A great deal of public school teachers hear the word standards and their skin may cringe. Standards, however, do serve a positive purpose although it appears that they may be a wasted of time. For example, standards would have made my life, and the lives of teachers in my department much easier this school year (I work in a catholic high school if you did not read my intro).
When it came time to make the midterm, all of the teachers in our department created separate midterms. When we found out that we needed one midterm for our department, we ran into many problems because each teacher taught different topics/chapters. If we had standards, or some type of set curriculum, we would not have run into this problem. The social studies standards keep the various topics easy to read for the teachers, parents, and students. I believe that students need to be made aware of the standards because they need to understand why they are in place.
Although we do not currently use the NJCCCS at my school, I will not be dreading them if/when I move back into the public school system.
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6 comments:
I agree with Mark's thoughts about NJCCCS. The standards are extremely necessary so that we are all teaching the same material at the same time and our students are learning the same material at the same time.
I work in a district which has five elementary schools k-8. All grade level teachers (K-8)must teach the same content at the same time.We are all tested at the end of each quarter by benchmarks prepared by the district.
Our district has our curriculum in line with the CCCS and our book. Our curriculum is placed on CD's and passed out at the start of school year. At first glance, abiding by the standards and time constraints seems overwhelming, but
is very effective for ensuring that all curriculum criteria is met.
On the surface, and I guess stating the obvious, it appears a lot of continuity is lost amongst the teaching staff by not utilizng standards.
In the long run, I would imagine the students will eventually be disadvantaged when compared to those adhering to the standards? The teaching process must be extremely difficult without having some type of uniform metric(s) in place?
i completely agree standards do set a guideline that makes learning simplier for students and testing easier to design and grade for teachers, besides that njccc and nets esure that student are getting quality education and that teachers are maximizing all their potential
I couldn't have said it better myself. I agree that we need standards and if all the schools would get on the same page, it would make things easier not only for the teachers, but the students as well.
Mark,
Excellent points.
As your classmates have stated, standards are necessary. We have common learning targets (objectives/goals). How we accomplish these are up to us as professionals, btu the NJCCCS are a necessary part of today's educational world.
Thanks!
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