Success and Common Core – A teacher’s perspective

(Walt Williams | Special to The Sun) You lead with the story about the cashier at CVS who couldn’t count change and said, as an excuse, “Sorry, Sonoma High math department.” You channeled local oracle Paul Touhy and told the cashier to put on her big girl pants, stop blaming others and be responsible for her own learning. You also tell the story of the teacher, long since retired, who bragged to you once how she was failing half of her freshman Algebra class. You replied to the teacher, “If I failed half my class I would stop teaching, cause it would mean that I’m failing.”

You measure success by the comments the students write in your yearbook. You have many barometers for academic success-graduation rates, tests, grades, data, but to you the most important thing is what they write.

You recently presented what should have been a simple explanation about the short and long-term goals for the Common Core to all the middle and high school math teachers. You changed the focus to, “What is a good teacher?” because frankly you’re tired of the Common Core (You secretly named your presentation, “F the Common Core” but with the superintendent in attendance, you kept it PG-13). You’re tired of the flavor of the month, tired of putting new lipstick on the same pig. Good teaching is connecting with students, teaching why smart is good and dumb is bad.

You are tired of people who think the common core is new. It is not, it is the same thing your Davis High School English teacher taught when he tossed his keys up in the air 35 years ago to teach the class about nouns and verbs, “Benjamin tossed keys.” You don’t remember much else from that English class but you remember that strange looking little balding man throwing his keys up in the air giving context to content

Mikey Sealey was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the end of the summer. His brother John was a student of yours who was so nervous about performing his poetry that he would only perform in your classroom, door closed, with only you as an audience. John now goes by Notrotious, and you showed his Notrotious Halo video as a lead for a unit on the lymphatic system in Biology class. You also told John’s story to a reluctant student who was nervous about performing an original song during her senior project.

You recently asked football coach Bob Midgley the how the season has been, his response was, “Pretty incredible.” Even though the team has only a couple of wins. Students, teachers and the principal shaved their heads in support of Mikey. Tragedy has brought the team and the community together, solidarity exists with students, staff and even the opposing teams are collecting money for the cause (http://www.gofundme.com/ekauyg). These lessons transcend education, these lessons shape lives. Learning? Oh hells to the yes.

You have designed a performance task around the creation of the SONOMAWOOD sign which you construct each year for the Sonoma Valley Film Festival. Students not only design and calculate board footage, cost and angles of the supports but they have to write a letter to Joe Burroughs the comedically-precise city planner about why the sign will not fall down as it almost did in the heavy rains of 2012.

It’s a three-class task. The first day you haul the 4-foot by 10-foot giant O into your classroom and explain what the students are expected to do. Students create their own plans for how they would make and install the sign; the results vary as much as the students.

The second day, you distribute copies of the architectural plans that a certain city planner has you create and get approved each year down to the exact angle measurement and screw type. Students work in groups of three and four measuring and bisecting angles, using the Pythagorean Theorem, calculating costs using the current price from Friedman’s of 8 and10 foot Douglas fir 2×4’s and 4×8 sheets of plywood.

The third day students present their results and their letters. While evaluating each other’s performance, Kelly discovers that Cyrus has used a different formula for finding the angle of the supports. Dante writes a nice feel-good paragraph explaining how great the project is because it connects the students with the community.

You display the picture from last year of the pink D and pirate flag that leads to a debate about first amendment rights. The class is excited to build the letters and set them up in the plaza horseshoe when the film festival begins in the spring plus they learned a few things about angles, slope, measurement, and working collaboratively.

Spirit days, fieldtrips, teachers who connect with students, lunchtime, teams, and clubs these are the things that students remember and cherish. You know your job is to connect students with learning, instill inquiry, show why smart people are better than dumb people but how do you make calculating linear equations interesting?

Some day society will realize teachers should be paid on a scale based on their connection to students. Basic teacher salaries should be doubled or tripled so that more people can afford to work in the profession. More money means higher standards means better teachers means more connecting means more learning. If you don’t love teaching or students, go find something you do love. It’s not,” Those who can’t do, teach”. It’s “Those who can’t teach, should do something else.”

Teachers also need rest, planning and growth time. Summer enrichment programs and mandatory collaboration time. Not just a week in Hayward but a month in South America building schools or helping sea turtles. Lifelong learning combined with a growth mindset and time to recharge the batteries. Teachers should return to school in the fall rested and excited for what is to come. Unfortunately you are usually tired and frustrated from a summer of second and third jobs.

You know all your lessons are not going to be home runs but at least you are planting seeds. Your students know what Habeas Corpus is because local filmmaker Chris Oscar who made the movie “Project Censored” came and spoke to the class. They understand what the first amendment is because you created an eight-foot art project and displayed it in front of the Old School skate shop.

Try, fail, try again, this is life. Your recent unit on elections and the democratic process fell flat (mostly because students don’t feel represented by the process, “It doesn’t matter who wins, nothing changes.”). You don’t give up, new city council elect Rachel Hundley is coming to speak to your class today, you just went fieldtrippin’ to San Francisco, and had your annual Thanksgiving feast next Friday.

Connection, collaboration, context to content. Mr. Benjamin would approve.