Beach, Thein, and Webb’s (2012) Chapter on ELA CCSS

            I taught GED and Adult Basic Education (ABE) in Idaho from 2003 to 2009.  Adult ed students had to be at least 16 years old, and the oldest student I taught was 84.  That wide age range offered a tremendous array of abilities/disabilities, diversity issues, experiences, and, of course, problems like hunger and no school due to jail time.  In 2009, about the time when the nation’s economy began to suffer, our program lost a significant amount of funding, and my position ended.  At that time, we had only loose guidelines to direct our instruction.  I might have welcomed the specificity of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in my curriculum development.

            I have limited experience with the CCSS.  During Dr. Torgerson’s The Composition Process class, I completed one project that included the CCSS.  I have learned that the CCSS allows teachers to “develop innovative ways of teaching [the] curriculum” (Beach, Thein, & Webb, 2012, p. 7).

            One of the reasons that Beach, Thein, and Webb stated how educational standards can negatively affect achievement is teachers having to teach to the test.  This fact is completely different from what I knew while teaching adults.  We had some standards, too, but they were all about whether students could pass the five GED tests.   My courses centered on increasing the students’ skills so they could take and pass these tests.  “Teaching to the test” was what I was expected to do every day during every course. 

            I appreciated that the authors noted, “If your students perceive you as knowledgeable and excited about learning, then they may be more likely to be excited” (p. 8).  That statement is so very true.  My students trusted me to know the material that I was trying to teach them.  And also to teach in a non-boring manner because, after all, teachers are entertainers.  I wasn’t expected to know it all though.  If I didn’t know something, students liked that I was the first one to admit it.  They would race each other to find the answers.  They loved schooling me. 

            I completed my teaching practicum in an eighth-grade classroom.  I couldn’t have predicted that I would teach anywhere but junior high.  In reality, I ended up teaching adults in their 40s and 50s who had educational abilities at the junior-high and sometimes lower levels.  So the junior-high factor came true, just in a different way.  My experiences taught me to keep an eye open for opportunities.  Learning more about the CCSS is another of those opportunities.