This school year my district, as many across the country
are, is in full adoption and implementation of the new Common Core Standards
for ELA. We have taken a very systematic approach of breaking down the
standards and fitting them into the context of our school district. The groups
of teachers involved in this process are to be commended for the tireless work
done to prepare for this year. Specifically, we have really overhauled our
writing curriculum and how we teach writing to our students. Without going into
much detail, we essentially have a writing program based on the new standards.
This program breaks down the standards and has mini lessons, assessments and a
whole host of resources for instructing students in the process of writing. To
say it is intense would be an understatement and yet I recognize that everybody
is implementing common core standards a little bit differently.
One of the things that I am already seeing in this new
school year is my students are doing a whole lot more reading and writing. This
is especially true in the area of informational literature. This is largely due
to the new standards along with the level of intensity in content needing to be
taught. Most people think this is a good thing and to an extent I agree. I am
supremely confident my students will walk out of my classroom better readers
and writers then when they walked in. Due to the sheer amount of reading and
writing we are doing with our students there is little doubt this will happen.
However, I fear they will also learn to hate reading and
writing when they walk out of my classroom. The level of intense instruction
and sheer weight of the content standards is overwhelming to many teachers and
surely is to students. We are being flooded with reading and writing on a level
I have yet seen before. There are many sports analogies of young athletes
pushed too hard and burn out and end up developing a hatred for the sport. I
hope I am wrong, but I fear we might be doing the same thing to reading and
writing in our new Common Core aligned classrooms. I hope at the end of the
year I look back at this post and laugh, as my students will have made gains
while still keeping a passion for reading and writing. Yet at this point in
time I remain skeptical we might be pushing too hard and too fast.
As a parent, I realize the balance of pushing my kids while
keeping their passions alive. If you have a child being pushed too hard by a
parent, it is pretty standard they will often grow to resent whatever you are
pushing them towards primarily due to the pressure applied by an adult. Is
learning any different? I worry we are focused so much on pushing kids forward
we are losing the balance and burning kids out. Can we find a middle ground
where kids will progress with their learning while not hating learning in the
process?
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