Throughout your life as a student you are constantly given
guidelines of what to write and how to write it. Even when your teacher tells
you to be creative, there is still a certain line that you are not allowed to
cross when writing. Upon entering this class I was fully prepared for my
professor to completely wipe my brain clean of what I thought writing was; however,
the exact opposite occurred. There was not complete freedom of course, but I
had never been able to dictate so much during a writing assignment. After
multiple trips to office hours with multiple different revisions I started to
get the hang of “showing rather than telling.” I have always heard teachers
give me that piece of advice but never have they sat down with me and worked on
a piece until I was able to meet their expectations. Taking this class helped
me discover that not all writing has to be formal and tedious to read. Writing
about something you truly care about is a completely different experience
rather than just regurgitating what other people have written.
After researching many different
articles regarding the Common Core State Standards I was able to recognize
exactly what my professor was talking about when he was explaining gaps in
research. What I was finding was a major gap coming from actual teachers! There
were plenty of explanations from administrators and retired teachers on what
they think of the common core and many different graphs and numbers. However,
the teachers were a variable that was often left out. Through my literature
review I was able to explain the common misconceptions of the core as well as
give the reader some standard background information which all led up to my
claim of what the gap was: “are teachers full prepared for the implementation?”
After reading so many articles it allowed me to gain an awareness of the
dynamic relationship between rhetorical situations, discourse community, genre,
and inquiry in order to full develop my upcoming thought and contribution to
the conversation.
Subsequently, in order to close this
gap I had to talk first hand to teachers in different school systems throughout
the country. This allowed me to engage in a meaningful, dynamic, and inquiry
based research process. There was no one to tell me what I had to ask and what
I had to cover during these interviews. I was able to ask questions that I felt
were necessary after digging through multiple different scholarly articles. Which
led me to be able to deduce whether teacher preparation was being offered and
fully taken advantage of, as well as the age appropriateness of the standards,
just to name a couple.
I received responses from eleven
teachers that were divided from three different parts of the country. Because
of this, there was definitely some sorting and analyzing that had to be done. I
was finding many mixed reviews on what these teachers thought which resulted in
follow up questions to narrow down my study. I was able to incorporate multiple
different kinds of evidence even offering solutions as to certain subject
fields needing more preparation than others. There was no easy fix to what any
of these teachers had concerns about but I was able to give them a voice.
Conclusively, I was able to figure
out that teacher preparation depends on the school system, the subject field at
hand, as well as teacher’s willingness to change their teaching strategy as it
is now. As well as coming to a conclusion that these standards are not age
appropriate and if implementation is going to be successful it will have to be
gradual. Talking to teachers in the project I was able to offer good amounts of
valuable information to the academic conversation of the Common Core.
No comments:
Post a Comment