GUEST POST: Dear Dr. Grunewald, If You Think You're Not Allowing The Teaching of CRT, What Do You Call Social Emotional Learning (SEL)?

https://truthinamericaneducation.com/social-emotional-learning/great-social-emotional-learning/

A special guest post by Edmond Public Schools parent Emily Wright.

Failing at Common Core - A First Hand Account By Oklahoma Parent Kristal Picolet

I am turning the blog today over to a parent.  Her name is Kristal Picolet.  

One day, out of the blue, she messaged me and began telling me about her experiences with her son in Colorado where all the standards had been moved to Common Core.  She and her husband made a job-related move here to Oklahoma and she speaks glowingly of how much better her son has done here in Oklahoma.  She felt compelled to speak out about her experiences now, since she has found her son's school is transitioning into the Common Core as all schools in Oklahoma are to be doing by 2014. 

 

Failing at Common Core

By: Kristal Picolet

Oklahoma Parent

I was a typical mom who was excited and eager to send her children off to their first day of Kindergarten. School would be so much fun, and I couldn’t wait to hear what they absorbed; to watch them learn and grow, and hear their stories. To enjoy and encourage them while they mastered the ability to learn how to read, write, and discover numbers. 

My baby boy was learning how to read! I treasured each moment at bedtime listening to him read me stories. He was very choppy, but he was five, and he was learning all of this complicated stuff for the very first time. Aren’t they supposed to be choppy? I recall thinking how amazing it was to watch him study and discover each word. It was so cute, because he wasn’t fluid, his sweet little voice trying to sound out each word or letter and I quietly enjoyed watching while his little brain ticked. 

After the first progress report, his teacher explained that he had a hard time in school. She said he struggled trying to memorize word patterns, dialogues, and memory blocking.

Obviously, we were concerned. Why can’t he memorize like the other students? Why can’t he write a personal narrative as well as Sam or Trina? Why does he continually receive the lowest assessment grade in reading, despite the fact that night after night we sit with him in his room and he reads to us perfectly fine? Again, very choppy, but we could always see definite progress. Why couldn’t he write those two sentences explaining all those math problems? 

As time passed our son began to have behavior problems, and we were constantly having meetings and conferences with his teacher. She would state, “He’s just not getting it. He’s falling behind.” We as parents couldn’t understand. Why would any five year old be considered a complete failure? Where was the encouragement? Why was he stressed out after only a few short months into school?

Immediately, I began to volunteer heavily in the classroom. I watched the teacher pass out worksheet after worksheet, and it was certainly rigorous, mainly due to the excessive amount of materials being covered. Most of the material was strictly introduced with little to no repetition. The children were expected to sit quietly in their seat the entire 8 hours, there were no centers, nothing hands-on, and quite frankly not much of it was engaging. Even I, myself as an adult struggled with boredom as she was presenting all this “stuff”. 

I noticed the majority of his class was fidgeting, laying their heads on their desk, twitching, giving blank stares, etc. She was presenting materials fast and furious, all of which mostly flew right over their heads. I realized at that very moment, it wasn’t just my son struggling. All those other students whom I thought were so far advanced were also having the same issues. How can 24 students be failing, in kindergarten? 

Quite often we would have anywhere from 4-8 pages of homework since the teacher didn’t have enough time to finish all of the heavy amounts of coursework in class. From kindergarten to 1^st grade, and now into 2^nd grade it was a challenge as our son continued to snowball further and further behind - or was he? 

After finally getting that one teacher who wasn’t too scared to say anything and whom I had built a solid reputation with after many hours volunteering in her classroom…she leaned over to whisper this during our parent teacher conference, "I have to give your child this pacesetter score (also known as common core standard grading), but I also want to give you this sheet as well", which she had handwritten, "this tells you how your child is really doing in my class." 

Huh? What? The pacesetter score was so complicated and rhetorical, nobody, including the teacher, could possibly calculate an actual grade. And now after three long exasperating years of this we as parents hear for the first time and are finally able to put all the pieces together, “Common Core.” The new secret curriculum none of us parents have ever heard about. 

We knew all along something wasn’t quite right and that our son really wasn’t that dumb, but by this point he hated school so much that trying to get him engaged was like banging our heads, his head and the teachers head against a concrete wall. 

Finally, it all clicked. We began to research common core, meet with the principal and our administrators and ask LOTS of questions. The grading was so subjective that nobody could even explain it. There were no clear, precise or solid expectations. The more research we did and the more information his teacher relayed to us (confidentially of course) we soon discovered how poorly common core was preparing students, specifically our own children. By this time all of the really good teachers and principals had either quit or retired, so it left us no choice. We decided to move as far away from common core as possible. We researched states that currently offered a traditional education. 

That spring of 2012 my husband’s job transferred us to the Oklahoma area. After just one year in a traditional school setting our son began to love reading and love school. He began to soar in all subjects. We no longer had a battle trying to just get him up and ready for school. He for the first time saw how clear and precise his expectations were and that he could actually reach to obtain a specific goal or task, and he did. Oh, how he did! He went from 0’s and 1’s, “partially proficient” and “rarely demonstrating required benchmarks” to a straight “A” student, practically overnight. 

He was nominated for student of the month, he began to receive perfect 100’s in spelling (mainly because common core doesn’t even include spelling in the curriculum), and he even told us that school was fun.  It was a huge relief to see him actually learning, and with such positive enthusiasm, excitement, and success. Lots of success!! We as parents could not believe the difference.  In fact, we even noticed a huge difference because for the first time we started seeing standard, very traditional homework assignments such as spelling tests and normal math. Not fuzzy math or integrated math. 

Our son was actually taught sentence structure, capitalization, as well as punctuation. He was asked to write about his favorite animal or his favorite sport rather than just handing him a blank piece of paper with no clear direction and expecting him to write independently an entire personal narrative or progressive poetry about his favorite “things.”   

We received our first traditional report card; it was so easy to understand. The teacher didn’t have to explain any of it, it was obvious what grade he had received and why.  His perspective changed, our family life changed, drastically. Our attitudes went from exhausted, frustrated and failing to encouraging, understanding and successful.  Our son learned and retained more in one year doing education the traditional way than three long exhausting years failing at common core the 21^st century, never been tested way. 

 Each child is so much more than just one single test or obscure benchmarks.  I went back and found that “Common Core Standards Grading” PowerPoint slideshow (all 16 pages).  It was relayed to us parents during a two-hour parent presentation explaining how our child was going to be graded. Even after 3 years of them pushing all of this so called quality curriculum and dozens of pacesetter grades, still to this day the only single grade we ever understood was this, FAILURE over and over.  

How does that prepare any child to become a future leader, a future employee, or to reach new heights and tackle life head on? It’s similar to teaching an infant two-month old how to walk.

Parents Need To Take A Greater Role in the Education of Your Children, But You Can't Because _______ (fill in the blank)

I've been meaning to write a post for a number of months now on a favorite soapbox topic of mine - Education Reform and the Role of the Parent.

When I first set out to try and 'right' perceived wrongs perpetrated on decent taxpaying citizens and parents through the public school system, I thought I was going to make quick headway.  I thought, if I talked long and hard enough (I guess), I could make people see how easily and simply all today's educational issues could be solved by moving education back to the local level.  Who, after all, more than a parent would want to see their student thrive in their education? 

I have been wrong about myriad things in my life, but about fewer things have I been more wrong.

I remember one of the first times I discussed a bill with a legislator and said something akin to, "Parents don't want that.", and I was told, "Parents don't know what they want."

I've also been told, "Too many parents out there today are doing a terrible job - someone has to take care of those kids."  "We all talk about local control - but local school boards are doing a terrible job." 

There was even a legislator this session who wanted to make ALL home schoolers provide their lesson plans and curricula to the state because she knew A family who was 'home schooling' their children because they couldn't manage to get the kids to school on time due to the fact that their crack habit created somewhat irregular hours. 

There is an old Chinese proverb that says, "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day.  If you TEACH a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime." 

Sadly, we have no idea how in the world to decipher this proverb anymore because humans have finally come to the point in history where legislation is written at EVERY level about EVERYTHING to protect EVERYONE from THEMSELVES.

No, there are no responsible home schoolers out there home schooling because there is ONE that isn't.  No, there are no school boards out there doing the right thing because there are a number that AREN'T.

We don't write legislation, regulations and mandates TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE doing the right thing in society anymore, we create laws to try and force those that aren't into doing so.  This ideology exists in direct opposition to that of the Constitution and the Founders' vision of our Republic.  According to the Founders, government wasn't instituted among men to protect men from THEMSELVES, but to protect THEM from the government (over-regulation).

Yes, I feel that MANY parents today (maybe even a majority) have abandoned their children on a number of levels (emotionally, physically, economically, behaviorally).

I know good Christian parents who just can't bear to be honest with their children and reproach them for bad behavior because "We must speak life" into our children and "shaming or confronting" them will only make them feel worse about themselves.  They 'helicopter' around their children's activities and schools because they never want to be out of the picture, but their eyes remain blissfully closed to anything other than perfection.

I know parents who need to have a house in Oak Tree but can only afford it on two incomes so they drop their kids off at school in the morning, allow them to let themselves into the house after school and remain unsupervised until they come home from work, pick them up and then cart them to 20 or 30 after school activities because they feel guilty about not spending time with them.

I know parents who have been left by a spouse (or whose other half is serving overseas in the military) and are having to be two people all the time and are simply too worn out to do as much as they'd like and as much as their children need.

I know parents who simply don't care a whit about their kids excepting the gubbmt check they get to feed and clothe them.

But let's "what if" a minute....
What if there weren't gubbmt checks to provide a 'safety net' for those who simply don't know how to survive because they've been getting a gubbmt check all their lives?
What if, instead of in-house suspension, a parent had to come up to the school and babysit their own misbehaving child, or be forced to take them to work with them?
What if a child was humanely and calmly given a swat with a paddle on their back end when they created an issue in the classroom that prevented others from learning? (I had a NUMBER of those and I turned out okay with no lasting emotional or physical scars!)
What if churches actually taught Biblical parenting, accountability and responsibility from their pews instead of the "speaking life" to "prosperity" gospel?
What if principals backed up teachers and told parents they had better make their kid tow the line or they'd get tossed into the street?

.....What if the federal, state and local governments, schools and districts, weren't providing a MYRIAD of ways for parents to avoid having to take personal responsibility for their kids?
.....What if the federal and state government stayed out of the mechanics of education entirely and schools and districts simply gave parents no choice but to have the responsibility for their children they should have assumed once they gave birth to them?

Yes, unfortunately for all of society, Leave It To Beaver is basically only a television show providing a glimpse of what family used to be and may never be again here in America as American values and morals drift further and further outside the scope of those of the '50's.

That doesn't negate the fact that, today, the education establishment, and government at all levels, take power away from parents on a long term and DAILY basis, only to then attack them for not doing 'enough'.

Guess what?  Prophesies are often self-fulfilling and your straw man is on fire.