herself as part of a larger community. And seeing as some of us aren't quite there yet, that's where I am starting.

One new thing I tried this month to beef up the sense of community and collaboration going on in our room is to divide the students into two teams, an "Americas" (New World) team and a "Europe, Asia, and Africa" (Old World) team to create a multi-disciplinary info-wall project on these regions prior to the Great Exchange of the 1490s. I gave them each a packet with the assignment laid out and a rubric, and let them know they would be completing this project as a team and that at the end, they would be grading each other on their collaboration skills. I hoped this would decentralize me as the judger and grader, and refocus them on their work with their peers. There were some growing pains the first few days as the kids found their feet in this new style of workshop, but by Friday, my heart was bursting with pride to see them independently getting out their materials and checking in with their teammates on their progress, and figuring out what they needed in order to get to the next step. Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I really think this project and its execution indicate tremendous growth for me in my goals of organization and being explicit with expectations for the students. Hopefully, I provided the right balance of being available for guidance and redirecting them back to their group when appropriate. This busy week of teamwork culminated with a soup making project, using ingredients found only in their region prior to the Great Exchange. They absolutely loved it, and every single one of them came away having accomplished a first-time in something. I overheard one of my sweet cheeky boys remark that we hadn't had to do any learning all day, and when I suggested otherwise he responded "that wasn't learning, that was FUN!" Interestingly, the success of this collaboration experience would not have been possible without my own collaboration with my mom who came in to help on soup day, and my co-teacher who jumped right in to support us. This project revealed SO much valuable information to me, which I now know how to collect as useful data about where each kid is with their collaboration skills, as well as which kids work well together, which kids took on leadership roles, and which kids still need a little more support in this area.

On the heels of this celebration, is this pressing feeling of not having enough of me to go around, which I spoke about in my last Theory in Practice post. This frustration has only been heightened by being pulled every other week to be the "bouncer" in band and chorus for the entire morning, taking me out of the classroom and putting me into a purely behavior management role during this prime instructional time. I know that this is just part of being a team player in a school setting like mine, but it hasn't helped that the band and chorus consist primarily of middle schoolers, whom I am not accustomed to working with. I wrote several times about my climbing blood pressure as I observed these students' poor attitudes. The music teacher says "Please stand up everyone," and the tweens heave deep long-suffering sighs and reluctantly slouch to their feet. The music teacher says "please put the candy away," and the munching student glares indignantly back, roles her eyes, and thrusts the candy away in a huge show of inconvenience. The incessant chit-chat between songs slows the whole class down, and they JUST. DON'T. LISTEN. (Not to brag, but my few kids here are the exception). Observing these behaviors makes steam shoot out of my ears like a cartoon character with poor anger management, and for a futile while I was jumping down their throats at every single instance of teenagery-ness, casting around meaningful glares and trying to shame them into compliance. You will not be surprised to learn this was not too effective. Collaboration again being the theme here, I discussed my frustrations with their teacher in a "how do you deal?" moment, and she helped me see the situation differently. The bottom line is teenagers are supposed to behave in these maddening ways. It's actually 100% developmentally appropriate to feel challenged by them at every turn and for them to feel angsty and drained by the demands of the adult world. Becky Bailey advises, “Let go of your expectation that children can give up what they want in order to follow your wishes and still be happy about it. Stop trying to control children’s feelings in hopes this will control their behavior. Children have a right to all of their feelings" (Bailey, 2000, 191). With this in mind, I'm not so scared to face bouncer duty next time around.

Attitudes are something I worry a lot about, with certain of my students in particular. One child has been so incredibly anxious that he has spent entire days spiraling out about whether his mom would remember to pick him up. This is the same child who is constantly pushing buttons and the limits of our class expectations, and I want to be sensitive to the stress he is under emotionally while also remaining consistent and clear with our boundaries at school. After all, “Your style of setting limits teaches children how to set and hold boundaries in their future relationships” (Bailey, 2000, p.99), and these skills will also serve him in learning to manage and regulate his anxious thoughts. He told me a few weeks ago on our way in from the playground that learning is boring and he hates it. It crushes me that he feels this way! This comment sounded a lot like another one of our friends who has the mindset that everything is adults versus kids and all adults want to do is make kids work work work all the time and never catch a break. I'm trying so hard to help him overcome this rigid mindset where he is a passive object with unwanted expectations being inflicted upon him by outside forces. He speaks to us and to peers in a very rude and short way, and like with the first child, I want to let him know there are limits, but I want to do it without making him feel punished and powerless to the will of the adult. I'd love to sit down with him and talk about his responsibilities with the understanding that “There may be another way of looking at discipline. It can be what we do with kids rather than what we do to them” (Fay and Funk, 1995, p.66). I think both of these kids feel stuck on the idea that their education is happening to them and not with them, and while I know that they don't really hate learning, the fact that this is how they associate with it troubles me deeply for their futures. I believe there is a connection between their feelings and the observations I made about their lack of involvement in group collaboration and signs that they see themselves as part of a community.

Perhaps I am leaving this blog post with more questions than answers, but I will say that despite the challenges that continue to give me pause, I still see evidence of progress all over. A stronger community is slowly but surely taking form, and while we all still have a long road ahead of us, I’m pleased to celebrate our strides, and to break bread with these incredible companions as we pause and take stock along the way. I can’t say it better than Frank Smith, who writes, “The classic kind of learning is…growth. It is growth of the mind analogous in every way to the growth of the body” (Smith, 1998, p.12). If that’s the case, then we have learned so much already!

Intentional Inequities - Dr. Jeannie Oakes on American School Systems and the Achievement Gap (Mays Lecture 2014)

I was so pleased to find the themes of civil rights and equity continued from 2013’s Mays Lecture with Mr. Bryan Stevenson. While Mr. Stevenson was a powerful storyteller, I felt that Dr. Oakes brought impact to her talk through the incredible data she shared from her research. I think the listeners couldn’t help but have a visceral response to seeing the data displayed visually, and it made the pattern of inequity in schools impossible to ignore. I was alarmed at the notion that continuing inequity is part of a “cultural compromise” in American society. Dr. Oakes points out how “Americans find ways to rationalize” the achievement gap, of which the major concern is that it’s a racial and economic gap.

It definitely rang a bell when Dr. Oakes pointed out the issue that “Schools serve capitalism as well as democracy.” I instantly thought back to The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith, and how he describes the evolution of schooling into an industrialized process, saying “The teacher was no longer the collaborator or even the guide. The teacher became the official in charge of work and the collector of the scores, chained like the students to standardized instructional procedures” (Smith, 1998, p.56). I think Dr. Oakes would agree that the issue is how society sees schools that are not performing/students who are not learning as bugs in a system that need to be fixed, rather than seeing the system itself as the problem. In other words, “Systems as a whole were not examined for fundamental flaws (like the official theory of learning) that might explain why problems arose. Rather, problems were regarded as extraneous glitches, as bugs in the system, which could be eradicated by generic procedures” (Smith, 1998, p.68). Dr. Oakes adds an even darker note to this situation of a flawed schooling system by pointing out that the privileged and powered may actually want to keep schools unequal to benefit their own kids, that “There’s not enough excellent education to go around” motivating those with political power to safeguard it for their own children.

            

Therefore, we need to recognize that “Educational inequality is intertwined with other forms of inequality” and in fact that “the popular reforms focused on improving ‘low performing’ urban schools actually perpetuate inequality” (Oakes, Mays Lecture, 2014). This notion that inequality is actually institutionalized is the same thing Stevenson was pointing out when he shared about our disturbingly disproportionate representation of African Americans among those incarcerated, and that there is a 1/3 chance of prison or jail time for a black child born in the year 2000 (Stevenson, Mays Lecture, 2013). As Frank Smith says, “Schooling, and circumstances outside school, may result in what might be called ‘abused learners’”(Smith, 1998, p.37). Perhaps these abused learners are the traumatized marginalized members of society who end up incarcerated, which are probably those same kids stuck in the cycle of failing schools.

            

These are all disheartening figures and facts when we think about the future of our schools and society as a whole, pointed out by these numerous intelligent people. So what’s to be done? Interestingly, the solutions suggested are echoed amongst all of these incredible people, and seem to center around a theme that has been emphasized from the very start in this graduate program: Community. As Dr. Oakes says, “We require a social movement above market forces or expert engineering; citizens and community members must make demands for change” (Mays Lecture, 2014). In Smith’s words, “Changing the minds of [people with authority or influence in education] will itself need a massive educational effort. And if their minds can’t be changed, which will often be the case, then community and political action will be required” (Smith, 1998, p.83). This is echoed in Stevenson’s “intentional discomfort” and call for proximity in the communities that need visibility the most, and again in Margaret Wheatley’s essay Willing to Be Disturbed. She says, “We’re comfortable with our lives, and if we listened to anyone who raised questions, we’d have to get engaged in changing things. If we don’t listen, things can stay as they are and we won’t have to expend any energy. But most of us do see things in our life or in the world that we would like to

be different. If that’s true, we have to listen more, not less. And we have to be willing to move into the very uncomfortable place of uncertainty” (Wheatley, 2002, p.3).

It seems they all call for us to take notice, take part, and speak up, to deny the existing narrative in favor of one that benefits our entire society top to bottom. Smith puts it, “The solution is not for teachers and students to do better in the circumstances that are imposed on them but for the circumstances in which teaching and learning are supposed to take place to be changed” (Smith, 1998, p.69). It might seem like an insurmountable challenge, but Dr. Oakes advices we take heart in the data that shows that most Americans are uncomfortable with the existing inequities. Stevenson and Wheatley would push these Americans to not turn away from this discomfort, but to harness its power to bring progress. Any movement for change takes work, and discomfort, and pain, and even sacrifice. I’m thinking now of the Latino women Dr. Oakes mentioned whose marriages suffered when they took on the activist roles in their communities. I’m also thinking of Bryan Stevenson’s description of the Civil Rights Movement as a time of terror, and Frank Smith’s warning that “Teachers who try to change will often run counter to the established practices of their school and entrenched beliefs of their colleagues—and of parents and others outside school… Once again, teachers will need to have and to provide support. Introducing change is best done collaboratively” (Smith, 1998, p.92). So what can we small teachers do to impact our own communities, as asked during the Q&A portion of the Mays Lecture? “Get tenure and speak your mind!” says Dr. Jeannie Oakes.

Theory in Practice: The Juggle

As I look back over my very fast-paced month, one theme I observe over and over again is this feeling of having way too many balls up in the air. Or for drama's sake, let's make them butchers knives, because that feels like it better matches the stakes should one be fumbled. And I have been fumbling A LOT. 

Of the many things to keep track of are the personalized things for specific students. I have one student who manages to bring a backpack, homework folder, AND a lunch about as often as Halley's Comet orbits the Earth, and have written several times about my co-teacher's and my developing phobia of sending anything at all important home with him. (I know this sounds like something that should be easy to fix but there are a lot of factors at play with this student's situation that I won't get into here). We have tried to establish a system where he can get the work done in class time, but he really needs an adult to sit and work with him and one is not always available. On another front, we have a student who is working on shortening his "start time" and complying with directions the first time they are given. This is a student with a remarkable gift for making 20 minutes disappear without having made a single mark on his paper. This month, he has been given a special and wonderful folder developed for him by his Speech and Language Pathologist to target these goals, but it really requires one of us adults to remind him to bring it out and track what he needs to track in it, and more often than not, we have forgotten to do this until practically the end of the day. These situations, not to mention the needs of my 8 other students, leave me with a discouraging "not enough of me to go around" feeling. Serious hats off to all the teachers in classrooms of 20 and more. I have absolutely no clue how you juggle it all.  

While we're on the topic of my growing edges, here is one which I have rehashed on this very blog again and again. Basically it has to do with taking my exciting and varied ideas and converting them into a thought out action plan. All through my TIP chart this month I can see evidence of my 'big idea' brain getting excited with notions like making a group timeline or a class book of local plants and critters with their families and genomes. Then comes the part where I would actually have to break this down into the steps I would present to the students and my mind is a blank. Again and again I have reflected on and gotten feedback about the necessity of thinking through all of the steps before trying to launch ideas. It leaves me a bit frustrated with myself. It might be a little generous to call this edge "growing." Although, that being said, as I zoom my lens out and look at myself from the very beginning of this grad program, I have improved in this area a lot. I just have a lot further to go before I will be satisfied that I've made it.

Resources that have helped me a lot this past month have been Positive Discipline's Mistaken Goals chart and Pathways to the Common Core by Calkins et. al. The former is a very simplified chart that helps the adult or educator identify the motives behind behaviors that may be challenging him or her. I like it because it recognizes the teacher's response emotion and you can use the chart starting right there. For instance, when I find myself feeling irritated or annoyed, I can find that emotion on the chart and see what the child's "mistaken goal" is, which in that case is "I count only when I'm being noticed or getting special service. I'm only important when I'm keeping you busy with me" (Positive Discipline). Seeing the behavior in this light suddenly changes my whole perspective and enables me to feel more empathy and less at the mercy of my own emotional responses. It helps me remove myself from the scenario and refocus on how to actually help the child.

One of my highest highs from the month, which I was definitely NOT expecting, was Halloween week. Despite all my fears Halloween was NOT a disaster! Our kids did such a great job all day long managing the madness and I can’t think of one instance of a kid exploding or fighting or being inappropriate with their costumes. They were able to enjoy the costumes and the festivities while also remaining within the expected boundaries. I think I have to thank our regular Class Meetings for the success of the day. If we hadn’t taken the time to talk about the procedures and expectations of Halloween practically every Morning Meeting for weeks leading up, I don’t think things would have gone as smoothly. In the Morning Meeting book, Kriete does say that discussing what is to come (news and announcements) with students contributes “to students’ sense of safety and being cared for by letting them know that the teacher has prepared for the day and is ready for them” (Kriete, 2002, p.96). The topic of Halloween was brought up by students in our meetings so frequently that it kind of made my head spin, but ultimately I am glad I honored their voices and their need to talk about and verbally process this extremely exciting day for them.  

Speaking of highs, while I am not yet perfect, I am pretty proud of myself for the way I have learned to streamline the taking of anecdotal notes. Both in my TIP and in my notebook and in pre-made charts I have created, you can see my habit of taking notes and reflecting on individual students and events forming. I feel like this process is becoming more natural for me, and the more I do it, the more I see patterns emerge and understand how to streamline this process to serve my teaching needs. Reading Pathways influenced my confidence a lot as the authors helped me see how the anchor standards actually look in a classroom and what I should be looking for in my student's words to learn about their learning. This has helped me focus the types of notes I take on students, which used to be all over the place and are now less so. The process is becoming almost second nature to me, which is exciting all on its own. Perhaps that's some of the muscle memory coming into play as I learn the art of juggling.