Skip to main content

Common Core State Standards Response -- Blog Post #3

Common Core State Standards & Handout Response

While the idea of standards makes sense, the handout did bring up reasons on why it would not particularly for lower-income students and those of colored backgrounds. I personally think standards in terms of concepts would likely be the best route and allowing the teachers to decide on what literature is brought to their classroom and defines their curriculum. The identity of students is often defined by area and race. Race is an emphasis in the article particular in its links to low-incomes and struggles of students of non-white backgrounds.

The idea of multi-cultural literature in a classroom is relatively new by US standards. It's something that needs to become more prominent and widespread to ensure students are aware and informed of other cultures outside of their own - an awareness. As a person with a mixed background and went to school in Idaho, I was used to be one of the few mixed raced students at my schools. What didn't help was that I moved often and each curriculum was different meaning I would likely be behind or ahead of the other students in my classes so the need for a national standard is something I can understand on a person level.

Dictating everything that is to be taught in a curriculum is an entirely different matter, however, and I much prefer the concept-based standards where teachers are free to teach what they believe will best educate their students and not just satisfy the standard and earn them high scores on tests. As a student's aptitude is not simply based on test scores and they're far more capable than an academic evaluation can perceive. As teachers, we should be more open to other culture not only for our students to gain an awareness but for us to gain awareness as well.

It's common to grow up on Shakespeare, Poe, Dumas, and Austen and their works are still considered masterpieces and classics. Other narratives stemming further than Uncle Tom's Cabin are important too. Other great works such as Dusk: A Novel by F. Sionil Jose, The Cave by José Saramago, The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker are lesser known and would be more than welcome in my future classroom among many others. Test scores miss the goal when it comes to education students, in my opinion, as we're essentially teaching more than just skills and understanding, and all those things are things a test can't determine.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Caraval -- Book Talk #1

Caraval, Book Talk #1   “Welcome, welcome to Caraval! The grandest show on land or by sea. Inside you’ll experience more wonders than most people see in a lifetime. You can sip magic from a cup and buy dreams in a bottle. But before you fully enter into our world, you must remember it’s all a game.   What happens beyond this gate may frighten or excite you, but don’t let any of it trick you. We will try to convince you it’s real, but all of it is a performance. A world built of make-believe. So while we want you to get swept away, be careful of being swept too far away. Dreams that come true can be beautiful, but they can also turn into nightmares when people won’t wake up.”   SUMMARY ______ Caraval is the first novel in a fantasy trilogy of the same name, the other two in the series being Legendary and Finale. The main character, seventeen-year-old Scarlett Dragna is the eldest daughter of a cruel and abusive dictator of a small is...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It -- Blog Post #10

Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It Response -- Blog Post #10 Tovani's book I Read It, But I Don't Get It addressed an obvious problem when it comes to studying and learning - reading comprehension. The book addresses the matter, stating that there is no concise or single answer to the issue but offers strategies to combat it. To have students learn instead of spitting out facts they received from the teacher. That reading was more than just skimming and reading the beginning and ends of a book to fake your way through an assignment. It is understanding what's being read and having an inner interactive dialogue. What I liked most was that Tovani split up these inner voices - calling them the reciting voice, the conversation voice, the interacting voice, and the distracting voice. All of which readers have experienced during the process of reading. Leigha's example of a distracting voice was something I could relate to and understand. She was trying to mak...
Post a Comment
Read more

Learning Letter

Learning Letter -- Blog Post #15 I began this class uncertain of what it entailed outside of the obvious that could be inferred from the course title. Still, I found myself very intrigued by the book talks and the scale of the unit plan, even if the latter made me rather nervous. The idea of book talks, as well as the blog  were exciting to me, mostly because I hadn't done a book report in some time and I had enjoyed doing them as a kid and also because I've never had a blog before and I wanted to see what it was like. I can easily say the Book Talks and the weekly blog posts were my favorite part of the course. My first book talk I was nervous even after I read over the requirements, because I wasn't sure how to place five minutes worth of information about one book into a presentation. I was worried it would be too long, so I zipped through it in my haste. The second I felt a lot more confidence in. I was less concerned about explaining the entire summary, and more so a...
Post a Comment
Read more