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Yesterday we featured a blog post that highlighted the tools that NCLR has created to help parents, educators, and advocates understand and implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Today we want bring to you the teachers who are currently doing the heavy lifting that is required for CCSS to work. For today’s “Spotlight on Education Excellence” we talked to two teachers who have acted as trailblazers in the CCSS movement.
Daniela Figueroa and Viviana Fimbres, teachers at Luz-Guerrero Early College High School, have been part of a two-year-long CCSS math pilot program. These two teachers were instrumental in helping NCLR and the rest of the education community understand how a curriculum based on the CCSS can be successfully implemented in the classroom. Their efforts were also the topic of a popular workshop session at the 2011 NCLR Annual Conference.
Both Fimbres and Figueroa admitted to being nervous about embarking on this project. They are good teachers who have always taken pride in their instruction capabilities. The prospect of this new curriculum was daunting, but they were up for the challenge.
A crucial feature of the CCSS curriculum is more engagement on the part of the students. The two teachers talked extensively about how this element of student engagement has changed the way they approach teaching now, as well as describing how rewarding it has been.
“CCSS has changed the way we present new information to students. It’s forced us to be more creative in order to get them to think more creatively,” explained Figueroa. “When we present new information now, we’re finding that students are much more engaged.”
Before the teachers implemented CCSS, their students were at best uninterested in the concepts they were learning and rarely able to independently articulate them. Figueroa and Fimbres had to learn how to get their students to come up with math concepts by themselves—something that is not easy to do. One feature of the CCSS curriculum is starting students from what they already know rather than teaching them foreign concepts of which they have no prior understanding. Lessons that started from a point of little understanding usually frustrated students into being uninterested. But now, while the material is certainly challenging, Figueroa and Fimbres have managed to get near 100% involvement in math projects.
“The energy is really amazing in the classroom now. Students love the way the lessons are set up, and they are more excited about their work. You can really see how proud of themselves they are now,” said Fimbres. “Teaching variables, for example, can be a very abstract lesson to teach, but just today they were using variables without even knowing it!”
Of course, the pilot program has not been without real challenges.
“Some of the lessons are difficult for the ELL students, because some of the lessons include language skills,” says Figueroa. “Implementing CCSS—and building instructional materials—needs to be responsive to ELL students, because it’s been a challenge to create a cohesive instructional unit.”
Another challenge, the teachers say, is getting the students to explain their reasoning. They cite time as a major factor, because giving everyone the opportunity to participate requires a lot of classroom management, which can be difficult for overcrowded schools.
“The students we teach are used to the teachers being the leaders,” says Figueroa. “It’s important that students understand that they will have to be more engaged, that there is no alternative.
Both teachers add that their students felt comfortable after a while, basically after they got used to the new model of teaching. They credit a combination of experience—the pilot is now in its second year—training, and collaboration with other teachers.
After talking with Figueroa and Fimbres, we could see that implementing CCSS has changed their perception of the power of teaching and their outlook on the profession in general. They are truly excited about the promise that CCSS holds for revolutionizing the American education system.
As for advice to any teachers who will soon have to implement the CCSS curriculum, Figueroa and Fimbres say, “don’t give up!”
“It’s a challenge, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll see the difference. It will take a lot of perseverance, a lot of planning, and a lot of talking with other teachers. No matter what, have faith in the program and have faith that this kind of teaching will give your students the kind of skills they need to solve any math problem. It has been amazing journey for us and we are better teachers for it.”