No, Really, The Common Core Isn't That Evil

Yesterday at the grocery store, someone wanted the clerk to price check how much it would be for 2 items that each cost $1.96. The girl couldn't do it. Someone else in line said "Just do 2 dollars times 2, then take away the 8 pennies." I giggled and said that's how my brain did it too.

This caused the original confused person who wanted the checker to do the math to launch into an anti common core rant because "that's not the way math should be taught."

But the person who offered the suggestion was easily older than my parents - so they didn't learn the CCSS way. And I'm in my 30's, so I didn't learn the CCSS way. The confused person was between us in age. The education world goes in cycles. We're currently in a cycle that believes in understanding the "why" behind things ... the previous cycle believed in figuring out the answer with formulas.

Since the last set of people to go through school were taught long division, we know the formula. But not everyone can explain why it works. Can you explain why when you divide fractions you just flip it over and multiply? For some situations, maybe you don't need to understand why things work. But if you know why they work, you'll have the number sense to figure out that maybe you pushed a button wrong on the calculator.

#1 - We'll go through more cycles so don't get yourself all worked up about it

#2 - The federal gov't didn't tell us to teach this. Teachers & ed experts from multiple states wrote them, reviewed them, and they're actually decent if you take the time to look at them. No, seriously. Look at any random language arts standard. Read what they have to do in 12th grade, and then read backwards how they mapped it all the way down to what we can teach a 5 year old to prepare them for high school eventually. It's really interesting how the littlest things like asking questions about a photograph can help them in the long run.

#3 - If you hear someone admit to being a doctor or a lawyer, do you feel the need to tell them how to do their job? Because it's getting to the point where I'm scared to let the general population know I'm a teacher, because immediately they launch into the evil empire that is the CCSS. It's scary.

We'll teach your kids. They'll learn. They don't care how we learned it when we were kids. We can teach them a lot of things. It's no different than teaching them anything else they don't know yet. That's why we went to college. Teaching is different than just talking in the general direction of kids. But when you tell your kids that their teacher is stupid and doesn't know what they're talking about, your kids don't want to learn anymore. How is that helping?

Breathe deep people, it'll all be ok.