Most people would agree that it’s a good idea for educators to work from a written plan that is focused on students learning important knowledge and skills. Writing a set of standards is a way to create such a plan.

In the district where I taught for 20 years, teachers, parents and administrators worked together to write standards for language arts. There was a tremendous sense of ownership, and for five or six years those standards were alive and well in K-12 classroom. Then what happened? Teachers retired and new teachers were hired. Administrators moved up the ladder of responsibility. Interestingly enough, parents were the most stable element of the group, many remaining closely involved with the schools as one child after another reached kindergarten age and entered the system.

The natural turnover in education makes it necessary to revisit standards for them to remain viable. About the time that our language arts standards needed a visit, several other sets of standards competed for attention. When different directions are coming from multiple sources, the natural response is to shut out the confusion and rely instead on what is most familiar. Under such circumstances, teachers reach back to what they experienced in school, modulated somewhat by what they learned in teacher preparation programs. In other words, confusion about standards tends to reinforce the habits of the past and impede progress toward the future.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have the potential to clarify what’s important in a 21st century education by establishing shared standards in all states. (At this writing, four states have declined to adopt the CCSS and one is using only the language arts standards.)

There are essentially two approaches to writing standards. One is to list every skill and concept that a child should learn by grade level, K-12. The problem with this approach is that teachers may feel the need to race at a breakneck pace through the long to-do list, sacrificing real learning for covering the curriculum. The other approach is to decide on a small number of essential skills and concepts that students will be working on throughout their years of school, and to back this list up with more detailed information about what mastery of the essentials looks like at each grade level. This approach gives teachers permission to limit the number of topics covered and focus on individual needs and strengths. This is the approach taken by CCSS.

As long as I have been involved in education, people have worried about national standards and national tests. The typical line taken is that parents, teachers and administrators want local standards and local control. In a society as mobile as ours, it’s a huge responsibility to prepare students for college, careers and, we hope, fulfilling lives given that they may eventually live in a wide variety of regions and settings. The responsibility gets even huger when we think about how rapidly our knowledge base is increasing, along with the technology to share and store that knowledge.

In my opinion, we need to “think globally and act locally.” All learning is local because it can only happen in a specific, personal context, but those who guide learning need to have a larger perspective. The CCSS offers that larger perspective to parents and educators nationwide. It’s important to note that a recent poll of members of the American Federation of Teachers shows 75 percent support CCSS. Teachers recognize the value of shared standards, but they need some time and support to do a good job of integrating them in their long-term plans and in their day-to-day work with students.

Jeanetta Jones Miller taught for 25 years in public schools in Albany, California, and Newtown, Connecticut, serving as English department chair at Newtown High School from 2001 to 2011. She specialized in curriculum development and served on committees that developed interdisciplinary reading and writing standards.

The zombies have arrived at Education.com. Fast ones, slow ones, nice ones and no-ones. (Sorry — we went on a department field trip to a Dr. Seuss exhibit last week; it is clearly still with me.)

We recently published a new batch of workbooks, and Zombpocalypse was one of them. We were so excited! And then, technical issues. It happens sometimes. Anyone who downloaded the workbook early on will know that two of the pages showed up mysteriously blank:  in the middle of a history of zombies and between the anatomy of the brain and emergency survival tips.

Luckily, we’ve fixed it. The text and images are now in their proper place and the zombies are here to stay. Users who downloaded workbooks with missing pages may try downloading again.

The middle school book club I teach on Saturdays just completed a piece of fantasy literature: The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor. The book functions on the premise that Alice in Wonderland is real — but Lewis Carroll distorted Alice’s story while she was here on planet earth. The real Wonderland is a realm of violent warring factions who wage battle using sophisticated magic and technology. It’s a cool concept, and was definitely a nice break from the tougher stuff I tend to give my middle school class (This Boy’s Life was met almost unanimously with groans and I spent way too much time in class explaining why Toby can’t simply be dismissed as “a bad kid”).

The Looking Glass Wars was definitely a fun book, and Frank Beddor (the producer of There’s Something About Mary) basically basically wrote it as a blueprint for a Hollywood film. The book itself loaded with some befitting tropes: characterization happens really rapidly, people in the book embody the classic hero and villain archetypes, and themes like the power of imagination are delivered in a pretty in-your-face manner. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it presented me with a cool opportunity to get kids thinking about the elements of a Hollywood movie and common Hollywood character types.

But then there was this: the publisher inserted several glossy pages featuring very detailed “concept art” in the middle of the book. Upon seeing the illustrations, one of my students exclaimed, “They’re all white!”, a comment that elicited a chorus of giggles from her peers. Read the rest of this entry »

May is National Historic Preservation Month. Did you know that? I didn’t until my coworker told me a few weeks ago. But now that I do, I’m excited! History is totally my jam.

I know, I know: History? Really? I’m well aware of the reputation that history, especially as a school subject, has gained over the years. Luckily, working at this place has allowed me to indulge my love for history, preservation, and all things old. For instance, I produced this workbook here and had a blast doing so. The development of this series was really just an excuse for me to dig around in some archival photos. I visit the Wikipedia pages of certain historical figures so often that I’ve rechristened them with friendly nicknames (Susie B, G-Dub, G-Dub C). Though it’s consistently at the low end of favorite subjects for the majority of kids, I’ve always been amazed and astounded by history.

Read the rest of this entry »

Early in the morning, on the grounds of Bartow high School in Bartow, Florida, Kiera Wilmot conducted a science experiment by mixing some common household chemicals in a plastic water bottle. The chemical reaction produced a small explosion that caused the top to pop off and some smoke to rise out of the bottle. Nobody was hurt, and no damage was caused to school property.

In addition to being expelled from school, Wilmot is being charged for “possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds” and “discharging a destructive device.” There’s a chance she will be tried as an adult.

Read the rest of this entry »

My favorite class in high school was the one where I wrote boring essays to fill arbitrary length requirements. I learned valuable lessons. I learned to use two adjectives that mean the same thing. I learned the art of the go-nowhere tangent. I learned that passive voice created longer sentences than active voice. I learned to say the same thing twice. I learned to repeat myself. Courier New was everyone’s favorite font. It turned one and a half pages and a C+ into two pages and an A.

Those were the days. I was rewarded for bad habits.

These days, I love concise language. Everyone does. Making clear points quickly is a 21st century skill that should be taught early. It’s a career skill, a conversation skill, a life skill. Nobody has time for wordiness, from the kid taking your lunch order to the head honcho at your workplace. Read the rest of this entry »

“You’re worthless.”

Did that ad just tell me I’m worthless?

As an editor I’m constantly clicking through Education.com—finding articles, checking on new worksheets, looking at content much like one of our members might. And like anyone on the Internet I’m moving fast. So I was already waiting for the next webpage to load when I read that.

I laughed and joked to myself, I think I just got bullied by our website.

A week later I saw it again. It might have told me “Everybody hates you.” This time I was ready; Read the rest of this entry »

There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question. 

—Carl Sagan

Rolling your eyes at Edith here might make you look cool to your peers, but after 2 years of teaching SAT I feel like one of my biggest imperatives is encouraging more kids to take a cue from her methodology

As one of the “new kids” in the Education.com office, I find myself asking a lot of questions—about processes, the back end of the site, policies for freelancers, and just about everything. Like many of people in the working world, I’m chary of creating the impression that answers to these questions don’t stick when I’m provided with them. The problem is that I always tell my students that “there’s no such thing as a dumb question”—that is, unless your question is disingenuous or deliberately disruptive. I’m pretty bad at taking my own advice.

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It’s the holiday season as far as I’m concerned. First, we had a joyous April Fools Day. Fake parking tickets still work after all these years. And now we’ve got Screen-Free Week starting on April 29.

These are alpacas. I learned about alpacas last night while enjoying screen-free human interaction.

What’s Screen-Free Week, you ask? It’s like Christmas. The differences are that it doesn’t cost you anything, the weather is nicer, and instead of giving people gifts, you give yourself the gifts of fresh air, rested eyes, and human interaction.

Originally called TV Turnoff Week in 1994, its creators probably never imagined how many normal Joes would walk around town carrying magical cell phones with Internet, video, music, games, and an app that saves a parking space for you. Yes, that exists.

Even so, the basic idea remains the same. Too much screen time isn’t good for you, and it’s especially bad for kids. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which runs the event, would remind you that preschoolers average 32 hours of screen media per week. But you knew that. You also knew that screen time can lead to irregular sleep patterns, body image issues, lack of creativity, early childhood aggression, academic failure, and weight problems. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve coached basketball to kids of every age from 4 to 18, and I’ve found that sports not only teach life lessons to the kid wearing the jersey, but also the coach sitting on the bench (or standing, yelling and stomping his feet). Learning to coach basketball is a lesson in leadership, not just V-dribbles and jump stops. Here are four basketball coaching concepts that go much further than the hardwood.

1. Focus on fundamentals: Build skills, build them some more, and keep building them.

Many youth coaches make the mistake of teaching complicated strategic concepts while their players lack the physical skills to put these concepts into use. Good coaches teach the fundamentals—dribbling, passing, shooting and footwork—and practice them at every practice. In the long run, the kids become more skilled Read the rest of this entry »