common core BY DR. JONI SAMPLES
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Parents and the Common Core Standards Learning and implementing the new Common Core Standards is a challenge for all of us in education right now. Change is always a challenge. If we’ve been teaching a subject for five or 10 years we know it, we get it, and we get how to teach it. Now we’re being asked
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SPRING 2013 SouthEast Education Network
to teach the same subject yet make sure we are teaching particular aspects of the subject in the Common Core that we perhaps haven’t emphasized. We might be looking at aspects of teaching which include more critical thinking or skills that require more knowledge on
our part. If we’re having a bit of a challenge with all of this, why would we even consider adding a new dimension, a new group of players who probably aren’t as skilled as any of us educators in the field of learning? Why include parents in this already challenging mix? I was a teacher and an administrator for years. Many of my schools didn’t have a culture of parental involvement. Involving parents for most schools is like asking Attila the Hun to sit in on your staff meetings.You know he’s going to attack.You’re just not sure when. I understand anticipating the attack as well as how and why we get into that mode of thinking. If you’ve had some experiences with unhappy parents, you don’t want to repeat the situation. It seems wiser to keep parents out of the system and any educational process than to open up a possible conflict. Including parents for fund-raising or acting as room mothers is fine, but don’t allow them decision-making abilities. It’s too crazy.Yes, it can be, yet I want to suggest a different way of making parental engagement work. Bringing parents into the new Common Core mix is truly not as odd as it sounds and in actuality is probably good timing for doing so.Those schools who practice parent