Today's teachers are faced with the enormous challenge of implementing the new Common Core State Standards within the model of the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Effective Teaching. The next few issues of iCommunicate will focus on an overview of these compelling issues and how IRC can help you implement them successfully.

The purpose of the Danielson Framework for Effective Teaching is to increase student-learning growth by improving the quality of instructional services. Doing this, says Danielson, "requires instructional strategies on teachers' parts that enable their students to explore concepts and discuss them with each other as well as question and respectfully challenge their classmates' assertions." In effect, teachers must assure that students:

• are being invited, or even required, to think
• are engaged in thinking and able to explain their thinking
• are able to formulate and test hypotheses
• can challenge one another respectfully
• clearly understand a concept

In sum, teachers need to understand both their students' thinking and their degree and level of understanding. These are all fundamental elements of the Common Core.

According to Danielson, this is the crux of the challenge, and she stresses that teachers need to know how to do all this and, even more importantly, if they are doing it well. So, how is this accomplished? According to Danielson, it is best accomplished when teachers have an opportunity to work together and to have interactions and conversations about whether they are implementing the standards with fidelity as well as about the kind of responses they are getting from their students and the kind of evidence needed to validate that students understand what they are learning. It is the main reason she created Domain 4, which focuses on what it means to be a professional educator and the roles educators assume such as:

• reflecting on practice
• coordinating work with other instructional specialists
• participating in a professional community
• engaging in professional community

As Charlotte says: "these activities are what separate highly professional educators from their less proficient colleagues." And therein is where the connection between the Danielson Framework, the Common Core State Standards and IRC come together. IRC provides opportunities for collegial interaction and conversations through state conferences, local council meetings and mini-conferences, book study groups, and professional development. And, many of these interactions and conversations revolve around the Common Core State Standards in ELA, science, social studies and even math. Moreover, belonging to a professional organization satisfies a major requirement of Danielson's Domain 4. All in all, IRC is clearly a vibrant partner to Danielson's Framework and the Common Core.