Greenhaus Education and Other "Effects"

I am tired of the #CommonCore bashing, so I am just going to start writing some posts about things I have learned that have helped me realize how powerful and SUPPORTIVE of student learning these standards and practices can be. Don't get me wrong - I never needed to be convinced that the Common Core State Standards for Math (CCSSM) were a good thing for math education.  I cheered their adoption because to me, these standards supported what I had been practicing and preaching, both as a teacher and a professional development provider. But - even though I have spent the last several years studying and coaching others in implementing the Common Core in a variety of ways, I just recently learned more to solidify, for me, their power. It was sort of an ah-ha moment: if I, who consider myself very familiar with the CCSSM, just learned something new, imagine how those who have spent little, if any, time with these standards (i.e. parents, news reporters, politicians) could benefit fro...

I posted an article a while back about my thoughts on the flipped classroom: Math Anxiety and the Flipped Classroom .  In this post, I basically expressed my concern that many teachers are using the flipped model to continue the same traditional way of teaching - lecture and homework, and merely switching where these things happened. If this is how the model is being used, especially in math, it is not going to improve student learning because it's the same old thing. My hope was that those embracing this model were truly doing something different - really using the class time to connect with their students, provide collaborative learning experiences, engaging in real-world applications, projects and extending the learning to make connections - not just reviewing homework. In short, teaching DIFFERENT in the classroom - where the classroom becomes a student-centered learning experience, not just a regurgitation of what they saw/learned in the online 'lecture'. That's...