Common Core has appeal to some locally

The name might be vilified, but Common Core has brought much more than controversial testing to local schools.

Many teachers say the actual curriculum changes in Common Core are valuable.

“I think you’d find that’s what most teachers say,” said Duanesburg Central School District Superintendent Christine Crowley, who says her teachers have embraced the changes.

Far from being locked into step-by-step lessons to teach for a test, she said, they’ve flourished.

“I have some amazing teachers in my elementary school, and they do some very creative things,” she said.

Common Core emphasizes “thinking” skills: communication, analysis and problem solving. In Duanesburg, some students are practicing those skills by building robots out of Legos. Fourth graders recently trooped back and forth from their computers, testing their robots and then going back to tweak their programming when the robot didn’t do what they expected.

Their teacher, Geoff Switts, wasn’t disappointed that the students didn’t get the job right on the first try.

“It encourages students to persevere with problem-solving,” he said. “They’re testing things out, re-evaluating. They learn that’s part of the process. Engineers have to do that, too.”

But he added that Common Core shouldn’t get all the credit. He said it simply laid out sensible goals and standards.

“Would I do this even if there was no Common Core? Yes,” he said. “Common Core isn’t teaching these children; teachers are teaching them.”

At Scotia-Glenville, teachers were so eager to have a say in the new Common Core reading curriculum that 29 people, across four elementary schools, have joined a committee to pick new books.

Common Core calls for an increase in nonfiction books, and teachers are finding ways to pair those with the fiction books they read now. In kindergarten, they’re reading a nonfiction book about penguins after reading their well-loved fiction penguin book.

“Students had read a fiction story about several penguins who could talk, walk around, were wearing clothing,” Scotia-Glenville Central School District Superintendent Susan Swartz said.

Next, they’ll read about where penguins actually live and what they eat. This could spark a conversation — penguins eat fish? — and help them understand the difference between fiction and nonfiction.

A fifth-grade teacher is adding nonfiction to enhance students’ understanding of their fiction books.

“They’re reading a fictional survival story,” said Karen Swain, Scotia-Glenville’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. “She brought in a nonfiction article, ‘How to survive in the woods,’ and asked the kids: ‘If you had this, what would you do differently? How would the outcome have changed?’ ”

But it’s not as simple as picking out a few new books and handing them out. For elementary-school children, reading nonfiction is very different, Swain said.

“It is a whole different kind of thinking,” she said. “We have to teach new strategies to unpack the text.”

For example, second-graders learn to identify characters and points of view in fiction. In nonfiction, they have to instead identify the main idea.

The focus on reading in Common Core goes well beyond just adding nonfiction texts.

Students are supposed to wrestle with “authentic” texts — speeches and stories about powerful, important issues. That’s why Schenectady’s 11th graders are analyzing Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman” and Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream,” as well as speeches by presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush.

They have to decide which speech made the best argument.

“What we’re developing is thinkers, not just readers,” said Kate Abbott, Schenectady’s instructional support director.

Before Common Core, many of the district’s reading assignments were simpler, because classes had such a wide range of reading ability. But Abbott said that wasn’t the right way to go.

“Kids who struggle with reading don’t struggle with thinking,” she said.

Elementary-school students still spend 30 minutes or more every day working on stories at their reading level, she said. But they also spend 90 minutes a day on reading and writing at the harder level.

“That’s been a really big shift for us,” Abbott said.

Teachers have to find their own ways to help every student read the texts. It’s not easy.

“You might have a reading level in fifth grade that ranges from first grade to seventh grade,” Abbott said. “The teacher has to think, how’s my second-grade reader going to do this? How am I going to challenge my seventh-grade reader? This is where the work of the teacher comes in.”

They might read part of it aloud or give struggling readers shorter sections to read alone, Abbott said.

“It’s not about whether they decode every word,” she said. “Can they grasp the central idea? Can they form an argument from multiple texts?”

That’s a big emphasis of Common Core. Even young students are now taught how to debate ideas after reading texts on an issue.

Despite the wide range of reading ability, it’s going well in Schenectady.

“Really, to hear a 9-year-old say, ‘I respectfully disagree with you because …’ and be right on the money, it just gives you chills,” Abbott said.

Teachers lead discussions now on child labor, slavery and other “real issues” that are worth spending two to five weeks on, Abbott said.

The changes are everywhere. High-school history classes now must include geography. Science classes involve more hands-on experimentation. In some ways, it’s like putting every student into an honors-level class.

The fifth-grade science curriculum in Schenectady now calls for analyzing the nutritional value of school lunches. That’s the sort of thing only the “enriched” or “gifted” class would have done in the past, Abbott said.

“We’re trying to push enriched learning strategies, because smart is something you can be taught,” Abbott said.

It all comes down to the theory behind Common Core, she said.

“Smart is working hard. You work harder, you get smarter.”

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