Common Core Teaching

I've been completely underwater these past few months pursuing an education certification at Brooklyn College. A portion of my work on this degree involves classroom observations of music teachers in New York City.

Yesterday I observed a 6th grade music enrichment class at a public school in Manhattan. The teacher was presenting Willie Nelson as a songwriter in an ongoing discussion of various composers known for their songwriting skills. He told the students about how no one liked Willie's voice in his early career although his songs were excellent.

He played the Patsy Cline recording of Crazy and went around the room asking for comments. He didn't force any kids to speak, but asked each one individually if they had anything to say. Some kids liked the song. Most kids hated it. But he didn't let them just say, "I hate it." He made them come up with specific reasons and details as to why they felt the way they did. I was blown away by the intelligent and insightful observations made by these 6th graders.

One girl said, "it sounds more like jazz than country."

When asked what about the song makes it sound like jazz, one boy said, "it has an acoustic bass."

In 6th grade I wouldn't have known an acoustic bass from a tuna fish.

One boy said he didn't like it because the vibe of the song is opposite of the title. He was expecting it to be crazy, and it's actually quite calm. A girl said she liked it for the exact same reason.

Their ease in discussing these advanced concepts let me know that they do this in every class with this teacher.

I asked the teacher if he purposefully incorporates Common Core into his curriculum and he said that no, he doesn't. He is familiar with all the terminology and can put it into a formal lesson plan. But he just wants to get the kids, who are not musicians, to think critically about music.

This provides evidence to a theory I have that Common Core teaching is nothing new, and that good teachers have been getting their students to think deeply about whatever subject they teach for generations.

There is plenty to discuss regarding the Common Core, including the assessments, by which teachers are being judged, based on their students' performance on a standardized test. But I'll save that for another post. I have to go write a paper.