What does it mean to be "college and career ready"?

This morning I saw this Washington Post article about kindergarten teachers forgoing the tradition of an annual show to dedicate more time on standards that lead to "college and career readiness."

The impetus behind the Common Core Standards is to ensure that students are "college and career ready." So what does that mean? What skills lead to success in higher education and the workplace?

Certainly, ability to decode words and perform basic math skills are essential to academic success, and the pressure these kindergarten teachers in New York feel is to drop everything else to make sure their students have those skills. In their opinion, the time taken to rehearse and perform is wasted because it will not improve test scores on basic math and literacy skills. The assumption is that good test scores will lead to "college and career readiness."

I have a new job as the operations manager for a co-curricular business preparatory program at a liberal arts college, which allows me to ask many successful business men and women directly what they seek in employees. They mention confidence, clear communication, effectiveness dealing with others, tenacity to keep at a problem until it is solved; in other words, all of the skills required when students work together to put on a performance. 

So the kindergarten play definitely prepares kids for the workplace--that is not the problem.  The problem is that the kindergarten play promotes skills that are not easily quantifiable. The work students do in the arts can't be measured, ranked, and nationally compared.

One of my favorite aspects of the ELA CCSS is the emphasis placed on speaking and listening skills. While letter-name and letter-sound recognition are essential to decoding (which is one half of reading comprehension), research strongly suggests that oral language development in early childhood is essential for vocabulary and comprehension (the other half of reading comprehension) in later grades. It's imperative for kids to learn their letters and sounds in kindergarten, but not at the expense of opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations with peers and adults.  

But here's what happens so often for low socio-economic background kids: They do not learn their letters prior to kindergarten, so they come into school "behind" on letter name and letter sound tests that are easily measured, ranked and then nationally compared. Letter name and letter sound scores make it easy to quantify "success", so schools begin to replace traditional arts instruction with programs to continue to drill letter recognition, perhaps in the best circumstances using songs and games and colors to make the activities resemble the arts classes students used to be exposed to. The schedule is infused with more and more direct instruction and less opportunity for play, personal interaction, and creativity. Scores on basic literacy skills improve, and the school is seen as effective.

But does the acquisition of basic decoding skills at the end of kindergarten ensure that students are "college and career ready"? The answer is no-- it is just the easiest skill to measure, rank, and compare nationally. Legislators, text-book companies, and high level school administrators don't have the time or resources to sit down and have a conversation with each kindergarten student in the nation.

You know who does have the time to sit down and talk with kindergarten students (or at least they used to)? Teachers. Teachers know the kids by name, know their interests, know their strengths and weaknesses above and beyond what a standardized test can show. 

This week at my new job we had a board meeting, and one of the board members was asking the director of Career and Leadership services how she quantified the success of student outcomes. She had already achieved an astounding 90% knowledge rate of where the class of 2013 landed after graduation, but the board wanted her to focus on making sure students had good salaries and prestigious titles. `They wanted something they could measure, rank, and nationally compare. Her response was priceless: "I consider myself successful when students land in their happy place. They are more than numbers to me--they are names." 

When we get students "college and career ready," we want to make sure they have everything they need to land in their happy place. In early childhood, that means they must learn their letters and sounds. If they can't read, they can't do much after graduation. However, we have to equip them with so much more-- creativity, compassion, curiosity, confidence, a sense of pride in their community and a feeling of love and support from those who take care of them. 

Dear Harley Avenue Primary School and other schools tempted to follow in their footsteps, please, for the love of all these incredibly holy things, do not cancel your kindergarten show for the sake of the what is easily measured, ranked, and nationally compared.

3rd Grade Summary of the Civil Rights Movement

Today in my 3rd grade class we were reading about Rosa Parks. The kids were riveted by this topic. They kept asking questions to make sure they understood correctly.

"Couldn't she just sit at the part of the bus in the back, you know where it goes all the way across?"
"Why did the black people have to go to bad schools?"
"Why didn't the white people want to share?"
"That was against the law? That doesn't make any sense."
"She went to jail?"

Finally, one girl's eyes got big. "Oh! so Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks broke every law so that black and white people can be nice to each other!"

Those words were so good, I had to stop and write them down. We looked a little more closely and revised as a group.

This is our summary of the civil rights movement:

"Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks broke unfair laws so that black and white people can be fair to each other."

I love my job.

More Front Loading Thoughts

Last week I had the opportunity to offer a very brief optional PD session on EL basics for my peers. I was so thankful to have 9 educators from my school volunteer their time to attend. It speaks to the dedication of the staff at my school that so many teachers were willing to invest their time...none of them needed the credit hours.

I did a modified section of the EL Open Institute where I gave them the opportunity to be second language learners by doing a brief model lesson in German. I try to cram in as many methods of making the content comprehensible as I can, and one strategy that I share is that if possible, it helps to preview the topic in the native language. Normally I give a brief one sentence explanation in English, but this time I was mentally distracted (and a little worn out from teaching all day) and I gave more like a 3-5 sentence explanation that included the language pattern we would be learning.

The result: the lesson fell flat. I was wondering why the engagement didn't seem to be as high as it normally is, but then one of my peers told me, "You front loaded it, so I just hunted and pecked for the right answer."

AAAAAAAAACK!

This is the exact opposite of what I am trying to do. Rather than promoting productive struggle, I spoon fed the answers ahead of time and wondered why they kept yawning.

My point is this: front loading is a lot more tricky than it seems. I crossed over the fine line of offering scaffolding and instead became a crutch, and rather than identifying the pattern themselves and applying it on their own, the exercise I gave became a search for the "right answer."

Have any of you had a teaching experience where your students all got the "right answer," but you ended the lesson pretty confident they had no clue how to find that answer on their own in different contexts?

Folks

Today has been a bit rough. The least favorite part of my job is the rampant standardized assessment. I see my students work so hard and get beat down continually. It's frustrating.

So I'm thinking back to a particularly good moment from last week.

The word "folks" came up in the book we were reading, and my 6th graders were unfamiliar with it. I took some time to explain the word, citing synonyms such as family, relatives, next-of-kin, and added that your folks are the people you would call if you got in trouble. I asked my students to think of an example of the "folks" in their lives.

And one said, "You're my folks."

That, my friends, is why I teach. They are my folks, too. And unfortunately, that kind of thing is difficult to measure on a standardized test.

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.

To Frontload or not to Frontload...

...that is the question.

In my efforts to implement close reads with accountable talk, I've been trying to limit my (formerly excessive) front loading for English Learners. I want them to read the text for itself, not parrot my ideas about the text back to me.

The first text I chose went beautifully. We engaged in AMAZING accountable talk, and I was so floored that they could in fact do what I was asking them to do.

With the second text, and the entire thing flopped. Crickets chirping. Deer in the headlights. And then the deer got hit by a semi.

They were so exasperated they turned to misbehavior. And these are kids that are not prone to goofing off. Suddenly everything I tried to do was a joke.

So what's the difference?

I think it all boils down to these two words: productive struggle.

The first article I selected was just out of their grasp, so they struggled with it a little bit, but could still comprehend enough to pick out meaningful portions to discuss. The portions they were confused about (or chose not to say anything about) I reinforced with other multimedia sources. (I guess that means I backloaded it?) I let them show me what they didn't understand, but required them to engage in the text first. They enjoyed the challenge. They felt the challenge was worth it. I felt like Mrs. Awesome.

The second text, though in the appropriate Lexile range, was simply too hard. The struggle was not productive, it was defeating. The next day, I had to backpedal and summarize the first 3/4 of the article so that they could even have the slightest clue what was going on. Once I basically told them what the article was saying, they were able to go back and read it themselves, but without the front loading, they were lost as last decade's Easter egg.

What do you think? Have you had successful ventures in close reads of complex text without front loading? Or have your attempts failed miserably? How do we strike that perfect balance of productive struggle with culturally and linguistically diverse kiddos?

Writing Process Prezi/.pdf with Common Core Standards

I have start-of-the-school-year insomnia... my brain won't stop.

I've been playing around with Prezi and I am super excited! Not only are the presentations fun, you can also download anything you have created and make it a .pdf poster. This morning I have been working on a poster/presentation for my classroom on the writing process. I will use it to teach the writing process initially, and then I will post it in my classroom as a means to organize our writers' workshop. I have included the writing standards on the poster, but did not make them grade specific because I teach all grade levels.

Here are the resources for your use:

-Writing Process Prezi

-Writing Process Poster