Common Core CPR - What About the Adolescents who Struggle... or Just Don't Care

I love this book!   It not only offers suggestions for engaging students who lack interest or motivation, it clarifies information about the common core that just about everything else I've read has ignored.   Two of the sentences from the standards that the book's authors identify as important are "The standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how these goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed," and "Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful in meeting the goals set out in the Standards."    These sentences remove the pressure to teach books recommended in  the appendix of the Common Core for a specific grade level.  If data shows that students in a class are reading well below grade level, I have the freedom to select books that stretch their abilities, rather than being compelled to use books that I know are far beyond their abilities.

This book also recommends choice for students, not just for teachers.  I have found in the past that my struggling students will read if I provide them with a choice of materials and assignments.  This year I am mandated to teach 5 texts to my sophomore students, which removes almost all choice for me and for my students.  To me, this is the ideal way to make students hate reading.  We collect data to evaluate the reading level and interests of students, then force-feed them books for which they have no interest and few of the prerequisite skills.  When students do not know the meanings of simple words like factual, affectionate, hasten, disruptive, or query, expecting them to read Julius Caesar is an effort in futility.  When reading a four page, high interest story in the text book is a accomplishment for them because it was so very long, five acts of Shakespeare must hold the same degree of intimidation to them that War and Peace would have for me.  While this book agrees that our goals must be to move students as close to the standards for their grade as possible, it provides strategies for moving them closer, not insisting that they magically perform at that level just because they are now in grade x. 

I'm sure I'll have more updates on this book over the next few days.  It's just too good to put down, even with a sinus infection.  Now there's motivation.....