Final Reflection

Megan may have chosen this semester’s class theme to be “education”, but at some point—for me, at least—the class theme turned into “revision.” Revision of how I felt about English classes in general, given my sordid history, revision of what I knew to be my writing process, and revision of what I believed my own voice to have become as a result of my conditioned aversion to writing. Since all discussion of revision starts with something to be revised, I’ll start at the beginning and try to show everyone how I’ve revised both my writing “vision” and my writing “voice” over the course of this semester.

I began class a little behind, so, naturally, I was already a little nervous. English class and I go way back and it’s not always been good. In fact, I’d purposely avoided taking this class until there was no other alternative; my extreme anxiety over past indiscretions was overwhelming enough to make me overextend my stay at UNCC. And our first big assignment was to consider our writing history. Even thinking of it now makes me want to panic! Still, I was interested in getting the truth out there, because I figured if people could at least see me as an example of what not to do, I might help someone to keep from repeating my mistakes. I also took what Megan seemed to be saying to heart: all my writing experiences—good and bad—have made me the writer I am. I wrote in my daybook about several of my writing and schooling experiences and tried to balance the good with the bad.

Then, I tried to reflect on what makes me the reluctant writer, and I tried to give an accurate, albeit uncomfortably honest portrayal of what I’ve experienced with writing. Later, I reflected on what I thought about my experiences and realized that, even though I made huge mistakes in writing, I also had great teachers and an awesome mom that guided me nonetheless towards at least a modicum of academic achievement. This helped me to see that I wasn’t really a completely lost cause as a writer, for I didn’t write a really horrible Writing History Response. I just wrote a therapeutic one and tried, once again, to forgive myself. Having made myself both vulnerable and visible, it was time to begin working on how I was going to survive the semester and do all the other assignments, most of which resembled regular academic work.

 Luckily for me, the class theme really intrigued me. With a mother and several friends being teachers, I’ve been surrounded by educators for, well, ever! This meant that I had a great deal to offer to the class as far as experience and opinion, being fascinated by all the differing opinions in class regarding creativity. I responded to the Friere quote about creativity and was very intrigued to see just how many differing opinions we had in class regarding whether schools were indeed quashing creativity by “teaching to the test.”

After reading and responding to Kaplan’s essay, I began to think about the good skills I gleaned from my early education, critical thinking skills being at the top of my list. I couldn’t help but think that my education was better than some others have received, due to my early love of reading, my mother’s influence and a wealth of good teachers. Though I would say I attended a middle-class elementary, middle and high school according to Anyon, I definitely received closer to an affluent professional level education. So, I asked myself: what was different between then and now? Looking back, I think my response to the “Blame Game” comic says it all.

I believed I had a responsibility to myself to value writing and education, whereas now, I’m not so sure current students would feel the same. After talking about this in class, I believe that everyone-- parents, teachers, and students—has a role to play in education. From talking to my mom and my teacher friends, I knew this to be more important than ever with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards—with critical thinking being the most important new emphasis to come out of the paradigm shift to Common Core.

So how can you teach students to think critically? I had no idea when I began the class, but writing the Exploratory Essay really helped me to understand that teaching methods played a huge role in how critical thinking might be taught. I also learned that I needed to revise my ideas about not planning my writing, because I found that the only way I could make sense of the Exploratory Essay was to do an extensive outline of the piece before writing it. I knew that Megan was testing all our limits with such a different kind of assignment, so I had to take some risks of my own and try something new, like planning, in order to properly complete the assignment. Moving out of my comfort zone with planning and procrastination really helped me write a better paper, and I think this outline also helped my inquiry question take early shape because of my choice to focus on teaching methods and critical thinking as my EE thesis.

From there, I began to listen around for hot-button issues in education so that I could find a suitable inquiry topic to research within my field of interest. Over lunch with a friend, I learned about Common Core and the issues associated with implementing it in North Carolina math classrooms. This led directly to my research proposal and, after being further narrowed down, became the question I asked of myself and others: how do you teach teachers to teach an old subject like Math in a completely new way? Can it even be done? After researching the subject and talking to my friend some more about the concept of professional development, I learned that critical thinking and Common Core were one and the same. I also learned that teachers were being taught in similar and different ways and resources were just now becoming available for the Common Core’s approaching implementation. Given the importance of the nationwide Common Core adoption and the emphasis placed on developing critical thinking skills, I knew I had a topic in which I might truly immerse myself. In this moment, I began to change the way I felt about my chances to perform well in this class; I had a captivating topic of inquiry and I believed I could write about it.

I will readily admit that, though helpful to my inquiry process, I found the Annotated Bibliography to be the most challenging piece of writing I did for the class, probably because of my documented anxiety with citations. Again I had to revise the way I approached this assignment, taking care to get the citations just right, and to take care not to add my first-person opinions to the analysis. Once again, planning and outlining helped me a great deal with this paper, and I got a lot out of the Active Reading activities we did in class. This and some good, old-fashioned perseverance eventually helped me to revise the majority of my mistakes on the rough draft and submit a fairly decent second draft, even with “Mom-workshopping” behind me!

 With the entire process leading up to the Joining the Conversation pieces, I was probably the most confident of my inquiry group in regards to this assignment. I know I was certainly thrilled to write the Step #1 Dialogue because it allowed me to indulge in a little creativity and fun, while sticking to the facts in my research. I believe the confidence I received from my group during workshopping helped me make the decision to revise Step #1 rather than Step #2 for my inquiry paper. I wanted to put a little bit of my personality and humor—what I knew to be a skill from my “good writer” days—into the class at some point. I believe I made my inquiry topic more engaging by including the “voices” of my sources in the paper and by making my friend Ms. Teresa Beck larger than life, and my decision to revise the stage directions and slang for my characters was some of the best advice I received from my inquiry group.

All in all, I believe it has been quite a journey from the awkwardly honest confession of my Writing History to the fun, engaging voices of my sources in the Step #3 Inquiry paper. I learned the value of revision, planning, and drafting, though I still need to work on time management and procrastination. I guess I can’t fix everything at once. This class experience has allowed me to practice writing way more than I wanted to, and yet, in the end, I actually found myself eager to write and have my writing read. I believe at some point, I remembered I liked writing and that I could actually make it happen; I am grateful to everyone in the class for being with me on this journey of re-vision and (in a way) rebirth.

Joining the Conversation Step #3 Final Draft

JTC Step 3.docx

Annotated Bibliography Final Draft

Annotated Bibliography.docx

Exploratory Essay Final Draft

Exploratory Essay Second draft.docx

Writing History Response Final Draft

Writing History Response.docx

Letter to Sydney, my CMS Elementary Student

Step #3 Self-Assessment Reflection

1.  My goal for this paper was to be as creative as possible and adhere to the suggestions I got in my workshopping of Step #1 in order to revise that step into Step #3.  I think I did a decent job of editing out some extraneous detail and making the humor and slang work towards a more realistic dialogue.  I think I did a good job, though the page count went up by over 50% from Step #1 to Step #3. Yikes!

2.  I developed this paper by looking back at the suggestions I got from my inquiry group for Step #1 Dialogue and making all the changes they suggested save one: I wasn't able to shorten my paper from 11 pages.  Instead the finished product sits at 17 pages.  I really appreciated the quality time my inquiry group put in on my workshop.  I got some great feedback and was able to make this dialogue really speak to the reader.  After workshopping, my dialogue was able to become a real play!

3.  I saw myself taking bigger risks by choosing to revise the Step #1 Dialogue as opposed to my Step #2 Academic Work.  I really like the setting of my PTA meeting in Step #1.  I feel it was a good choice because that kind of atmosphere lends itself to polite disagreement and democracy while still feeling organized and realistic.  I really appreciated the suggestions from my group to add more stage directions and slang to make the dialogue more like a real play.  I think they gave me good suggestions about what kind of voice each character would talk in, so I was able to be more playful than I might have dared, had they not given me the encouragement.

4.  Of course, my interviewee, Teresa Beck, contributed loads to my paper's success. Teresa is such a character that all I had to do was write down her responses verbatim and add some more jokes and cute stuff.  Beck really brings in the authentic perspective of the teacher on the front lines, so I think her character makes some great points that none of my sources pointed out.  She's an invaluable resource, not to mention an incredible friend!

5.  I think I learned that I am really more drawn to humorous, creative styles of writing as opposed to the cold, dry, academic style of the traditional research paper.  I know a lot of people found the Step #1 Dialogue challenging, but I loved it and clearly had a lot to say in this style of writing.  I really thought this was a great way to approach the "conversation" Megan's always talking about;  I had a very long conversation to record and I hope I did a faithful job.  I learned from others that some writers are willing to take risks and some simply can't bear to do it.  I think this paper represents the biggest writing risk I've taken this semester, but, good grade or bad, I really had fun writing it!

6.  The hardest part of writing this paper was attempting to keep it short and succinct.  Not surprising to ANYONE, I had a lot to say on a big topic of interest to education right now, and I hope I did the inquiry justice in that ridiculous length.  I think I took risks with using humor and silliness to make my characters believable.  There's a very good chance I may have gone too far and given them viewpoints they didn't actually have. but I really did try to give my sources a voice that reflected their biases (where present) and general credibility without compromising the fun inherent in such an assignment.

7.  I am most proud of the way I was able to incorporate the stage directions and slang my group members suggested I add in order to make my dialogue more real, more like a play.  I think I had already said a lot, and I thought it interesting that they asked me to add stuff in and only omit things I really could do without.  Overall, I think I made a good choice to revise this Step as opposed to the other; I really tried hard on this one!

8.  I still think I could stand to omit bits of dialogue that may have been redundant or pointless.  I hesitated to do that because real people say redundant, pointless things quite often; even this may have given me some of the authenticity I was looking for.  I did make other improvements at the suggestion of my group, but the length was non-negotiable, really.  If I'm being honest, I knew from the start that it was going to be long, both due to my enthusiasm for this style of writing and my natural tendency to be verbose.

9.  Most of my brainstorming had to do with coming up with the perfect setting that would have brought all my sources together in one spot to talk to one another.  Once I settled on a PTA meeting in a middle school, I just sat down and started writing.  I don't know that I've ever typed faster!  It may have taken me three hours to type around 11 pages, so I guess I was excited. Just a teeny bit!  After I finished, I spot checked it for grammar errors and then workshopped with my group.  I took their suggestions and modified my paper where they told me to.  I then went back and hunted down citations and page numbers in the attempt to make the citations proper.  I feel I still may be having trouble with doing that properly.  Then I cleaned up some of the prose and created a Works Cited page.  Finally I submitted it with the best of intentions and tried not to think about being graded down because I wrote too much!!

Step #3: Inquiry Project

Professional Development and its Effect on Implementation of Common Core State Standards in Mathematics: A Dialogue

Setting:  PTA meeting, W.C. Friday Middle School Gymnasium, Dallas, NC

Characters:

·         Meredith Brannon (concerned parent)

·         Teresa Beck (8^th grade math teacher)

·         Stephen Sawchuk (assistant editor, Education Week magazine)

·         Marilyn Burns (founder, Math Solutions professional development service)

·         Kim Anderson (researcher, Regional Educational Laboratory at UNC Greensboro)

·         Cristina Marks, (State Policy and Implementation Support, Achieve, Inc.)

·         John Kendall (author of Understanding Common Core State Standards)

·         Other concerned parents and teachers

(Meredith bangs gavel on podium; murmurs in crowd cease. Meredith turns on wireless microphone)

Meredith:  Can everyone hear me?

Parent audience: Yeah. Yes.

Meredith: Aww-right, good. Ladies and gentlemen, let me first thank each and every one of you for attending this special meeting of the W.C. Friday Parent-Teacher Association.  After last month’s very vocal meeting regarding the Common Core curriculum being taught next year at Friday, I decided to invite several experts to come out and talk to us about the plans to make the Common Core work in the Math Department. 

I’ve also compiled a list of questions that I wanna ask these experts at some point—some questions are my own, others I got via email from other parents. I’d like to ask that everyone please be respectful and listen to the experts as they talk. Don’t interrupt—we don’t let the students talk while the teachers do, so neither should y’all! 

So first, I’d like to welcome Mr. John Kendall, who’s fixin’ to give us a short overview of the Common Core State Standards and what they mean for middle schools like W. C. Friday. Mr. Kendall?

(Meredith sits down in a chair near stage left. Kendall stands up and walks to the podium.)

Kendall:  Thanks for having me here today, Ms. Brannon, and thank you all for coming out to listen.  I understand a lot of parents and even teachers are having trouble understanding the idea of the Common Core State Standards.  So let me try to explain.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an effort led by states like North Carolina to set up a shared set of expectations for what students in all grades, kindergarten through 12^th, will be expected to learn and know in English and Math classes.  This set of expectations was coordinated through two organizations: the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers (Kendall 1).  These expectations were released to the state education agencies in June 2010 and North Carolina was one of the first states to adopt them for future implementation. 

The main benefit to adopting these standards are that they are nationwide—schools from coast to coast will be teaching all students in the same ways using very similar resources and will assess their students’ performance using the same examinations (Kendall 1).  This will give all US students higher level of education that will prepare them for college. It will also allow teachers to access a great deal of professional tools developed so as to effectively teach to the Common Core.  Implementing these Standards requires a massive amount of work and preparation on the part of teachers, parents, administrators, and state agencies, but this will be worth it when the Common Core curriculum produces high school graduates on the level with those in top performing nations like Japan and Finland.

Meredith:  Aww-right, thank you for that introduction, Mr. Kendall.  So can you tell me what’s so different about the Common Core standards when you compare ‘em to the old educational standards in North Carolina, particularly for math?

Kendall: Sure, Ms. Brannon.  The Common Core standards dictate that math curricula across the grade levels will change and be spread out to a larger extent than it is now. Several math concepts will be introduced to students earlier in their careers compared with the curriculum based on traditional standards. For example, take the Pythagorean Theorem.  Students will be introduced to it in 6^th grade and by 8^th grade will prove it, whereas the current standards say it shouldn’t be introduced until 7^th grade (Kendall 25).  Common Core calls for a step-wise approach, where students will build a foundation in early grades and continue to expand their base of knowledge with analysis of known concepts and integration of these old facts with new ideas (Kendall 24).

(Beck raises her hand forcefully from her seat on stage.)

Meredith: Thanks, Mr. Kendall. (Meredith pauses, notices Beck’s raised hand) Yes, Ms. Beck. You had a question?

(Beck stands up and looks at Meredith.)

Beck: You bet I do, Meredith.  (Turns to Kendall) Mr. Kendall, can you tell me where this curriculum design came from? How do we know it’ll work?

Kendall: Hmm, I’d better let Ms. Marks answer that. (Turns to look at Marks) With me here today is Cristina Marks from Achieve, Incorporated.  Achieve is one of the organizations that worked with the governors and school officers to develop the Common Core Standards.  She knows more about this than anyone. Cristina?

(Anderson sits down. Marks stands up and walks to stand behind podium.)

Marks: Thanks, John.  Well, Ms. Beck, the answer to your questions is simple: Japan.  We at Achieve have studied educational systems in countries like Japan who continually turn out the highest performing students based on international standardized tests (Achieve, Inc. 1).  The Japanese Course of Study was a very important starting point for the development of Common Core (Achieve, Inc. 2).  We basically took the Japanese standards and improved them. Basically, we made them more specific, more detailed, and more organized.  We did this in the hope that educating our students to better standards will make them better students, just like the ones in Japan (Achieve, Inc. 3).

Meredith: Thank you, Ms. Marks.  So with more rigorous standards developed and adopted, what’s the plan for makin’ ‘em work in North Carolina math classes? You wanna take this one, Ms. Anderson?

(Marks returns to her seat as Anderson rises and goes to stand behind the podium.)

Anderson: Sure, Ms. Brannon.  Hey, y’all, I’m Kim Anderson, and I work at the Regional Educational Laboratory at UNC Greensboro studying educational policy.  I helped compile and publish a report on how North Carolina has studied, adopted, and implemented Common Core State Standards.  

So we adopted ‘em here for K-12 Math and English halfway through 2010. The State Department of Public Instruction in Raleigh began workin’ on resources and professional development courses for teachers, the plan bein’ to have this info given out to teachers in a couple different ways: webinars, TV broadcasts to the outlying districts, and face-to-face instruction through what we call Professional Learning Communities.  Teachers will be attending workshops and return to their schools prepared to function as trainers to other teachers on the Common Core standards and teaching methods they can use to make the new standards work (Regional Educational Laboratory, et al. 13). 

Ms. Beck, right? (Anderson catches Beck’s eye, both nod.) Ms. Beck will be attending the Common Core Summer Institute at Meredith College in June to become the Professional Learning Community coordinator for the Math Department here at W.C. Friday.  Then she’ll pass that knowledge right on over to the other teachers.  Also, all the teachers’ll have access to the Math Wiki page developed by the Department of Education. Powerpoints, SmartBoard lessons and worksheets are bein’ uploaded there right now for teachers to use in class. Later on, the State Department will ask the teachers to give ‘em some feedback so that the tools can be tweaked and made more useful for both teachers and students.

Meredith: Thanks, Ms. Anderson. I had an email question you might be willing to answer. (Reads from papers in her hand) So, with all these new standards in place, what’s in store for students with End-of-Grade and End-of-Course tests?

Anderson: Well, the assessments are being developed and field tested even as we speak. North Carolina officials elected to be a part of a federally-funded assessment consortium called SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (Regional Educational Laboratory, et al. 4).  Alabama and South Carolina have also hooked up with SMARTER.  This consortium has worked to develop examinations and teacher assessments that are aligned to the Common Core Standards and the results of testing these new assessments will be reviewed at the end of the school year.  Then the State Department of Public Instruction and SMARTER will set up the first set of achievement standards based on the field test results and continue to work on changing policies and assessments before the 2014-2015 school year starts (Regional Educational Laboratory, et al. 13). In that year, students and teachers will be assessed based on Common Core standards for the first time and we’ll see for sure how we did with implementing the new standards.

Ms. Beck: (standing) And just how’re we gonna know what to teach if we’re supposed to teach so kids can pass a test…but those tests haven’t even been written yet?! (sits down hard in chair)

Meredith: Oh, good question, Ms. Beck. So what’s the main thing you think teachers will have to change in their math classes if they and their students are gonna be ready for Common Core assessments?

Burns:  (Stands up quickly) Ooh, ooh, I’ll answer that!

(Anderson nods at Burns and quickly sits down. Burns hurries to the podium and smiles brightly at the audience.)

Burns: I’m Marilyn Burns, and way back in the Dark Ages I wrote a book called I Hate Mathematics. For those of you young folks, the Dark Ages means the seventies! (Giggles) So now I run a professional development service called Math Solutions that helps teachers teach mathematics so that the students will NOT hate it! I think the Common Core Math standards are very well-designed because they are structured in two parts: Practice Standards and Content Standards (Burns 43).  Content Standards are different for each grade and build upon one another to form a solid mathematics education, but consistent throughout the grade levels are the Practice Standards.  These are golden, folks, and quite the game-changers. They outline eight ways where we want students to engage with the math they’re learning (Burns 43).  Now, not all eight standards will come into play with every math lesson, but we at Math Solutions recognize that each Math Practice Standard is important if a teacher wants to get his or her students ready for these new tests (Burns 44).

Meredith: Thanks, Ms. Burns.  You sound very passionate about Math in general.  Wish I’d had more math teachers like you in school. Now how do you propose teachers start to help their students and implement these Common Core Math Standards?

Burns:  Well, Meredith, I think the first step you have to take is to learn about each student’s numerical reasoning skills (Burns 44). What I mean by that is how they go about solving problems using the calculator in their heads and not the ones with all the Justin Bieber stickers stuck all over them! (Laughs)

As math teachers, we traditionally spend very little time teaching kids how to solve problems in their heads. Instead we devote the large amount of class time to crunching numbers with pencils and paper (Burns 44).  But the Common Core tests are going to require kids to use those heads and figure out not just the answer, but more.  The right answer on new tests will require kids to explain just how they arrived at that right answer, too. It’s gonna mean bringing a bit of English into the Math class, ‘cause kids’ll have to understand the concept of multiplication as well as knowing their times tables (Burns 44). And it also means spending more time teaching kids how to explain their reasoning strategies--

Beck: (Interrupting loudly) But that’s not exactly easy! Kids today think the right answer is the only thing that matters. Once they’ve got the right one, they’re done!  How do you go about figuring out how kids reason out problems, and once you do, how do you make them better at it? I don’t want to just show them tips and tricks they’ll just memorize and maybe even forget before the test!

Burns:  Another very good question, Ms. Beck.  (Smiles over at Beck) You know, I really like your passion! I’ve actually developed this little test called the Math Reasoning Inventory, or MRI, that can help with that.

(Audience breaks out into confused whispers.)

Burns: Don’t worry! No electromagnets here, just video cameras.  Okay, so we know kids read a prompt on a writing test and respond to it in different ways—math’s no different than that, really (Burns 45).  There’re as many different reasoning styles out there as Harlem Shake videos! So we have to teach ‘em the basics if they’re gonna pass these new Common Core tests…and we have to do it fast!  So with help from some other teachers and educational researchers, I observed how students explained how they solved math problems. They may have all crunched the same numbers and gotten the same right answer, but several of them struggled when I asked them to me how they arrived at that answer without the pencil and paper to help them out.  So, using the information I got from these students’ responses, I developed the MRI to assess a student’s numerical proficiency and mathematical reasoning skills as defined by the Common Core standards.  Questions on the MRI are based on Math concepts through the 6^th grade for three topics—whole numbers, decimals, and fractions.  The test works like this: each student takes a math test with questions from one of the topics I mentioned before and then has a pow-wow with the teacher to explain how they got figured out the right answers.  The teacher then analyzes the student’s responses and test answers to determine where they may be lacking in certain skills.  With these results, the teacher can make a plan for their improvement using tracking tools and lesson plans on the MRI website (Burns 46).  Good news, too--It’s totally free and available any time to any teacher who wants to use it!

Meredith: Sounds like a pretty useful resource, Ms. Burns. Thanks for sharing that with us today. (Burns returns to her seat on stage.) Aww-right, are there any more questions for the experts from the audience?

(Sawchuk raises his hand and stands.)

Meredith:  Mr. Sawchuk?

Sawchuk:  (Lowers hand) Thanks, Meredith.  I’m a parent of two, and I happen to write for Education Week Magazine.  I have been researching Common Core for a while now and I am concerned because I’m not hearing great things from educational researchers out there.  A bunch of them claim that Common Core is just another fad system that will fade out in a few years (Sawchuk 16).  What do you folks say to that?

Burns: (approaches the podium) Well, you know, I think we’ve all jumped onto a bandwagon of change sometime in our educational careers only to see it abandoned on the roadside for the next shiny new idea.  The difference here is that the Common Core is nationwide—and it’s gonna take a lot of time and money to see it work. That said, I don’t think the government would’ve granted funds to an initiative like this one unless they thought it was necessary and had even the smallest chance of success in closing the achievement gap.  I, for one, believe this to be a step in the right direction for improving math education on a large scale (Burns 43).  That’s why I’m so excited and so ready to help Common Core work!

Meredith: Anyone else care to weigh in on that?

Burns sits down as Anderson approaches the podium.)

Anderson: I want you you to know that I totally get where you’re coming from, Mr. Sawchuk.  And Marilyn is right—we have seen a lot of good ideas come and go.  What’s different here is that it’s a nationwide plan and the implications are just as big as our country is.  We have to look at the benefits of adopting such a uniform set of standards, and avoiding the tendency to pick and choose which standards we think we can implement (Regional Educational Laboratory, et al. 3).  With No Child Left Behind, many states lowered the bar on student achievement to avoid any penalties, the result being that the US has consistently underperformed compared with other industrialized countries on standardized tests.  Other sets of standards have been developed and abandoned so quickly that support and professional development seemed pointless to most state agencies.  This time, the states are approaching it differently. Officials in North Carolina reported that adopting something as far-reaching as Common Core will allow for the development of tools and resources that might actually be useful and will hopefully allow for increased collegiality among the agencies and educators in the state (Regional Educational Laboratory, et al. 7).  We may be in it for the benefit of North Carolina students first and foremost, but we can certainly make it better for the rest of the country as well.  And going forward, North Carolina education agencies say they have already outline a plan to work hard and work together to develop the much-needed training for teachers!

Meredith: Thanks, Ms. Anderson.  Anything to add, Mr. Kendall?

(Anderson sits; Kendall rises and approaches the podium.)

Kendall: Sure, Ms. Brannon. You know, I agree with Ms. Anderson.  I recognize that there are many drawbacks to the Common Core and we certainly have put ourselves under the gun with implementing it in such a short amount of time.  That said, I still think the benefits outweigh the risks.  And we all know we need to improve the education we’re giving our children…certainly before a high school diploma means next to nothing and you need a Master’s in Fry Technology to work at McDonald’s. I, for one, don’t want to see us get to that point. 

But we do have a long way to go to get Common Core functional, though.  I believe professional development to be a very important step to making Common Core a reality in every state including this one. The key to this lies in the name of the program and I talk about this in my book.  The word ‘core’ refers to an essential set of skills. And ‘common’ suggests a social contract and all that it implies: shared benefit and equitable treatment (Kendall 27).  Basically it comes down to this: if we work together to develop these Common Core teaching tools for all educators, we can really make Common Core work in North Carolina and everywhere else, too.  Thank you.  (Leaves podium and returns to sit in his chair)

Meredith: No, Mr. Kendall, thank you!  Ms. Marks, anything to add?

Marks: (Approaching the Podium) Just that Achieve, Incorporated helped develop the Common Core and devoted a great deal of time in researching the standards we eventually gave to the states (Achieve, Inc. 2).  We think they’re the beginning of a new era in American education, one that will be marked with success rather than failure.  The United States should be the leader in education, not Japan.  So it’s time we met that challenge head on! 

We used the quality Course of Study from Japan and made it better—the Common Core Standards are the result.  And we helped to design the Common Core Math standards for middle grades so that they clearly show the progression from grade to grade, while we chose to introduce some concepts earlier than they do in Japan.  With this and the step-wise progression of the knowledge sets inherent in the Common Core Math standards teachers ought to find it easy to understand what we expect them to teach students as well as how we expect them to teach them to do well on the tests (Achieve, Inc 3).

 But parents must be behind the Common Core as well, and getting informed is the best way to do that.  I encourage everyone to get online and research the Common Core State Standards and learn more about the conceptual knowledge that complements the necessary skills the students will learn in class. You can check out corestandards.org and achieve.org to get started.  And I’ll be happy to answer any questions about political implications of the Common Core, should you have any.  Thanks for supporting your school by coming out tonight and, may I say…God Bless America! (Leaves podium and returns to her seat)

Meredith: Thanks, Ms. Marks. Ms. Beck, anything more from the teachers?

Beck: (Stands in place) Just this—parents, please know that this is a major adjustment for students and teachers as we prepare for the Common Core changes.  Your support is more valuable than ever as we boldly go where few teachers have gone before. 

And we know that we, as Americans are facing huge challenges that the Japanese do not. We educate everyone—special populations like autistic children and the mentally handicapped—and Japan does not.  We have a very racially diverse community with its own special concerns. Japan does not.  We have only recently begun to place a high value on getting a college education whereas Japan has been doing so for generations.  And we’re not exactly famous for disciplining our children, but Japanese children are the epitome of discipline.  A lot of these problems can be helped if the school receives more support from the community and the parents. We must mitigate these problems before they become unmanageable and affect academic performance (Beck Interview).

So help us make this work. Lead by example and kids the value of a quality education. And please try to provide a stable home environment free of stressors (Beck Interview).  Your support has always been felt by the teachers here at W.C. Friday, and we’ll need it now more than ever before if Common Core is to have even a small chance of success. Thanks for coming out and lending us your support, tonight and every night from now on. (Sits down)

Meredith: Yes, thanks to everyone once again for coming out on a lovely spring evening to show your support for W.C. Friday Middle School.  If anyone has any business items for next month, please let me know before next week so I might include them in the agenda for May.  This meeting is adjourned.

(Audience claps for speakers and Beck briefly.  Audience files out and Meredith, Beck and Sawchuk begin to stack chairs in a corner.)

Meredith: So, Teresa, tell me how you really feel.  That last answer was a bit PC, especially for you!

Beck: (Sighs deeply) I was trying not to make a scene up there, y’all, but Law, did I want to!

Meredith: What do you mean?  What didn’t you say up there?

Beck: This…that I think we’ve put the cart before the horse when it comes to Common Core.  I hope it’s not a fad, but I’ve seen a great number of similar standards flicker and die out before they can make anything good happen (Beck Interview). 

Meredith: So what’s the one thing North Carolina is doing right when implementing Common Core?

Beck: (Lifts chair onto stack) These Summer Institutes for one.  I think more teachers ought to be able to go.  I think the Professional Learning Community is a good idea in theory, not practice. I get that it’s certainly cheaper for one us to go to Raleigh, instead of all ten of us.  But it’s like playing the telephone game…crucial info almost always gets lost in the retelling.  In my opinion, we need to figure out a way to get all teachers to learn how to teach math again.  This means that we need to find a way to get all these teachers into a program that will teach them higher-order thinking and analysis.  Some of these people haven’t been students themselves in over a decade.  They’ve got a lot to remember about learning and I think the best way to do that is for the teachers to become students for a time.  Wow, I don’t even think that I remember what that’s like! (Beck Interview) 

Sawchuk: Good point, Ms. Beck.  We have to teach them concepts and analysis tasks and recent studies show teachers already struggle with teaching kids these skills ‘cause they can’t do it themselves.  They’re already struggling with lessons and curricula that don’t line up, and we have to teach them soon (Sawchuk 17).  Common Core-based exams are coming in 2014-15!

Meredith:  So it looks as if we are in need of a fundraiser to teach our teachers how to teach our students!  Okay, I think we can make that work…just give me a moment…

Beck: Should I hum the theme from Jeopardy! ?

Meredith: Okay, so you think we need to send all ten Math teachers to this Summer Institute on Common Core Mathematics?  We’ll have to sell a lot of Krispy Kreme doughnuts this spring!

Beck: I think it’s the only way to ensure that these older, set-in-their-ways teachers will ever stand a chance of learning how to teach to this new set of standards (Beck Interview).  They’ve had their way for too long. Time to throw them a breaking ball! Think we can swing it?

Meredith: What do you think, Stephen?

Sawchuk: Honestly, ladies, I think we have no other choice! We’ve got to get these teachers prepared in any way possible.  We should also look into changing how the principal evaluates teachers.  Other states like Michigan and Delaware have already changed their teacher evaluations, forcing teachers to get creative in order to develop ways to teach to the Common Core right now (Sawchuk 20-21).  Just sayin’, it’s something to think about…and this are just the beginning, ladies.  We’ve a long way to go to make this work around here.

Meredith: You’re totally right.  Principal White has gone to Raleigh already this week to attend a conference on the Common Core-based assessments.  No doubt she’ll want to work on changing the teacher evaluations to reflect how well teachers are teaching to the Common Core.  We should also see if the NC Department of Education has any preliminary guidelines for this process so that we are prepared.  We’ll put the Summer Institute fundraiser on the agenda for the next PTA meeting.  Shouldn’t be a problem, they all know what’s at stake here.

Beck: (Grabbing another chair) And I’ll check out Marilyn Burns’ Math Reasoning Inventory (Burns 46).  Free help is always preferable to paid help, in my opinion.  It sounds like the test could be a winner at helping our kids learn to reason out answers to questions.  We need a good excuse to banish those infernal calculators anyway, at least until the last half of the year!  Otherwise these kids are going to end up older versions of HoneyBooBoo and I’m not gonna be responsible for that!

Sawchuk: Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that! I just hope we can get it together and make Common Core work for us.  So many experts I talked to say it’s doomed to fail because so little time has been given to folks to implement it after the states adopted it.  That’s why I know we’ll have to make every effort to get the teachers ready (Sawchuk 16). I definitely think it’ll be much harder than some of those talking heads up on that stage think it’ll be to teach to these new Standards.  But who knows? Maybe it’ll be like that movie Field of Dreams! If we teach them, good students will come! I just hope they come out of this on top rather than on bottom! (Grunts, lifts a chair onto the stack)

Meredith: I agree with you both.  Common Core sounds great, but we’ve got a long way to go to make it to ‘great’.  Shoot, I just learned tonight how different these Mathematics standards are when you put them next to the old ones.  That means we need a game-changer for real! Bottom line: we have to get the teachers ready by any means necessary and we need to start working on that now. Geez, more like yesterday! ‘Cause even the best of our teachers is not prepared for this new curriculum.  What do you think, Teresa?

Beck: You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie there, Meredith. It won’t be easy, and we could definitely use some more time for preparation of our staff to teach this new, detailed curriculum.  Too bad no one at the state level ever asked the teachers if teaching to the Common Core was possible or even sensible (Beck Interview).  Guess no one thought we would object, huh? Anyway, we just have to do our best and hope that our preparation now will get us ready for those Common Core-based exams and assessments.  They’re happening whether the teachers and students are ready or not!

Meredith: (Lifts a chair onto the stack) Exactly! Ready or not, hear Common Core comes! (Laughs) Despite all the negative feelings, I still think it’s a good direction to travel in.  We just need to prepare everyone for this, teachers first and foremost.  I, for one, think it’s possible.  I just hope we haven’t left the professional development too late to make a difference!

Beck and Sawchuk (in unison): Let’s hope not!

(Beck and Sawchuk look at each other and laugh)

Beck:  Let’s also hope there’s still coffee and cookies out in the lobby, guys. Come on and let’s see!

(Meredith, Sawchuk, and Beck finish stacking the remaining chairs and exit the auditorium, talking amiably.)

Works Cited

Beck, Teresa. Personal Interview. 29 March 2013.

Kendall, John S. Understanding Common Core State Standards, n.p.: ASCD, 2011. eBook

            Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 17 Mar. 2013.

Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, et al. “Plans to Adopt and Implement            Common Core State Standards in the Southeast Region States. Issues and Answers. REL 2012-No. 136.” Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast (2012): ERIC. Web. 17 Mar. 2013.

Achieve, Inc. “Comparing the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and Japan’s Mathematics Curriculum in the Course of Study. Achieving the Common Core.” Achieve, Inc (2010): ERIC. Web. 17 Mar. 2013.

Sawchuk, Stephen. “Many Teachers Not Ready for the Common Core.” Education Week 31 (2012): S12-17. Print.

Burns, Marilyn. “Go Figure: Math and the Common Core.” Educational Leadership 70.4 (2012): 42. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 25 Mar. 2013.

Reflections on Step #2 (Academic Work) Workshop

1.  From my group I got some really great feedback about my paper, especially concerning the organization.  From Lynnsey I got suggestions on how I can split up huge page-spanning paragraphs into smaller, more manageable ones.  She also asked me to more clearly define the term "professional development"; I use that term very often in Step #2 and she felt that I needed to expand on what I meant by using that term.  Finally, she pointed out that I needed to add a conclusion that included my interview (primary research) and my reactions to the research.  Josh agreed with Lynnsey about breaking up the big paragraphs and he also suggested that I needed to clarify my reference to "the question" when I'm talking about my inquiry question. Specifically he said that I need to state my thesis clearly rather than referring to it indirectly.  He also mentioned several places where I included information, but failed to relate it clearly back to the thesis.  Joey suggested that I make all the letters M in Mathematics lower case because he didn't think they needed to be capitalized.  He also reminded me that I needed a conclusion where I included my interview and my reactions, and he suggested that I add in some more information about North Carolina's plan for the future of Common Core Mathematics professional development. 

2.  Probably the most helpful advice I received were the suggestions I received regarding the organization of my paper.  I have a terrible time separating thoughts into paragraphs, preferring instead to continue the paragraph and include all relevant points.  My group really helped me see places where I needed to break up thoughts into separate paragraphs; in fact, each member marked the places in almost exactly the same spots.  Clearly, they're all better at seeing the breaks than I am, making this process tedious, yet very worthwhile!

3.  The suggestion I got to decapitalize the M in Mathematics was probably the least helpful advice I received, though I would like to point out that it was given with the best of intentions.  Thanks, Joey. Believe me, I totally get what you mean about it seeming unnecessary.  I only did it that way for one reason. On the Annotated Bibliography, Megan clarified this for me in her comments--I need to capitalize the M and do it throughout my paper to keep it consistent with my source materials. 

4.  My plans for revision are as follows:
Step 1: break up the big paragraphs where my group marked them to isolate thoughts, but make sure to relate them back to the thesis.
Step 2: Clearly state my thesis/inquiry question in the introduction
Step 3: Define "professional development" in the context of my inquiry
Step 4: At the places Josh marked, relate information/quote back to thesis to answer "what's the point of this info?"
Step 5:  Add a strong conclusion including my primary research, my reactions to the research, and summarize the plans for the future of Common Core Mathematics Standards for NC middle grades.

JTC Step #2 Academic Work

The Common Core State Standards are “a set of academic content standards for grades K-12 in English language arts and Math” published by the Common Core State Standards Initiative in June 2010 (Common Core State Standards Initiative n.p.).  These standards have been adopted by nearly every state in the US, making it a nearly nationwide set of expectations for what students will need to know to be prepared for college and the workforce.  After the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, a fierce debate has broken out over how these standards can be successfully implemented by state officials, administrators, and educators before the 2014-15 school year—when students will be tested with Common Core-based assessments.  One area receiving a lot of attention in the Common Core academic literature involves professional development. The Common Core State Standards are so new that professional development has been only just developed by the individual states for use by the individual educators. This is if professional development has been planned at all--some states are relying on the educators to get creative and prepare themselves for the new Standards.  This is the issue—what are officials at the state agencies doing, if anything, to prepare teachers to teach to the Common Core State Standards?  In this article, I plan to focus on this question as it pertains to the North Carolina educational system for 6^th through 8^th grade Mathematics education, and I will introduce the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and how they differ from the old standards. Then I will talk about how the changes characteristic of the Common Core Standards will be successfully implemented through certain kinds of professional development for North Carolina middle grades Math teachers. Finally I will talk about the question of successful professional development and whether researchers feel teachers are indeed ready to implement the Common Core in their own classrooms, ultimately affecting the success of the Common Core implementation.

            State officials adopted the Common Core State Standards for grades K-12 for English language arts and Mathematics shortly after it was released in June 2010.  It is important to note that this is a package deal—“when adopting the common standards, states agree that they will not pick and choose which standards to adopt, but will adopt and implement the full set” (Regional Educational Laboratory, et al. 3).  This means that North Carolina has adopted the full complement of Math Standards, which includes separate Math Content and Math Practice Standards.  These Standards in Math were designed to close the achievement gap between students in the US and those of high-performing nations like Japan.  Indeed, according to Achieve, Inc., an organization involved in the creation of the Common Core State Standards, “the Japanese Course of Study was an important resource” in the development of the Common Core (pp.2).  This organization explained that the Common Core developers simply used the Japanese Course of Study and made it more specific and detailed, while keeping the two sets of standards “substantially similar in terms of focus” (Achieve, Inc. 3).  This organization believes that the more detailed standards will help teachers to effectively prepare for the Common Core in their classrooms, stating that “teachers who use the [Common Core State Standards] will be more likely to understand the expectations and how content progresses from grade to grade” (Achieve, Inc. 3).  John Kendall, author of an e-book on the Common Core State Standards, mentions that the biggest differences between current Mathematics standards and those of the Common Core occur in the middle grades curriculum.  He says that “probability and statistics begins in 6^th grade, and students begin working at expressions of ratio and proportion in 7^th grade.  In 8^th grade, students are not only expected to apply the Pythagorean Theorem but also to prove it” (Kendall 25).  Kendall notes the differences in standards in terms of how teachers will view them, stating that “teachers may find that the specific descriptions, arguments, and proofs required present a greater challenge than their states’ standards for middle school” (Kendall 25). An educator herself, Marilyn Burns seems to agree with Kendall in his assessment of the differences in Common Core Standards.  She recognizes that “for example, students should be able not only to figure out the answer to a problem like 15 x 12, but also to demonstrate an understanding of multiplication as defined by the Practice Standards” of the Common Core Mathematics Standards (Burns 44).  Indeed, the Common Core State Standards seem to place an emphasis on concepts rather than simple computational skills.  Stephen Sawchuk, an education journalist, writes about this major departure from the old Math Standards, “the idea being that understanding how and why algorithms work is as important as crunching numbers” in the Common Core curriculum (Sawchuk 18). 

So, the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics are clearly different from any other set of academic expectations—what does that mean for teachers? Sawchuk thinks the new Common Core Standards spell disaster for the teachers charged with their implementation.  He says that, “evidence from a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation study suggests that teachers already struggle to help students engage in the higher-order, cognitively demanding tasks emphasized by the [Common Core State Standards in Mathematics], such as the ability to synthesize, analyze, and apply information” (Sawchuk 18).  Achieve, Inc. disagrees, stating that the Standards make clear what teachers should do and how to do it. They state that the Common Core Standards are designed with a higher “level of specificity” than any other set of academic expectations, “making the coherence and the developing rigor of the content more evident” to teachers (Achieve, Inc. 3). Burns thinks that the Common Core State Standards can be implemented successfully if educators start in a certain place. She believes that “assessing students’ facility with numerical reasoning is essential to implementing the math standards” (Burns 44). In Burns’s opinion, this is the first step for teachers if they are to help their students; diagnosing flaws in their reasoning skills will allow teachers to know where to begin when attempting to teach their students the analytical skills they need to perform well on Common Core-based assessments.

Even with the debate between proponents and dissenters of the Common Core State Standards, the path is clear—professional development must be a part of the implementation process for state educational agencies to successfully implement the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics.  This can be simplified because, as Kendall says, “the essence of the Common Core initiative can be induced from its name” (Kendall 27). He explains that “the nature of the core is of an essential and irreducible set of knowledge and skills, while common suggests a social contract and all that it implies: shared benefit and equitable treatment” (Kendall 27).  The fact that so many states have adopted and are now implementing the Common Core State Standards, particularly in Mathematics, means that educators across the nation are working right now to develop tools and lessons to help educators implement these new standards in their own classrooms.  Burns, now the founder of math education consulting firm, has developed the Math Reasoning Inventory (MRI) that teachers can use free of charge to assess how their students reason out math problems.  She believes the MRI “enables teachers to focus on strengthening any deficient reasoning strategies and underlying concepts about Mathematics”, skills already established to be critical to high performance on the 2014-15 Common Core-based assessments (Burns 46).  Tools like this can be used by North Carolina middle grades students to prepare their classes for new assessments and determine where they need to begin when instructing to this new curriculum.  Still, people believe that more hands-on professional development is needed.  Sawchuk argues that “teachers are wrestling with an absence of truly aligned curricula and lessons”, a fact which North Carolina education agencies are attempting to address (Sawchuk 17).  According to the Regional Educational Laboratory, North Carolina agencies “reported that their state could benefit from the cross-state collaboration fostered by common standards, such as shared instructional resources and textbooks, joint professional development efforts, and the use of common assessments (Regional Educational Laboratory, et al. 7).  North Carolina plans to use a multi-pronged approach to professional development in particular, reporting that they will “use the Internet to provide online training sessions, including webinars and professional development modules” along with “a combination of face-to-face, direct training for school staff” (Regional Educational Laboratory, et al. 13).