Can Student-Driven Learning Happen Under Common Core?

Jennifer Alfonso-Punzalan

ET
CA

Mindshift.  (2013, February 26).  Can student-driven learning happen under Common Core?  Retrieved from http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/02/can-student-driven-learning-happen-under-common-core/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29.

This article on Mindshift, written by Marsha Ratzel, is about how the Common Core standards will work with student-driven learning.  Ratzel, a middle school Science and Math teacher, believes that the Common Core standards will create many opportunities across and in subject areas for students to take ownership and lead their own education.  She targets English Language Arts standards, Math standards, and Social Science standards that will encourage student-driven activities such as questioning, applying a concept to their own lives, persevering, speaking and listening, and collaborating.  Ratzel predicts that teachers and students have a challenge ahead of them to discard the prescriptive teaching/learning practices that were part and parcel of No Child Left Behind, and that the Common Core will hopefully unshackle educators and learners.

I share Ms. Ratzel's sentiments very much and I, too, am hopeful that the Common Core will bring about real learning opportunities that are student-driven and authentic.  I think teachers will need to have a lot of time to collaborate with one another and share best practices.  Districts and offices of education should provide a lot of quality professional development opportunities to support their teachers with implementing the Common Core standards.  Politicians will need to give the Common Core time to be implemented and let students be really successful learners before they decide to turn the tide again.