My sense is that most educators are viewing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) as another inconvenience, yet another requirement to be met in our classrooms. However, I would argue that the CCSS presents us with an incredibly unique set of opportunities, if we choose to embrace them as a collective "opportunity." Knowing that we may have to restructure what we do and how we do it, we have opportunities to truly re-examine our practice and adjust it accordingly in order to better meet the academic needs of our students. Additionally, and perhaps more critically, we don't necessarily need to limit our focus on our students' academic needs.
Since the CCSS are not simply an "upgrade" to what we've been dong, but rather a whole new approach, we have an opportunity to also address more comprehensively the needs of the whole child. In a sense, we're developing new unit plans, new ideas for instructional reinforcement, new plans for formative assessments, etc. This will offer us the chance to critically re-examine—in an extremely reflective manner—our own practice and, therefore, our own effectiveness as professional educators. ASCD's Whole Child Initiative states that all students should be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. A reorganization of our approaches to instruction provides us with the opportunity to integrate these five aspects into our instruction. Further, as professional educators, these are things that we should not do occasionally, but rather we should strive to integrate them every day and for every child.
But, how can we do this?
- Data-driven educational decision making. Adding the science of teaching to the art of teaching; this is