Through the Eyes of a Student Teacher

Teaching. Teachers. Education. All these topics are coming under the lens as common core standards and teacher evaluations and more come into the schools. It's easy to say one thing or another about the benefits and negatives of all the different school reforms. I see students who have yet to really enter the classroom have all these opinions and ideas about what is happening inside the classroom, and I used to be with them before I started being in the classroom all the time.

Teacher evaluations are happening, the students are experiencing more testing, and common core is now a requirement, but it isn't necessairly affecting the students as much as we might think. Forenote: I am writing from my personal experience in my classroom. Other classrooms around the city may be experiencing different things.

The most impactful current change happening inside the classrooms is the implementation of the Common Core Standards. These standards are being implemented all around the US. These standards are different from previous standards because they state the goals that the students must be able to accomplish, but it doesn't state how it needs to be done. There currently isn't a set curriculum for how teachers must teach these standards and as long as teachers are reaching these standards and are showing that their students are meeting these standards. It is difficult for teachers this year because they may be formatting their lessons to fit this standards, but if they already had lessons planned, they just need to correspond their lessons to the standards. These standards will be good as long as the districts don't force teachers to implement a specific curriculum that is completely cookie cutter, and doesn't allow for differentiation within the classroom. After this year, teachers who have now implemented common core should be able to continue teaching well as long as there isn't a curriculum that gets shoved onto them.

What has been really upsetting lots of teachers is the new teacher evaluations, which should be happening, but not the way that has been implemented. Teachers should know what  they are doing well and what they need to improve, but they definitely shouldn't be punished for not being effective on some aspect. Teachers a self-motivated already that if they are told they need to work on something, they will work on it without needing to set up a contract with the district on how they plan to improve. My teacher did well on her first evaluation but she is always nervous about how well she'll do on her evaluation. Teachers aren't upset that they are geting evaluated, they are upset that if there is something they need to improve on, they are getting punished for not being completely effective on every aspect of their teaching. They end up on a contract, even if they are not effective on just one aspect. That's ridiculuous. It would be most nerve wracking for first time teachers who are  learning how to manage their own classroom and are learning what works and what doesn't work. They will be spending many years perfecting and learning the best ways to be the most effective teacher they can be. So it doesn't make sense to punish them for not immediately being effective. It's something that they are still learning.

The last thing I've seen in the classrooms that has also been recently implemented in the additional testing that the students have had to do. I am in a first grade class, so they had to recently take the PIA. This fairly short assessment (only 3 questions long) focused on different math standards. Some of the questions seemed unreasonable to what the standards asked, but it also showed the teachers which concepts students needed to work on. The teachers then took the problem that was most difficult and taught that concept again. Giving the tests did take away from some teaching time, but not any more time than a school assembly or other thing that has happened in the classroom before. I don't love that students are spending more time taking tests, but if these tests can provide instant feedback to teachers about what their students need to work on, then it can be more beneficial.

Being the classroom clears up a lot of conceptions that pre-pre-service teachers may have as well conceptions that the media provides to the public. There will always be changes to the education system, and teachers will always be learning how to adjust. When you chose to be a teacher, you chose to be in an ever changing system. We haven't found a perfect system yet, and there is always going to be things we don't love, but we need to remember that these changes do not define what we do as teachers. Teachers do so much more, and can do so much more despite all these changes.