Teaching Strategies For Teachers And Teachers

Today, many states and schools systems are adopting a standards based education system. In fact, according to Common Core Standards Initiative (2014), forty-three states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) have adopted the Common Core State Standards. The premise is that if all critical subject areas follow a standard from state to state, that all students will receive the same and fair education. The Vermont State Board of Education saw a need and a value in implementing such a system. As such, the Board created a strategic plan to implement a framework of standards that would eventually adopt the common core standards. This paper will discuss the strategic plan created by the Vermont Board of Education and evaluate whether or not the goals of the plan were met through the Framework of Standards.

Adopted by forty-two out states in 2010, the Common Core State Standard Initiative strives to provide an educational structure which details what English language arts and mathematics should be taught from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The initiative is the federal government’s attempt to ensure all students who graduate from high school are adequately prepared to enter a two or four year college or the workforce. Despite their intentions, the Common Core has caused much controversy in the education community. The thought behind Common Core is very valid and has the potential to help students, however changes must be made to unrealistic standards and wordy statements. Common Core must first be rewritten so that the language is clear and can be easily understood by the general public. Next ask experts on childhood development and elementary school teachers to review the standards and rewrite standards they see as unneeded or irrelevant as well as unrealistic.

The Leadership Team will then need to meet with all literacy, math, and CTE teachers to develop skills for lesson planning that is aligned to the curriculum. If the curriculum is not aligned the integration will not be successful. Teachers must be willing to collaborate with one another to stay on track with the lesson plans. Curriculum maps serve as an effective tool to ensure teachers are incorporating academic standards in the lesson plans and how often they are used (Grams, Hebert-Giffin, 2011).

Our parish has seen a drop in the math scores with the new PARCC test. With this weakness being of the utmost importance, a responsible district leader, should engage in professional practice by ensuring that their administrators and teachers are working as a team to improve student achievement. Everyone should work together in order to promote positive change concerning this districts math scores. Observations should be conducted by the administrators and by district level supervisors in order to find any strength and weaknesses that may need to be addressed. ISLLC standard 2, states that the school administrator should sustain an instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth. In order to do this, everyone on the team must be open to diversity and innovation, which includes the constructive criticism from the Danielson Rubric used during observations, and adoption of new curriculums. The district level supervisors have to provide professional development for all teachers in order to implement a new curriculum

The design is a survey method sent via email to parents of young children and preschool teachers. The type of design that has been chosen for this research is qualitative research with a survey method that has been created for teachers and parents. The qualitative design is a way to get better understanding of the reasons, opinions, and to motivate people. There are two different surveys that were administered one is going to be for parents and the other one is going to be for teachers of young children. Each survey had eight to ten questions on it and the responses were confidential. Please see appendix for a sample of the two surveys. The parents and teachers is appropriate because the people that are being asked have seen students or children’s leadership styles and knowledge first hand. These are the people that will know what needs to be included in the upcoming and updated common core state standards.

The leadership team discussed specific outcomes that they want accomplish, taking into consideration the issues they want to address. After careful deliberation, they decided that they wanted to create a process of implementation with a feedback loop in which teachers and staff discuss each lesson. Documentation would be written down of what worked and what did not work and modifications could be done for the upcoming lessons. This could be accomplished by setting time for staff to meet and discuss lesson implementation, areas of strength and weakness. After discussion the staff would discuss and change the lesson plans to meet the needs of classroom. By crating this process of implementation staff can course correct

Launched in 2009, the Common Core state standards have done nothing to help students progress their learning abilities, and have even harmed their ability to be educated. With Common Core, teachers must follow strict guidelines on what to teach and how to teach it, but this one-size-fits-all ideal does not apply to the real world. Former teacher, Susan Rakow,

The Common Core State Standards are a state attempt to create strong educational standards. The standard are created to ensure that students in the country are learning and grasping the information that are given in the classrooms for them to succeed academically. The Common Core plan included governors and education commissioners form forty-eight states and the District of Columbia. They wanted to make sure the standards are relevant, logical and sequential. For content all subjects must have critical-thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills. Some positive aspects of this policy is that it prepares our students for a competitive global jobs. It can provide national connections in education. Designed to shape the best standards so that all states will be taking a step ahead in education. These standards had been created after extensive research by professional educators for excellence in education. The CCS focus on what students expectations of learning, and achievements. Educators do not need to worry that the standards will make their jobs look redundant because they are in charge of creating lessons to teach their students the content and skills that the CCS demands. The teachers do not feel that the standards are one-size-fits-all. Some negative aspects of the policy are that is a program created by solely the government. The CCS is a program put together on idyllic situations in education by individuals who have subsidy and students ahead of the learning

In the article, “Six Ways the Common Core Is Good For Students”, news company, Nea Today, reports that the new Common Core standards may present a new hope for teachers and educators in the classroom. Some of these ideas include restoring creativity in the classroom, increasing collaboration, and providing an equal platform for students to feel comfortable in their learning environment. The article provides multiple ways that Common Core could help improve the public education system.

The Common Core curriculum is intended to educate pupils for the increasingly demanding world that we exist in today. Common Core State Standards establish precise, uniform guidelines for what every school child should know and be able to do from kindergarten through 12th grade creating benchmarks for reading and math, replacing education goals that varied drastically from state to state. These new standards focus on preparing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills that are essential to be successful after high school, and gives teachers a means to evaluate a student’s development throughout the academic

The book Inquiring into the Common Core by Nancy Fitchman Dana, Jamey Bolton Burns, and Rachel M. Wolkenhauer focuses on what Common Core is. This is a book that you can read that helps with the ideas and guidance for teachers, principals, and administrators in implementing the Common Core State Standards. Inquiring into the Common Core is an essential resource that offers teachers an inquiry based professional development model for achieving greater understanding of the standards, then the desired outcomes will be determined. “The CCSS values the voices of teachers, as teachers were and continue to be involved in their development” (Dana, Burns, & Wolkenhauer, pg.2). The Common Core is clear about what to teach but it is up to the teachers on how they teach it.

When Common Core was put into full effect, teachers were unprepared and were not given the professional development that was needed to effectively implement these standards. As Sarah Boslaugh says in her article, “the new standards are more demanding than those already in place in many school systems and teachers and administrators do not have enough time to prepare for their implementation, which would result in widespread failure among students”(Boslaugh, 2015, para.1). Common Core’s standards were poorly implemented and it is causing the system to fail. Sue Pimentel, a founding partner of the nonprofit Student Achievement Partners and lead writer of the Common Core State Standards for ELA and literacy states, “Teachers aren't being given enough time to work together to develop the materials and teaching techniques that will be necessary to effectively implement the Common Core, nor are they being given enough time to observe and critique each other's teaching” (qtd. in Tucker, 2014, para.3). Sue Pimentel is saying that teachers are not properly trained to teach their students the Common Core curriculum, so it is illogical to have these standards be implemented. Since teachers are now required to follow a step-by-step format to teach, along with a set of required criteria to be met, the classroom has completely changed both inside and out. A majority of schools are not even attempting to help teachers with this change. “Adapting to change: teacher perceptions of implementing the common core state standards” is an article written by Brooke Burks. This article discusses how teachers are coping with this rapid change of curriculum. As the article says, “fewer than fifty percent of school districts planned professional development reared towards implementing and aligning Common Core standards” (Burks, 2012, p.4). Teachers are in need of any

Brooke Burks amongst other from Auburn University at Montgomery, completed a survey that looked at secondary teachers perceptions of their preparedness to implement the Common Core State standards. In addition, the survey included information regarding the teachers’ feelings on the training they have or have not received related to implementing the Common Core standards in their classroom. As we know, there are many conflicting views amongst teacher, parents, and anyone involved in the educational field. However, the Common Core standards must still be implemented. The article quoted Sawchuk, who discovered that fewer than fifty percent of school districts planned professional development centered on implementing and aligning Common Core standards in 2012. In other words, survey showed a significant percentage of school districts who do not plan professional development conferences, but are still expected to implement the standards in their classroom. Planned professional development can go a long way for teachers we are expected to incorporate the new Common Core standards. These professional development training can assist teachers in the transition and answer potential questions teacher have about the new curriculum. Teachers are supposed to guide their students and follow guidelines outlined on lesson plans. The standards essentially creates the lesson plan, because all aspects of the lesson follow the standard. If there isn’t a solid foundation on how to implement

Think about a time you may have taken or passed a test, then questioned what you really learned versus what you just memorized for the good grade? In John Taylor Gatto’s “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” he says “We are not taught to learn, we are taught to remember.” (Gatto, pg.) . As a teen at seventeen years old, I completely agree, as would many other teens I am surrounded by in high school. We have all become professionals in remembering the answers, but in the end not taking any actual, solid knowledge of the teaching. It is not only as teenagers, even adults and elementary students have also picked it up and those elementary students will carry it into adulthood. It is not an age habit, it is society as a whole who choose to remember the instruction of the concept instead of learning, which I too am guilty of.

Describe your pet (name and what kind of pet it is). If you don’t have one, what kind do you wish you had? (think-pair-share) – Display animals on the board to get students thinking.