Hailey's English Adventures

Since Washington adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2011 and then fully implemented into schools in the 2014-15 school year, the standards have been a hot-button topic ever since.  I was a freshman in high school when Common Core became the talk of the crowd and people had mixed feelings about the topic; some people hated the standards, some felt they were heaven on earth, and many were somewhere in between and felt torn over the subject.  As a 15-year-old, I didn’t really have too much to say about CCSS because I didn’t know much about the standards and felt I couldn’t speak about what I didn’t understand fully.  I just knew Common Core was a set of standards and benchmarks students of all grade levels were going to be expected to meet.  Then, my mom went back to school to become a middle-level math teacher and I learned a lot more about what Common Core actually is when she was going through her education classes and edTPA process.  She was able to...

As Stephen Brookfield asked his readers to do at the beginning of the article, I thought about the many different discussions I’ve been a part of during my student career and what made the discussions good or bad.  Something that would make discussions good was when teachers made an effort to make sure every student had an opportunity to speak if they so wished.  I would say the bad discussions where when basically two to three people talking back and forth and not allowing other students the chance to speak up during these discussions.  Also, the teacher didn’t step in and give other students opportunities to state their opinions.  Therefore, good discussions were when multiple students were able to contribute to the discussion and provided a variety of comments to create a vibrant discussion.  Sometimes this happened on its own; however, there were times when the teacher would stop the conversation and ask if there are other students who would like to give th...