As a first grade teacher with a focus on teaching literacy I have felt nothing but positivity towards the standards. The way the literacy standards are written you clearly can see how skills build upon each other and how they are mapped to preparing college readiness. What I did not consider was that the common core starts with kindergarten and therefore I get to spearhead the initiative without having to make up any lost time.

However, Jon who taught high school math felt the standards were a step in the right direction but since the expectations of what students should know, when, had moved down a year, he was struggling to make up two years worth of content.

We also noticed that there was a huge difference between the clarity of the math and literacy standards. Literacy seemed more simple and able to understand across contexts where the math was more convoluted.

Questions we walked away with – Are teachers getting too many new things thrown at them constantly to be successful? How can we help teachers in the community to feel supported and valued in adopting these initiatives?

Overall we felt that there was just not enough conversation space for teachers and often with a hectic teacher schedule Meetups can be hard to get to. I would love to have a vibrant interactive community where we talk and share about the things that matter to teachers, things you are concerned about or even teaching successes that you feel the community could benefit from.

Please share your thoughts… on the common core, on starting or continuing the conversation on a Meetup blog… or whatever you feel is important.