Common Core: changing the way we learn

Common Core is changing the way teachers teach and students learn. Its more rigorous standards require students to think more critically.

Sixth grade teacher Morgan Hammon at Ethel Boyes Elementary said she tells her students all the time, “I’m not teaching you what to learn, I’m teaching you how to learn.”

Mark Hunsaker also teaches 6th grade at Ethel Boyes and focuses on critical thinking with his students too. He said it’s an important skill in today’s society.

“Employers don’t just want employees that can follow orders, but can take a problem and critically think about that problem and look at the consequences and be able to solve that problem on their own without having to be given every single direction,” Hunsaker said.

This way of teaching is just what Ethel Boyes principal, Pauline Alessi likes to see.

“It’s not just the answer,” Alessi said. “It’s the journey you go through to get there, and that can be done in multiple different ways.”

Critical thinking is a big part of Mary Towler’s high school math class at Compass Academy. It goes further than just finding the answer.

“It’s not a list of problems out of context that we’re going to have them regurgitate or solve with no connections, so we’re trying to have them make connections and analyze the situation and analyze what information they have about the problem,” Towler said.

Students at Compass Academy are getting the hang of it.

“I like it because we’re learning a lot more in depth and we’re really going into the problem and finding everything about that problem and every way it’s connected to math,” Cole Owen said.

“Other than just sitting there listening to a lecture, you’re doing it yourself and you’re using your own mind to figure out why you’re doing this,” Annalisa Reed said.

School District 91 Elementary Curriculum Coordinator Todd Brown said the focus on understanding why you get the answer is different than the old days.

“We were always taught when dividing fractions, don’t ask why, just invert and multiply,” Brown said.

With critical thinking in mind, Brown has this advice for parents in helping their children with homework.

“Parents just jump in and say, ‘Here let me show you how to do it,’ or ‘That’s the wrong way,’ and then try to get them to memorize a step. It would be better for then to explain to you, ‘This is what I did, and then ask them, “Is it right? How do you know? Did you think about trying this?’ Those questions to prod their thinking so they find the meaning themselves.”