Promethean Plan: A Teacher on Fulfilling the Intent of the Common Core
by Guest BloggerAugust 12th, 2013
By Mark Anderson
Mark Anderson, who became a NYC Teaching Fellow after working in retail and hospitality management, now teaches at Jonas Bronck Academy in the Bronx. His writing on educational improvement has appeared in Gotham Schools, the Times Union, VIVA Teachers, and other venues.
Prometheus Brings Fire to Mankind, by Heinrich Friedrich Fuger, c. 1817
As a special education teacher in the Bronx, I have worked in self-contained and inclusive settings, first in an elementary, and now, in a middle school. I welcome the Common Core standards as beneficial to transforming practice in my school and classroom, and have worked to interpret them as a NYC Common Core ELA Fellow, as well as create curriculum and materials aligned to them within my own school, and with other teachers across the nation as part of the 2013 LearnZillion “Dream Team.”
I believe that the adoption of the Common Core standards has provided us with a golden window of opportunity for engaging and challenging our students with rich content, empowering teachers as scholars and content experts, and establishing a modicum of academic coherency in classrooms across our nation.
Here’s how we can all too easily squander this great opportunity:
- Allowing skills-based teaching to remain predominant.
- Placing the burden of teaching literacy entirely on ELA.
- Infantilizing teachers.
If we perpetuate these three practices, then the Common Core will do little to transform
