Is the Common Core possible for the "in-betweeners"?

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Today has been a frustrating day.  (Sorry, I realize this post is not strictly literature related, but it does apply.)   Yesterday my Social Studies classes began a close reading of the Declaration of Independence.  Just the first paragraph.  Really, just the most famous sentence in the first paragraph.  ("We hold these truths to be self-evident...") My intro to this has always been pretty effective, you know, that this is possibly the most important sentence in American history... that this sentence sums up the foundations of our government... that the idea that all people owned these rights was truly revolutionary, and in many ways still is!

*insert crickets chirping here*

Me:  Well, okay.  Let's look at the text here.  What rights did the authors believe all people have?

*chirp chirp*

Me:  Look at the text!  What rights are all people given by God?

Random student: Uhhhhhh, the right to separate from the British?

Me:  No!  Look at what it says.  What is in the text?!  Find the word "rights"!

*chirp chirp*

This is not the first time this year I've been faced with this problem. Which has left me with the concern that the Common Core is so different from how we've done reading in the past, I don't know if the students who are in the middle of their school careers can be persuaded to adapt to it. There's such an ingrained dislike of reading, as well as a deep-seated resentment towards any reading in content area classes.

It's not that I believe they can't do it, but I fear they will choose not to. I know, for me, trying to push myself to teach differently has been a challenge. I researched, read, thought, and planned to reach a point of buy-in to CCS. We aren't giving the students the chance to buy in, and so many of them are so jaded and disenchanted by the age of NCLB, I'm worried they never will.  Will we lose a whole generation in the middle?

Comments

  1. DylanCharles96November 29, 2012 at 3:18 PM

    Ya my mom has the same problem there hate of reading is like a wall its hard to breach and realy teach this new stuff.

    ReplyDelete

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