Area schools prepare for new way of teaching

Education is constantly evolving, whether to keep up with new technology, implement new teaching methods or react to changes in society and culture. The next effort to enhance the education system are the Common Core Standards, which replaces the previous No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy.
Unlike No-Child, Common Core is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association’s Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).
Although forty-five states and. U.S. territories, with the exception of Puerto Rico, have adopted the Common Core, it is not a mandatory program.
On Oct. 12, 2010 Kansas adopted the program.
The standards were developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators and other education experts to prepare students from kindergarten through high school to succeed during college, trade school and throughout their career.
The standards steer away from teaching to a test, to a more comprehensive learning of a subject.
Students are expected to be on the same level, nation-wide, with the Common Core, so if a student moves from one state to another they can pick up right where they left off.
School districts can either purchase the curriculum or design their own.
In Allen County, each school district, USD 257, 258 and 256, have each chosen different routes.

USD 256, Marmaton Valley
USD 256 has teamed up with Uniontown and Central Heights and purchased a curriculum through Greenbush, Southeast Kansas Education Service Center.
Jeremy Boldra, Marmaton Valley High School principal, said one of the reasons for teaming up the schools was to get teacher collaboration.
“We are small and we typically have one teacher per content,” Boldra said. “We don’t get as much collaboration and spin off of ideas.”
They purchased deconstructed standards, which essentially help “unpack” the curriculum in order to develop lesson plans.
With the Common Core Standards there is a much greater emphasis on writing skills, such as opinion or agreement papers.
“It’s about teaching a content in a different way,” Boldra said. “It is essentially getting back to the art of teaching. It used to be that teachers were focused on teaching toward a test, for the past 10 years or so. Now, we’re really back to teaching basics and the knowledge they should have by a certain point (in their education) from K through 12.”
There hasn’t been much implementation in the classrooms, one reason, Boldra said, is because the state hasn’t released assessments yet.
Teachers are making adjustments in their lesson plans to get more familiar with the new content and to slowly expose students as well.
The district has also been hiring more substitute teachers so the teachers can attend more training sessions to become aligned with the new curriculum.
“I have talked to principals and superintendents whose teachers are worried about the evaluation, they are a little more leery about that rather than the standards,” Boldra said. “There is always hesitation and suspicion if your evaluation will change.”
Boldra is positive about the direction education is headed.
“I feel like Common Core is nationally where we need to get,” Boldra said.

USD 257, Iola School District
USD 257 chose to design its own Common Core curriculum, starting with mathematics, and has already begun implementing some of the curriculum.
“We have been working on (the curriculum) since 2010,” Curriculum Director Angie Linn said. “Our assessments are based on Common Core Standards with 15 percent being (Kansas state) anchor standards,” Linn said of the former curriculum.
For the past three years Linn and her crew have been working on a new math curriculum.
Language arts will be the next subject to be implemented followed by social studies and science.
Linn and a team of teachers and administrative staff have been attending Common Core Standards conferences and planning meetings.
Planning committees have been formed for each subject, made up of representatives for each grade level, K-12.
Last week, a math subject area committee met at Iola Middle School to continue work on writing assessments for the local district curriculum, which will be validated during the 2013-2014 school year.
“The time spent away from the classrooms is beneficial, because it gives the teachers time to share ideas and resources, write their curriculum and learn the Common Core standards,” Linn said.
According to Linn, there has been a switch in teachers’ thinking and teaching methods. The Common Core Standards focus more on the application process. The old method of teaching toward a single test style is no longer applicable. Students now will be required to apply their knowledge in multiple formats of testing, proving a comprehensive knowledge of a subject.
Technology has become a major part of education. Kids need to learn not only how to write a report but the most efficient way of typing, such as the home row on a keyboard.
“The new focus is not on individual abilities alone but also on the ability of students to work within groups and learn from each other,” Linn said.
There are skills that students will be expected to learn earlier. By the third-grade, students will need to know how to give presentations with audio and animation.
The new standards have created some natural uneasiness among teachers, Linn said.
Assessments will get away from answer-question style tests; instead students will have to show they know the information through presentations.
“Kids may not (have a problem with it), they are more resilient,” Linn said. “I think they will enjoy the application process, showing not only their skills but also their knowledge of the subject or component being tested.”
Next year when students go through their end-of-year assessments, a portion of the questions will be derived from the Common Core Standards. These questions will act as a tracking point but will not count against students in their assessment scores.
Linn is confident USD 257 will be prepared by 2014 to fully implement Common Core Standards.

USD 258, Humbold School District
USD 258, like Iola, chose to generate its own curriculum.
They began the constructing process last year and over the summer a team was sent to the Kansas Department of Education Summer Institute to become better acclimated with the new standards.
“We are working to build a foundation with the new standards,” USD 258 curriculum director Kay Bolt said. “We are learning the new terminology and vocabulary. We are delving into it slowly.”
Bolt said one of the major goals with Common Core is to prepare students to do more research on their own and be more familiar with technology skills.
“Before (teachers) were teaching toward a test. Now, it is a more broad umbrella,” Bolt said. “Students are more responsible, they work in groups and learn how to hypothesize (on their own).”
Slowly, curriculum has been implemented into the classrooms by using instructional practices. By introducing the new standards slowly it makes not only the teachers but also students more comfortable with the changes.
“It’s kind of like building a plane in the air,” Bolt said.
A planning committee will continue to work on the new curriculum and will be ready for full implementation by 2014.
“We’re trying to get there, and we will,” Bolt said.