English Language Arts Common Core Standards

I have two primary thoughts on the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts: The first one is that the Standards can provide a useful model that teachers can utilize in order to build a structured curriculum. I think this proves especially true for new teachers, who may feel aimless without a foundation to build upon. Personally, I would be grateful to have a sort of guiding template on what to teach my students. My second thought is that the Standards may restrict teachers in regards to idiosyncratic methods that may be helpful to the educational and personal growth of the students, but which do not necessarily conform to the Common Core template. The best teachers I had in high-school were of this idiosyncratic kind. The worst teachers I had were of the kind that too easily disconnected themselves from the classroom by rubric-ready teaching devoid of personality.

In my 10^th grade English class I had a teacher of the idiosyncratic type. On the first day of class he asked a student to stand on a chair and turn a poster upside down. The same poster was hung in every classroom and was emblazoned with a slogan that read something along the lines of: “As a teacher, I guarantee to connect the lessons we learn in class to your future in the workforce.” This teacher spent most of the semester lecturing, with the first 1/3^rd of the time spent on studying the Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave—and spent no effort connecting these “lessons” to the workforce. His personal, beyond-the-guidelines style of teaching was affecting and inspiring to many of his students. But this structure he built for himself was also extremely flawed. The students who were not impressed with his personal style or could not follow the lectures were left afloat and drifting. The lack of structure, goals, and standardization isolated most of the students.

In connecting the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts to my personal history of being an English student, I believe that the best teacher is one that can personalize their teaching style in a manner that is structured enough so that they are able to relay realistic educational goals to all their students. I believe that the Standards are structured enough to act as a guide, but are not too rigid that they disallow idiosyncratic teaching methods.