Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12

            I have never really had an issue with the idea of having a list of common core state standards. It is nice to have a sort of goal to reach, especially of you are like me and are just getting your feet wet with the whole teaching thing. The section that stood out to me the most in this reading is the part where it kind of glances over the concept of “teaching to the test” very briefly. Though the chapter talks about this concept and basically says that it is a bad thing to do but it does happen, I feel that they could have hit on how some schools may be becoming up fed up with standardized tests (this chapter was published in 2012). The article does say that as educators we must resist the urge to teach to the test but I would like to know how other teachers and schools are resisting this urge. Are they doing so while also meeting the requirements of the standardized tests? Are they disregarding the standardized tests all together? I know, for example, Cheney High School last year just ignored taking the most recent standardized test all together. Most teachers and parents felt that, as this test was not affecting their grades nor counting towards any form of college admission, taking this new test was detrimental to their students’ learning and interfering with the flow of knowledge. “Opt out” forms were being passed out by students and parents left and right while the teachers, who could not legally tell the students not to take the test, hoped for the best and would not get penalized by higher-ups for the very low test turnout. “Teaching to the test” is indeed a problem in the 21^st century and we as future educators need to make sure that our school systems do not turn in to diploma mills.

Chapter One: Discussion in a Democratic Society

               When I started out as a freshman here at Eastern, I always dreaded going to classes where the professor encouraged everyone to participate in whole class discussions and based your participation points of whether you added to the class discussion or not. However, as I have gotten older and realized that adding to a discussion can be as simple as making a quick statement, I no longer dread, and in fact I kind of look forward to, going to discussion based classes. Nowadays, lecture classes can bore me to tears and I feel that almost all classes should be discussion based. There is so much knowledge to be spread between peers and if it is only the professor talking the entire class time about important topics or issues, then the entire class is only learning one perspective of the topic at hand. After reading this article, I feel the most important requirement to a discussion that most people have a hard time overcoming is creating a hospitable (or welcoming) environment. Some discussions, especially about hotly debated topics, can become so heated to the point where the discussion dissolves in to a contest to see who can scream their opinion the loudest over the other person. This will no doubt intimidate other people who were thinking about joining the discussion and will make them just want to sit on the sidelines in silence. We have to remain civil and respect one another during discussion in order to maintain that hospitable environment we seek to achieve. Tying back in to my earlier sentences about my personal experiences with discussions, it was only when I started encountering these hospitable environments did I actually want to start participating in whole-class discussions, even if it meant just adding a statement or two to the discussion. Hospitality, in my opinion, is the result of all other requirements of a discussion acting together as one.