TMCnet News
Common Core collaboration among local teachers 'unprecedented'May 19, 2013 (The Bakersfield Californian - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Teacher Diana Cable pointed out the hexagon-shaped name tag, cuboid torso and cone hat on Chloe the homework "robot." "I have never seen my kids more excited than they were about this project," she told colleagues at a brainstorming meeting to plan for new state academic standards. "Every day they kept asking, 'Are we going to work on the robots Are we going to work on the robots '" Chloe was a vehicle to teach kindergarteners at Rosedale North Elementary School about two- and three-dimensional shapes. They have to study those in kindergarten under Common Core State Standards, a set of minimum requirements for what students should know at each grade level. California has joined 44 states and the District of Columbia in adopting Common Core, which was designed to better prepare students for college and the workforce and create more uniformity in educational standards from state to state. Although Common Core goes into great detail about what students should know when, the state Board of Education hasn't dictated how teachers should teach the new standards, nor has it provided a curriculum or instructional materials. That's meant school districts across the state have had to come up with curricula on their own -- a tall order for districts smarting from years of state funding cuts. In Kern County, some districts have joined forces to tackle the problem together. The idea for Chloe grew out of a unique collaboration between the Rosedale, Greenfield, Norris and Fruitvale school districts. Rosedale and Greenfield each have 36 teachers who have been meeting regularly since August. A dozen each from Norris and Fruitvale joined them in October. With help from an educational consultant from publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the Rigorous Curriculum Design Team first underwent training on the demands of Common Core, then set out to design projects and assignments aligned to the new standards. The teachers meet once a month, clustered at tables and desks grouped by close grade levels. Then they pitch ideas and reach a consensus on a curriculum for the developmental level they teach. It's an unusual approach for districts that are friendly rivals, said Fruitvale Junior High School Principal Leslie Roberts. "We have several districts involved who are very competitive as far as test scores go," she said. "Normally we're saying we want to be better than another one, but that's not the goal this time. "Right now we all want to help each other because that's what's best for the kids." Greg Adkins, a participant who teaches at Granite Point Elementary School in the Greenfield district, said in his professional life, this level of collaboration is unprecedented. "I can't ever recall anything where you had four districts working together on something this comprehensive," he said. "That's really amazing." The project began with the Rosedale Union School District, which was making some curriculum adjustments, anyway, to comply with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind. It didn't make sense to make No Child Left Behind revisions only to have to redesign its curriculum again when Common Core was implemented, so the district killed two birds with one stone by getting a head start on Common Core. "Like most districts, we had lost some people due to budget cuts, so whereas in the past we would have had people to do this in-house, it seemed like hiring a consultant would be more cost-efficient, and it would save even more money to go in on it with another district," said Rosedale Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Sue Lemon. When Lemon mentioned the initiative to Lori Aragon, her counterpart at the Greenfield Union School District, Aragon jumped at the chance. "We'd have that person to bounce ideas off of rather than coming up with ideas on our own," she said. Once the initial pair was partnered, word started getting around and other districts sat in on a few sessions to see what they were doing. Fruitvale and Norris liked what they saw so much that they signed up, too. "It's been extremely helpful to plan and coordinate with three other districts," said Norris Assistant Superintendent Kelly Miller. "We wouldn't be anywhere near where we are right now if we hadn't done this, that's for sure." A big advantage of working together is that "every district has different strengths," said Maria Padilla, who teaches at McKee Middle School in the Greenfield district and has been working in the group since its inception. "One might have more gifted students, one might have more EL (English Learner) students, so we all have strategies and ideas that the others might not," she said. Even educators from as far south as Los Angeles and as far north as Fresno have dropped in on the meetings to see what they can learn from them. The kindergarten teachers in the group knocked around a few early math ideas before coming up with the project of building a robot piece-by-piece out of shoe boxes, paper towel rolls and other geometrically shaped castoffs. Cable tried it out in her classroom and reported back to the group on how it went. Children could not add a part until they had correctly named its shape. Each robot also had a function and appropriate accessories. A homework robot held a pencil, for instance. A house work robot held a dust rag. The children named their robots, gave them a purpose in life, and wrote about them in their journals. "They loved it, absolutely loved it," Cable told her colleagues, beaming. And the project snuck in all kinds of Common Core mandates, such as creative thinking and integrating reading and writing skills into math. One of the assignments the third grade teachers came up with was a virtual trip to Yosemite National Park that included graphing monthly temperatures, calculating the height of waterfalls and creating an advertising campaign aimed at potential tourists. In the junior high math cluster, teachers planned to use video game consoles as a teaching tool. The assignment was to research the pros and cons of the various consoles by evaluating factors such as console price, the price of compatible games, and the type and variety of games. Then they were to write about which one would be the best purchase and why. Both exercises met several Common Core objectives, including math computation, applying math to a real-world scenario, and writing. "On my own, I think coming up with all these assignments would have been impossible," said Greenfield Middle School teacher Kalisha Hudgins. "But as a team, we found ways to tackle the task by splitting things up and trusting each other's judgment, not spending too much time on any one thing." The age-group clusters have been handing off their work to other groups of teachers along the way for evaluation and critiques. "We tried to have the grade above or the grade below look at it with a critical eye and give feedback to their teammates because so much of learning is foundational," said Andrea Tottossy, a professional development associate with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Leadership and Learning Center. "I told them not to worry about hurting anybody's feelings," she said. "All of these people will be going back to their home schools and sharing what they've done here, so read them through the eyes of the people who'll be seeing this and asking questions." Although the teachers in the program are feeling the time crunch as the current school year winds down, they said they're grateful and more at ease about next year. "This has renewed my enthusiasm for teaching," said Rosedale North's Cable. "I know it's renewed my students' enthusiasm for learning, especially in the spring when kids are in the doldrums. "This is so valuable to the other teachers at my school. It's making it possible for everyone to feel like they don't have to reinvent the wheel." ___ (c)2013 The Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Calif.) Visit The Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Calif.) at www.bakersfield.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |