My first grade teacher was responsible for allowing me the gift of math in my life.
I must have been having problems understanding the concept of addition and subtraction because I remember one day when the classroom was empty she had me stop by her desk. In her hand she had 9 popsicle sticks. She then took two popsicles out of the stack and put them in her drawer. How many popsicles sticks did she now hold in her hands?
I wasn’t too sure on how many popsicle sticks were now in here hands, but I was darn sure that I didn’t want anyone taking any popsicles away from me. After that math was easy.
I see the introduction of CC as an admission that the entire complex that is Public Education has failed.
I also think they see this as the most effective way out of the mess they have created.
Common Core won’t fly in the wealthy suburbs. The kids are too smart and the parents will fight back.
The reason the kids are smarter is because their parents are substantially more engaged in every aspect of their kids lives.
It’s the difference between teaching to encourage learning or teaching to the lowest common denominator.
I’ve had experience teaching adults and had to constantly deal with classrooms in which half the class was saying slow down while the other half was saying speed up.
I had many discussions with other Instructors about “who” should I teach too. My contention was to teach to the top of the class. There were business reasons for this. While many of my counter-parts thought it best to teach to the bottom. I never wanted to lose half my class by dumbing down the content and always found a way to engage everybody.
I was never “taught” how to teach. I fell into this role and have been told that I’m a “Natural Teacher”.
When a student doesn’t “get” something, you need to get creative. You can see it in their body language. A good teacher sees this and can stop and begin to rephrase the concept in a way that will make sense to the student.
What I see is a tremendous amount of indifference from both the students and the teachers in mostly urban schools.
There have been reports over the years of our Military having to deal with teaching new recruits some of the most basic skills that would make your head spin.
I may be wrong here but I think that CC is trying to “Institutionalize” or “Structure” teaching as a system. This may come from our experience in our Military but has been adopted to, and been destroyed by bureaucrats within the system.