Dear Saint John School families,

We recently concluded the first full month of school and the seamless transition from summer to the school year is a testament to the hard work of our students, staff, and parents. Thank you for all your efforts that have resulted in a terrific start to the year.

I would like to use today's newsletter message to address some elements of the Common Core. I've discussed this topic at a few of our parent meetings in the past couple of years, but I feel some additional clarification would be helpful. Much has been written and argued about both the pros and cons of the standards. My purpose is not to debate the merits of these standards, but rather  focus  on what it means for the students at Saint John School.

It is important to realize what the Common Core is as well as what it is not. The Common Core is not a federal mandate, it is not a test, and it is not curriculum but is  a set of standards adopted by the state of California. These standards are a set of goals that guide educators about what children should know in the core subjects and at various grade levels. In contrast, the curriculum is the detailed process over a school year to achieve a set of goals (standards). The curriculum taught to Saint John students was and continues to be developed by the teachers and administration of our school.

Because our school adheres to the state standards, elements of the Common Core are included in our goals as well. The primary outcome of those goals for Saint John students is increased depth of knowledge in their core subjects as well as the application of those learned concepts. In other words, the teaching is focused on more rigor and relevance. An example of this would be in the subject of math. For most of us, math was learned by memorizing a set of rules and applying those rules to individual problems. Of course, we also learned that the rules couldn't be applied in the same manner for every computation. Today, we teach math as an understanding of math ideas and concepts through the process of showing students how numbers relate to each other (number sense). This along with computational fluency gives students the ability to apply their math skills in a manner that utilizes multiple strategies and creative thinking to solve a variety of difficult problems. This is a skill we want to foster in all our students across the board.

It is interesting to note that we have teachers who've been teaching with these same strategies for years. It just wasn't called Common Core. It was referred to as "best practices."
 

Because the Common Core has raised the expectations of student learning, more rigorous work is required not only by our students, but by teachers, administrators, and parents as well. There will also continue to be changes in teaching strategies and methodologies to help our students become more critical thinkers and problem solvers. Regardless of your stance on the Common Core, I think we can all agree that helping our students become better critical thinkers and problem solvers  are skills we would like to see our Saint John students develop. As always, we are available to answer any specific questions you may have about standards and curriculum.

Peace and blessings to you and your families.