"Which Of These Standards Is Bad?"

I've gone on record as not being a fan of Common Core, particularly the K-3 standards. Bookworm, the elder, was 2 cohorts ahead of our school district's Common Core rollout, while Monkey was the second cohort to get the shiny new Common Core-aligned Curriculum 2.0. While my kids have very different personalities, I actually expected things to go more smoothly for my younger child, whose capacity for perseverance was pretty high going into school, and whose natural inclination toward math and science seemed a perfect fit for the STEM emphasis that accompanies current US Public education approaches.

Hah. Not so much. Beginning in second grade (mostly toward the end) and for almost ALL of last year, there were increasing tears, hostility, argumentative behavior even out of school, tears, increased fidgeting, even the appearance of a vocal tic, and have I mentioned the tears? This from a kid whose second-grade teacher told me that she remembered her for her smile. And as a frequent substitute in that school and another school (where I saw Kindergarteners weekly), I have seen more than my fair share of Kindergarteners acting out in ways and to degrees that I didn't see when I left (I thought temporarily) teaching 12 years previously. I've heard from parents that I'm hardly alone in my concerns for my kid's emotional well-being; I've heard teachers talking to each other before and after school and in the lunchroom and being frank with each other about their concerns that this is too much too soon; I've seen the unguarded shell-shocked halfway-to-burned-out faces of K-3 teachers who didn't know I noticed, who thought they were hiding it from their classes and school volunteers (I'm ADD; I notice EVERYTHING except what I'm supposed to. LOL).

The first question that most pro-Common Core cheerleaders tend to ask is, "Have you read the standards?" My answer is "Yes, I have, actually." They're tedious reading; I have only gotten up through middle school as that's where my elder is at the moment, and I'm not thrilled about the K-3 standards. (For anyone who wants to see how innocuous they look, separated out, in writing - which as anyone who has spent ANY time in a classroom knows is not the same things as "in practice" - here is a link to the Kindergarten standards.) The next usual big red flag question/demand is, "Show me which of these standards is not developmentally appropriate for Kindergarten," often phrased as "Which of these things can't a normal 5YO do?"

*sigh*

Music Lessons - Is My Child Ready?

As a music teacher, that's a question I get a lot from parents of kids of all ages. Since a good chunk of my teaching is in the Early Childhood area, parents of younger and younger kids are asking these kinds of questions, so I thought perhaps since Information Is Power, I'd try to give parents a little more information.

So, some background: I grew up in a home where there was ALWAYS music. My mom is a music teacher: when she found out she was pregnant with me, she was teaching junior high band; she taught lessons one afternoon a week out of a spare room in our house when I was small, and when we moved to a new home when I was in middle school, she eventually expanded to 4 days a week. Over the years she would play in the local high school's pit orchestra when they did their Spring musicals and play the soundtracks for those musicals perpetually during the rehearsal window, so I grew up learning songs from a variety of musical theater classics. (Note to other parents: If you're going to play a soundtrack as background in your house and you have a small child who likes to sing along, find out the lyrics BEFORE your small child asks you about some of them in order to avoid uncomfortable questions you'd rather not answer. LOL) I learned a little piano in Kindergarten and then in first grade I tried a few of the instruments we had around the house, settled on the clarinet, and never looked back. By high school, I had a couple students of my own, and when I went to college, my plan was to become a high school band director. After 6 years in an elementary general music classroom and more time in elementary band, I finally got my chance to do high school band - it only lasted two years, and I learned that politics is definitely not my thing, but at least I can cross it off my Bucket List. :-) The place I always had felt least comfortable was in the elementary general music classroom; the younger the kids were, the more ill-at-ease I felt. Small kids were definitely NOT why I went into Music Education.

Teaching as Gardening, or Another Reason I'm Against Common Core

It's been a long slow slog toward Spring here in the mid-Atlantic this year; on the way to school the other day, Monkey actually sighed wistfully and said, "I wish it was Spring!" I had to break it to her that not only was it already Spring, it had in fact BEEN Spring for over a month. She was understandably underwhelmed as she shivered in the car on the way to school. LOL

Finally, though, we've had a couple weeks without frost, and so I've planted a good portion of my veggies in the garden bed reserved for that purpose. I started, naturally, with the cold-resistant plants: kale, beets, spinach, carrots, peas. These are the ones that grow best in the early spring and in fact, many of them don't do well in too much heat, so once Summer kicks in, the peas will die back and be replaced by cucumbers, and the lettuce will become bitter and the spinach will "bolt," growing tall and sending up a center stem and flowering and going to seed, because their "window" has passed. That, though, is when the green beans, summer squash, strawberries, herbs, tomatoes, and okra tend to flourish, in the warmer and hotter weather of later Spring and through the Summer. Once Summer draws to a close, there will be other vegetables to harvest in Fall, some even after the first frost, that aren't even planted yet (but will give us lots of food thru Fall and Winter). In other words, it's not just one garden "season," but a sequence of "seasons."

Common Core State Standards: Why American Parents Should Pay Attention

Perhaps you've heard the buzz in the past year or so, or maybe just the more recent outrage, about the "Common Core State Standards." What are they? Why should we care?

There has been an incredible amount written about CCSS from both those who support them and those who oppose them. For anyone who doesn't know or couldn't guess, I'm opposed. STRONGLY. Why? Read on to see: