Educator Effectiveness Academy

My team and I just finished attending a three-day Educator Effectiveness Academy hosted by the Maryland State Department of Education in Anne Arundel County. We heard from curriculum experts and other leaders from MSDE about the MCCSC. During the academy we  were given the opportunity to disect the MCCSC standards, ask questions and provide feedback on certain aspects of the common core structure and design.

I want to thank our master teachers for doing a good job facilitating activities which were designed to help us begin to think about the new MCCSC standards, their implications on teacher training and student achievement and how this information will be shared with teachers this year. 

We learned a lot. However, our introductory training has generated many questions that don't seem to have answers yet. Some of our questions included:

What will be the assessment limits?

Why aren't the structures of the mathematics, English/Reading Language Arts and STEM standards formatted in the same manner?

How do you start teaching these new standards in the middle school when students have not been exposed to the elementary core content building blocks?

How do you balance the need to introduce and begin implementing the new MCCSC standards while at the same time being held accountable to teach the old curriculum that is assessed by the MSA? 

Where will the money come from to support the purchase of technology in order for students to take online tests?

Since the common core doesn't spiral the content in mathematics from year to year, what do you do to help to remediate a child who is below grade level?

While we had many questions, we are excited about the direction we are heading as a state. It reminded me of a quote...

Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident, and more and more successful.

Mark Victor Hansen