Common Coring

Lately, I have had trouble focusing.
Specifically, my struggle to pay attention has been happening during teacher training seminars, more commonly referred to as "Professional Development Opportunities." Two or three times a year, I am asked to leave the friendly confines of my classroom to sit at a long table with my colleagues in sterile-looking meeting rooms; there, my mind will sleepily vacillate from what is being presented by some consultant from an education advisory firm–a proven strategy or revolutionary paradigm that would transform teaching as we, an audience made up of educators who need some sort of direction from these pedagogical mystics, know it–to a series of musings that usually verge on the oracular.
I was the first teacher representing my campus to arrive at "The Common Core Training of Trainers" seminar, my most recent "Professional Development Opportunity." Quickly walking past the other teachers, those whom I vaguely recognized from other trainings that had been dedicated to the celebrating/understanding of the new education initiative being endorsed by President Obama and Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Secretary of Education, and penned by the likes of David Coleman, the President of the College Board, and Jason Zimba, the Founding Partner of Student Achievement Partners, I noticed that the ethos of the room was lively and positive, teachers excited by this supposed paradigm shift in education, The Common Core-where the marriage of rigor and critical thinking will overthrow the despotic and soul-sapping standardized test-laden legacy left by over a decade of No Child Left Behind. Not ready to join in on the pre-seminar mingling, I sat at an empty table, put my head down, and began to take inventory of who I was as a teacher and what I believed in…
I had been a teacher of English in an inner-city school in the largest high school district in California. During my nine year stint at this particular institution of learning, I have encountered three realities in education: 1.) the role of the teacher is to be a healer of social maladies injected into the students' collective psyche-the elixir at our disposal is the blending of critical thought and passionate discourse; 2.) the true products of the educational experience must be new and thus revolutionary and must not maintain the socio-political status quo; and 3.) all hope in education lies with the students and not with the teachers, administrators, and board members, as the latter seems usually to be manipulated by some sort of extrinsic motivator, specifically the acquisition or retaining of power. Unfortunately, these three realities seem to be ignored on an hourly basis, starting from the top, with our Federal, state, and local government’s selfishness manifesting in a deluged of politically opportunistic proposals, through our administration, whose decision-making process seems to be grounded in the fear of having all of their hard work and dedication overhauled by the results of some arbitrary test taken by indifferent students who do not have any stake in the assessment’s outcome, and ending at the teachers, who have been so browbeaten into believing that they have reached the pinnacle of their instructional experience when they can get their students to sit down and shut up long enough for them to pump state sanctioned and thus legitimized knowledge into their presupposed empty heads…
"I am a Common Core nerd!" was the declaration that woke me out of my self-reflective haze. The presenter’s voice was as nasally as it was condescending, but it was obvious to me, and I believe to everyone else attending the six hour training, that this very professional, stylish, and youngish looking lady, who was going to explain how we were to get our colleagues back at the schools where we teach to embrace this inspired, new way of teaching, was very, very passionate about the Common Core. At the very onset of her presentation, the speaker warned us that getting teachers to buy-in to this new way of teaching will be a difficult endeavor, for it is not a matter of getting our coworkers to change their teaching practices; we, the Common Core Trainers (or soon to be, at the conclusion of this seminar), are to change how they view teaching in general. To accomplish this, she continued, we, the Trainers, are charged to create an emotional link to Common Core along with an intellectual connection; essentially, we are to get them excited about this new pedagogical undertaking. While she began to explain in great detail how we are to "shape the teaching environment" so that this change can be implemented, my thoughts shifted away from whatever the speaker was saying as I continued to contemplate…
… the tendency in education of invalidating who our students are as human beings, their passions, knowledge, experiences, and I became saddened by not only the state of our education system, but at the state of our humanity. In its purest form, the educational experience, specifically within the urban context, is a microcosm of the human experience, as it externalizes what is within all of humanity, putting it on the examining table for all to see, deconstruct, and be inspired by the eternity that has been placed within all of us. The result of this practice is a deeper understanding of what it truly means to be human, of who we truly are. Being educated should be a humanizing experience for everyone involved; in other words, students, teachers, administrators, board members, and politicians should leave the experience empathetic to everyone else struggling with the human condition. Instead, the educational experience, especially for those students in an urban environment, has become dehumanizing, as the political decision-makers at the top reign down from their lofty mount mandates that propagate a single conception of the world, the master narrative told to us by those who are in power, deaf to the individual voices of those on the margins of society. The biggest loser in this gothic horror tale are the students, who are pelted daily with information that they feel no actual connection to besides it being something their teacher told them to memorize so they can duplicate said information on an assessment later that week…
… "Some people like to climb mountains. I like to build planes. In the air…" To recapture the diminishing focus of an audience who has grown weary of being talked at for 90 minutes, it has become common practice for the speakers at these Professional Development Opportunities to insert mildly entertaining video clips into their presentations and then, at the conclusion of the stand-up comedian’s humorous monologue or the inspiring car commercial, they would turn to the audience and ask rhetorically, "Isn’t teaching a lot like that?" The audience, now awake, thanks to the stimulating aesthetic of the video, smiles and nods, and knowing they have regained the enthusiastic attention of the audience, the presenters continue speaking for another 90 minutes, when another video will be needed. The video shown to the sleepy audience at this particular training was created by a marketing firm titled "EDS Airplane," which depicted a fictitious airplane manufacturing company that built their airplanes while they were in flight. This notion amused the people in the room, who then chuckled knowingly as the presenter then turned to her audience and asked rhetorically, "Isn’t teaching a lot like that?" The audience, now awake, thanks to the stimulating aesthetic of the video, smiled and nodded, and knowing she had regained the enthusiastic attention of the audience, the presenter continued speaking for another 90 minutes, when another video will be needed. However, even though she moved on quickly from her question and the film’s vague message, I was still wrestling with her question to the audience (essentially, what does it mean to be teacher) because for years I have been struggling with my role…
…as an instructor, for I am confronted by a perpetual existential crisis where I am asked by my superiors to ignore my students' humanity, their need to understand who they are as human beings and to toe the company line by inculcating them with expectations of how to act and what to think. Every day I play an active role in my kids' psychological and spiritual dismantling and perspective reconstruction. When students deviate from the state standards, now Common Core, based lesson plan to ask a personal question about a personal issue or just a general concept with which they may be overwhelmed or even worse they are "disruptive" or "out of control" as they attempt to assert their subjectivity, I am to bring them back, forcefully if necessary, from where they were, immersed in their own lives-the arena in which all their struggles take place, to where they need to be, the world of shallow facts and meaningless names that have been deemed important by some person in a land far, far away…
… The presenter concluded her session by asking her audience to fill out evaluation forms assessing the quality of her performance. As she described the necessity of this evaluation process, she was glowing with a divine corona reminiscent of the images depicting the Infant of Prague found in a Czech Cathedral, for she just completed a conveyance of the Truth. Conversely, a tinny enthusiasm was exhibited by the teachers as they dutifully filled out the forms placed in front of them and quietly exited the classroom and headed to their cars.
As I slowly walked back to my car, I reflected on the one aspect of being a teacher that makes my job worthwhile: my students. When I look into the eyes of each of my students, I see infinite potential, infinite curiosity, the infinite capacity to create something new that would inspire the rest of humanity to look within its collective self and to find and embrace its human spirit, the metaphysical entity that is our true identity and our intimate connection to the rest of humanity as well as to the Divine. This human spirit is a precious resource that must remain unsullied by the disease ridden hands of society. For some of us who are older, we have already sacrificed our spirit, our identity for the purpose of fulfilling social expectations. On the other hand, our youth, although occasionally injured by social injustice and personal traumas very much prevalent in urban communities, still retain their virtuosity, their ability to find their true selves, their drive to express themselves in ways that are new and innovative, enriching society with this creativity. As a teacher, I sometimes feel it is my job to quash that spirit and to force my students into an existence that is unnatural and destructive to their true identities, and now with the implementation of the Common Core, I will be asked to figuratively "core" or remove my students' center, their individual perspectives, their subjectivities and to fill the emptiness with a common, sanitized identity. However, as a human being, it is my obligation to encourage my students in their struggle to discover who they truly are and to express themselves in new, exciting, and enriching ways.