Common Core State Standards

There were a few points that stood out to me in Chapter 1 "The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12." Today, we are teaching 21st century students. As teachers, we have to constantly adapt to our student's needs as we move into the future. This includes "adopting roles of social planner, facilitator, and co-learner" and stepping away from the "traditional teacher role." I believe that the most important of these three is to be a co-learner. In this day and age, student's have access to everything you want or need to know at their fingertips. Students have to ability to teach their teachers sometimes, especially when it comes to using new technology. Since students have a vast multitude of resources available to them as they learn, they can read many articles that are conflicting or challenging to the traditional facts or methods of teaching. It is important as teachers to be co-learners and acknowledge these findings our students share with us. At the same time, we should guide them through what they are reading, watching, and looking at. Teaching students about reliable sources and how to access the best resources is essential. Learn with them as you guide their learning.
The common core website as well as this chapter both emphasize the importance of Common Core as an innovative way to move our education system to the top. I hope for this to be true. However, every education reform is believed to be innovative at first. And the chapter says that there is always the risk of "standardizing." So I am interested to see where Common Core takes our education system in the future.
Lastly, the chapter talks about how Common Core is general set of standards that are a road map for teachers. These standards will not tell you what to teach specifically. I think this is a good thing as teachers move towards teaching their students how to learn and think critically instead of focusing on small, irrelevant facts to be memorized for a test.

Discussion in a Democratic Society

While reading Chapter 1 "Discussion in a Democratic Society," I couldn't help but think about my own future classroom. Going to school as a kid, I experienced what my teachers called Socratic seminars. Half of the class would sit in a circle in the middle of the classroom. The other half of the class formed a second circle around the first. The teacher made sure to teach us how to be respectful of other students' opinions and encouraged all students to share their thoughts on the subject. The inner circle would discuss the subject as the outer circle critiqued and graded the person they sat behind. Then, after having adequate time to discuss the subject, the inner circle would switch with the outer circle. The students from the outer circle would now have a turn to discuss the subject. I want to implement something like this is my history classes as discussion is essential to figuring out the "why's" of history. At the same time, as the chapter mentioned, it is difficult to teach students to respect each other and challenge each other's views at the same time. Despite this difficulty, discussion is essential to learning and will be used frequently in my future history classroom.