Contact your reps on Common Core

[fubarjohnnyr]

In my years of experience I never saw a prepared lesson plan that was prepared for the teacher.

Truth - Bunch of crap written out to appease someone then filed away and forgotten in cabinet. Lesson plans are part of the wasted motions administration have you do in order to demonstrate a perceived competency. I never did them and when it came time to go over my evaluations I would defiantly point it out.

You are correct BUT the best or the worst argument against CC will be heard and have much more effect coming from parents. Many legislators and our current department of education have little interest in hearing what educators have to say. Parents will have to carry this torch.

Truth - Primarily because of this below.

The teachers who support CC seem to fit into 2 categories.
1. New, young, naïve, lib, and follow blindly.
2. Those inept few that don't have a clue how to teach and see CC as the easy way to improve student test scores which in turn makes the teacher look better and allow them to 'blow their own horn' and move up.

Although I would say most teachers, regardless of being young or seasoned, will follow blindly. Their nature isn't in bucking the system, being the contrary voice, or risking position by being a broken cog in the turning machine.


I would like to note that my fellow educators here in this forum share similar philosophies/persuasions, and while it seems we exist under a mammoth, oppressive foot of a broken system; we invariably instill the traits that made America the great nation she once was. Keep up the defiant fight my friends.

 

[crrcboatz]

Fuber I must say had you failed to turn in your lesson plans in a building I was responsible, after one conversation, you'd have gotten a letter from me. After the same defiance 2 times in a row you would have been on a needs to improve plan. Lesson plans ARE necessary. They are a tangible guideline for the teacher, the administrator and the public. WHAT goes into those lesson plans is what is important. The state dictating finite, proscribed learning is what most of us hate the most. A well organized teacher with goals and objectives that define the will of the local district is a responsibility every educator has. Teachers are paid by local funds NOT the state. Teachers are NOT state employees. NO state official hires them. In fact without the recommendation of the local superintendent, even a local board cannot hire a teacher!! Fuber we do agree on the of some of the other points you made though.

 

[Pokinfun]

I would agree, most teachers are parrots who will just repeat what they were told at their last conference, even if they do not understand the topic. Sometimes I find it funny to ask them a follow-up question to explain their assertion. We had a teacher give a presentation, where she said Common Core was designed developmentally inappropriate for early childhood education. Her next claim was how we need PreK to get children ready for the new standards, which is not needed if you remove Common Core.
She had absolutely no idea that PreK is part of Common Core, to remove children as early as possible from their parents home to teach them a nationalized value system, instead of their family's value system.

As far as the member who said something about the Second Amendment, by Common Core(C3) the Second Amendment is not really explained, merely how the Bill of Rights are Important. The student should read the Bill of Rights and explain what they mean. However, every Social Studies teacher is going to explain each Amendment. The problem is each teacher explains the Amendments how they view the right. Therefore, if they are pro firearms they explain it as a right, which keeps our nation free from becoming a dictatorship. If they view the Second Amendment as an individual right for self protection, then they say we have the right to have them in our homes. Lastly, if they are anti Second Amendment, then it is no different than the Third Amendment, which is outdated and no longer needed.

I think the biggest problem with C3 is a student can read our founding documents, decide what they mean, write about their interpretation, be completely wrong, and still get an A because they formatted the paper correctly.

Although I would say most teachers, regardless of being young or seasoned, will follow blindly. Their nature isn't in bucking the system, being the contrary voice, or risking position by being a broken cog in the turning machine.


I would like to note that my fellow educators here in this forum share similar philosophies/persuasions, and while it seems we exist under a mammoth, oppressive foot of a broken system; we invariably instill the traits that made America the great nation she once was. Keep up the defiant fight my friends.

 

[farmerbyron]

In my years of experience I never saw a prepared lesson plan that was prepared for the teacher. That was true even in the Texas encounter. Building principals typically were responsible for reading lesson plans on a weekly basis. They should have been looking for the "targets" that each teacher is to follow for the week. Those targets were prescribed by what we called "canned" curriculum. The targets were integrated into the teachers plans by activities, and expected learner outcomes they would list. They also must list the stated "expected learner outcomes" from the activities. If tests were part of it, they had to show relevance of the test to the targets. If students had done poorly on recent tests of the subject matter, they were expected to list "reteach" strategies to cover the material that students did not do well on. However they were expected to stay on a time frame to finish the curriculum in time for the "big one" as principals often called it. That is the biggest fallacy of all this testing. Teachers had to cover the material by testing time. There was little time to reteach material that students had been challenged with.
I equate this to building a car. Does the builder get the car out the door in order to keep up in assembly or do they redo part of the assembly because it was not done properly in the beginning?? Maybe like a car built on Friday stigma. I would never want my car built that way. With our children I would surely never want to push them through learning in order to satisfy a mandated timeline. For me I personally would rather they learn mastery skills with a basic degree proficiency of those skills as determined by a well qualified and effective teacher, than someone setting in an office at the state dept that says "getr done by testing time".

I was talking to my mother this past Sunday about this stuff (27ish years of elementary teaching experience). She expressed frustration that in the past, like 10-15 years ago, she was able to custom mold the curriculum for the kids and really shape the way they were learning. Now with all of these mandates and other documentation requirements and evaluations she feels like she is just throwing darts in the dark trying to teach the concepts laid out. The evaluations want to have a rigid schedule where on this certain day, they are supposed to teach x lesson and the next day is supposed to be y lesson just to keep the kids on track for the test date. But kids don't learn that way. A lesson one day may be very easy for a class and they should move on rather than bore the kids with something they already understand. Then the next lesson may be more difficult and the kids need more time on those days. These new requirements are taking away her flexibility to really focus on what the kids need to actually learn.

I wish I could express this as clearly as some of you educators but I can only tell this stuff second hand because teachers are in fear of their job. My mother is about to retire as she is burned out on all the BS she has had to deal with as of late. About 12 years ago she left OK for TX to teach. She talked about what a culture change it was being that TX had so much more BS requirements and testing. She missed OKs freedom in letting her teach. She taught there about 7-8 years and moved back but OK had adopted TX's education policies in the interim. It is really sad to me to see her lose her passion for teaching. I remember as a kid she was always coming up with new and different lessons and activities for her classes. Now it is all she can do just to keep up with the "mandates" and other responsibilities. CC is a bad deal all the way around and has got to be eliminated.

 

[Pokinfun]

I would agree, lesson plans are part of being an effect and reflective teacher. I do not like daily lesson plans because they change daily depending on the debate and discussion. I do not mind weekly or unit lesson plans because they keep me organized and they are posted for the students to know what to expect. However, I do not have to make out super detailed lesson plans, just an outline, with my alignment with Common Core, strategies to involve all learning styles, assessments, and required resources. By the way the different strategies is what makes the lesson fun for students.

Fuber I must say had you failed to turn in your lesson plans in a building I was responsible, after one conversation, you'd have gotten a letter from me. After the same defiance 2 times in a row you would have been on a needs to improve plan. Lesson plans ARE necessary. They are a tangible guideline for the teacher, the administrator and the public. WHAT goes into those lesson plans is what is important. The state dictating finite, prescribed learning is what most of us hate the most. A well organized teacher with goals and objectives that define the will of the local district is a responsibility every educator has. Teachers are paid by local funds NOT the state. Teachers are NOT state employees. NO state official hires them. In fact without the recommendation of the local superintendent, even a local board cannot hire a teacher!! Fuber we do agree on the of some of the other points you made though.

 

[crrcboatz]

I was talking to my mother this past Sunday about this stuff (27ish years of elementary teaching experience). She expressed frustration that in the past, like 10-15 years ago, she was able to custom mold the curriculum for the kids and really shape the way they were learning. Now with all of these mandates and other documentation requirements and evaluations she feels like she is just throwing darts in the dark trying to teach the concepts laid out. The evaluations want to have a rigid schedule where on this certain day, they are supposed to teach x lesson and the next day is supposed to be y lesson just to keep the kids on track for the test date. But kids don't learn that way. A lesson one day may be very easy for a class and they should move on rather than bore the kids with something they already understand. Then the next lesson may be more difficult and the kids need more time on those days. These new requirements are taking away her flexibility to really focus on what the kids need to actually learn.

I wish I could express this as clearly as some of you educators but I can only tell this stuff second hand because teachers are in fear of their job. My mother is about to retire as she is burned out on all the BS she has had to deal with as of late. About 12 years ago she left OK for TX to teach. She talked about what a culture change it was being that TX had so much more BS requirements and testing. She missed OKs freedom in letting her teach. She taught there about 7-8 years and moved back but OK had adopted TX's education policies in the interim. It is really sad to me to see her lose her passion for teaching. I remember as a kid she was always coming up with new and different lessons and activities for her classes. Now it is all she can do just to keep up with the "mandates" and other responsibilities. CC is a bad deal all the way around and has got to be eliminated.

Your mother sounds like a wonderful teacher/educator. Equally it is nice to see her child taking an interest in her profession. Most of all, you observing WHAT she did is a home run sir. Children of teachers/ educators that do as you did growing up, ie, knowing what your mom did, professed, etc, have a one up on education of their own children. You know the value of education because of the exemplary effort put forth by your mother. I'd be willing to bet you will instill that in your own children. WTG

 

[fubarjohnnyr]

Fuber I must say had you failed to turn in your lesson plans in a building I was responsible, after one conversation, you'd have gotten a letter from me. After the same defiance 2 times in a row you would have been on a needs to improve plan. Lesson plans ARE necessary. They are a tangible guideline for the teacher, the administrator and the public. WHAT goes into those lesson plans is what is important. The state dictating finite, proscribed learning is what most of us hate the most. A well organized teacher with goals and objectives that define the will of the local district is a responsibility every educator has. Teachers are paid by local funds NOT the state. Teachers are NOT state employees. NO state official hires them. In fact without the recommendation of the local superintendent, even a local board cannot hire a teacher!! Fuber we do agree on the of some of the other points you made though.

It wouldn't be the first time I had been written up for insubordination

I will concede lesson plans are useful for some teachers especially the inexperienced, and by all means use them if they prove beneficial to specific situations. My observations where if the admin forced weekly lesson plans, I saw far too many simply copy/paste superfluous material into a template and business went about as usual. This was turned in and somehow everyone felt better about their responsibilities. If a teacher can not articulate by action as you say " ...the goals and objectives that define the will of the local district..." through their curriculum and performance in the classroom, then there is a larger problem afoot without any relevance from a lesson plan.

Now if we were in the same building as teacher/administrator, you would still go shooting with me on the weekend wouldn't you?

 

[crrcboatz]

it wouldn't be the first time i had been written up for insubordination

i will concede lesson plans are useful for some teachers especially the inexperienced, and by all means use them if they prove beneficial to specific situations. My observations where if the admin forced weekly lesson plans, i saw far too many simply copy/paste superfluous material into a template and business went about as usual. This was turned in and somehow everyone felt better about their responsibilities. If a teacher can not articulate by action as you say " ...the goals and objectives that define the will of the local district..." through their curriculum and performance in the classroom, then there is a larger problem afoot without any relevance from a lesson plan.

Now if we were in the same building as teacher/administrator, you would still go shooting with me on the weekend wouldn't you?

absolutely!!! As long you didn't clean my clock every time!! lol Shooting and firearms is in no way relevant to what a person does for a living. We would have a common bond already. I have met some wonderful people who are also gun owners. I have only been into firearms for about 4 yrs. I have a lot to learn.

 

[rawhide]

Some food to feed the discussion.
http://pioneerinstitute.org/common-core/ video addressing the legality and other issues related to CC.

 

[streak]

My wife and I recently started reading about this as our little one will be starting school next year. This stuff I am hearing from other parents and reading is scary as a parent. I hope its not to late to get into the fight to keep this out of our schools.