Lounge Conversations {Hot Topics}

Are You Ready for the Common Core Standards?

by Jill Scott on May 21, 2012

When I first started teaching it was without the benefit of textbooks. Although at the time I thought of it as a hardship, looking back I realize that the lack of textbooks is what enabled my team and I to really focus on the standards and teach to them, instead of following a textbook scope and sequence.

I look back on those early days of teaching with fondness. I was working with a team of three other teachers, and we did all of our planning and photocopying together, as a team. We spent common planning time pouring over the standards together, deciding how we would assess mastery of those standards, and then we would pull our resources together to teach to those standards. It was a great system, and I long to get back to it.

I see the implementation of the Common Core Standards as my golden ticket to getting back to planning and teaching in a way that truly makes sense to me. As this school year winds down, teachers all over the world are thinking about how they want to change things next year and asking themselves what they can do better. It’s one of the areas that I find inspiration in my role as a teacher. Every year I get a fresh start, a chance to make things better, a clean slate.

With this new school year I’m going to dive into the Common Core Standards.  I’ve been slowly implementing the CCS over the past two years, but I’m going to be moving to the middle school next year and starting over anyway, so what better time to implement the standards completely than right now?

Not to be a buzz kill with summer vacation right around the corner, but I plan to spend a lot of my vacation time this summer planning curriculum and writing Learning Targets. Learning targets are simply the standards in kid-friendly language, specific to the lesson for the day and directly connected to assessment. I had learning targets in mind when I had the vinyl cut for my whiteboard in the picture above.

I’m very excited about implementing the CCS.

How about you? Are you ready?

 Related Posts. When You Don’t Agree with Policy  |  A Year’s Self-Evaluation  |  Cure for Spring Fever

*Jill Scott, Controlling My Chaos

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Put Your Best Foot Forward at Open House

by steve_reifman on May 7, 2012

My school will be hosting its annual Open House soon, and I thought I would share some ideas with you about this important annual event.

I have mixed feelings about Open House. On one hand, I believe it can be a valuable opportunity for teachers and students to display with pride the work they have done during the preceding months. On the other hand, Open House often becomes a big show, a form of end-of-the-line inspection where visitors walk through your room to evaluate you and your students.

At its best, Open House shows the school community what you are all about. Visitors learn about your aim, mission, goals, and what you did to bring these ideas to life. There is a sense of celebration and accomplishment in the air as you and your students highlight the quality work you did together.

At its worst, Open House resembles a fashion show. An emphasis on making things look good overrides any attempt to inform observers about the important work that occurred in the classroom. Too often, an informal competition develops as to who has the most attractive bulletin boards or the most attention-getting art projects.

For Open House to be as authentic and meaningful as possible, I make sure that everything on display arises naturally from class units and projects and represents an honest glimpse of the thinking and learning that occur in our classroom on a daily basis. I frown upon special art projects that look great but that were created specifically for this occasion and have no connection to any larger project or unit of study.

In addition, I suggest accompanying each piece of work with a summary sheet describing the nature of the unit it represents, listing the skills and standards the kids learned during the unit, and explaining how the project promotes your larger goals and priorities and, perhaps, how the project furthers your class mission. That way, parents and other visitors can gain a deeper sense of the thinking that occurs behind the scenes and beneath the surface.

Thoughts on Open House at your school?  What do you do to make it meaningful?

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The Problem with Education {Better Plans or Better People?}

by Laura Gurley on March 27, 2012

What are the problems with our current education system?  Is it too much testing, or not enough?  Is it a lack of funding or an excess of paperwork or too many required workshops on those professional development workdays? Is it the over-zealous, but out-of-touch, government or the central office?

Do we need better plans and more workshops to make our education system more effective and productive? Or does the answer lie in something else entirely?

Take a minute to watch the following clip from a leadership seminar for educators, and let us know what you think. The speaker is Todd Whitaker, with Eye on Education, a fantastic resource for professional development.

{Subscribers need to click through to the site to view the above video.}

Thoughts, teachers? Do you think the answer for a better educational system is in better plans or better people? Have you been frustrated with your school system’s ever-changing programs? Examples?

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My Classroom Management Approach in Action (Part 2)

by steve_reifman on March 9, 2012

Under the approach I mentioned in Part 1 of this post, rather than administer rewards and punishments to control student behavior, I need to bring my kids together, much as a basketball coach does during a time-out. I need to call attention to what I see happening, explain why I believe that behavior to be problematic or counterproductive, and refer my students to our Class Mission Statement, a set of ideas that the kids themselves wrote at the beginning of the year detailing who we are, what we want to become, and the principles and goals that distinguish us as a unique group of people with a unique set of priorities.  

This way, ideas guide us and hold us together, not carrots and sticks. So, on that day when things began to break down, I called my kids up to the rug in the front of the room and opened a discussion. I talked about respect, kindness, teamwork, discipline, and other key ideas that we talk about all the time. We discuss these ideas every Friday morning when we review our mission statement, we talk about them Tuesday and Thursday mornings during our Quote of the Day activity, and we talk about them throughout the week as the need and opportunity arises.

When our difficulties continued throughout the day, I continued to call everyone together and refer to these larger ideas.  Our day still wasn’t one of our best, but things did improve, and I was pleased with my response to the things that were happening.

When difficult moments occur, I’ve learned that I can use them as learning opportunities, not as occasions to lose my temper and escalate the controlling use of carrots and sticks.  Stephen Covey, author of some wonderful books including The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, also mentions the bonding power that mission statements offer.

My approach is absolutely more difficult to employ than traditional management approaches because it takes more time, more effort, more patience, and more problem solving. The results, however, are far more effective, far more lasting, far more empowering, and far more satisfying.  Children want to be part of the solution to any problem that may be occurring.  We just need to open the door and invite them to participate in the problem-solving process.

-Steve Reifman

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Okay, this is a good one for discussion– Which theory do you use to motivate classroom behavior?  Intrinsic or extrinsic motivators? Benefits, drawbacks, examples, practical insight?

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My Classroom Management Approach in Action (Part 1)

March 9, 2012

A Note from the Editor:  This is an exciting time for our contributor, Steve Reifman. Steve has two new books coming out this month. Chase Against Time, the first installment in his Chase Manning Mystery Series for readers 8-12, comes out March 15th. Each book in the series features a single-day, real-time mystery thriller that occurs [...]

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For When You Don't Agree With Policy

January 12, 2012

I clenched the phone tighter and closed my eyes. “So what you’re saying is for the End of Course exam 9th graders will be required to write three essays, two of which will be scored.” The voice on the other end of the line cleared her throat, “yes ma’am. Three essays. Two are scored. Students [...]

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Shame vs. Vulnerability

November 14, 2011

A few weeks ago, I went to a local School Improvement conference hosted by TEA. The first day I had the privilege of hearing Brene Brown speak about vulnerability and shame within the education system and I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t shed a tear once or twice during her talk because [...]

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