Notes on "Focus on Standards" Study
A few points really stood out for me:1. Before states write standards, teachers already have their own standards ("Their own individual sense of what a student ought to be able to do") that they bring to the table. It is a fallacy to consider that without imposing standards teachers won't know what to teach.
2. Teachers need to study ways of reading student writing before they can adapt teaching to the standards.Teacher inquiry groups, for example, in which you formulate and pursue questions. Some teachers in inquiry groups, for example, follow a single student in their writing. What is expected of them? How well do the assignments actually prepare them, assess them, provide them with ongoing support? Think how much we could learn, just by keeping an eye on one student's writing for a week.
3. An important distinction between how the study approached standards and how most districts do, is that teachers in the study where asked to discuss the standards in terms of "what works" and "what doesn't make sense." This allowed the teachers to connect to the standards constructively instead of defensively.
4. Writing means learning! The teachers didn't figure out what they thought about standards and classroom practice until they tried to write about it.
5. It's a myth that you can hand teachers a book of standards and they will be able to teach straight from it. Teachers use the standards that are already in their heads for their daily practice, not something from a binder. This is all based on experience and practice. At the same time, teachers often rely far too much on their own personal standards without opening up to a more balanced approach (See the study about how long it took (years) for the veteran teachers to actually open up to taking a constructive look at what they could get from the standards!)
-Evan Nichols Teacher Consultant Bay Area Writing Project
