Confession

Have you heard of the Enneagram? If you haven't, go learn about it. It was life altering and paradigm shifting for me.

The Enneagram differs from other types of personality spectrums because it focuses on your inward motivations rather than your outward behaviors.

For example, my older sister and I behave in very similar ways. We are both outwardly "good girls," overachievers, perfectionists... but we have very different motivations. She is a 1-- which means she is an idealist. She strives for perfection because she truly believes things should be perfect. I am a 3--- which means I am a pragmatist/con artist. I don't really care if I am actually perfect as long as everyone else around me thinks I am.

So what does this confession have to do with teaching the Common Core, you ask?

Because when I am teaching, I am often tempted to focus on the product rather than the process. I want to be able to say, "Look at the amazing work my students did!" without thinking about whether or not they really learned anything. Could they replicate that work that "we" did? Or did I really do most of it for them? Could they really explain how to do it? Or did they just emulate my model?

Today, I was in Mrs. Phenomenal Phillips' classroom, and I heard her remind her students of what writers do.

She didn't talk about what the writing was supposed to look like. She'll talk about that later, I'm sure, but for now she's not taking any shortcuts when it comes to teaching them the process.

She says, "Reflective writers go back and read what they have already written."

So often, I don't want to encourage my students to do this kind of work because it takes too long. I want to go through the motions of the writing process, cross another standard/project off of my list and put it up on the bulletin board for others to oooh and ahhh over.

This kind of writing instruction is not going to suffice when PARCC comes along. Students will no longer be able to pick an answer out of a line up in order to show what they know about writing. They will actually have to write on demand. I can't help them "revise" and "edit" multiple times so their writing looks good. They will have to do that work themselves. I am going to have to sit on my hands and shut my mouth and let them own the writing themselves.

So next week, I am going to teach what writers DO. And then I am going to sit on my hands and let these kids do it, even if the product is bad, because they will never learn to make a good product if all I do is "fix" their work.