I am a huge football fan and am excited that my team is going to be playing later tonight. However, I wanted to take an opportunity to share an article that was forwarded to me and is entirely relevant to the topic of Super Bowl Sunday.
In "More Super Bowl School", Deanna Burney discusses what educators can learn from professional sports, specifically football. She talks about how football players all study a playbook and therefore have a common vocabulary with which to communicate with each other. They go through the plays in practice and work together on the field to reach their ultimate goals. Similarly, educators could perhaps benefit from a common language to discuss teaching. Burney uses the example of the term "differentiated instruction." It's a term that I regularly use and I think I employ the concept fairly well, yet when I talk to other teachers, they mean something completely different when they use the same word.
Part of the problem is that education doesn't seem to be as collaborative as it could be. I am on listservs and participate in workshops and people are very willing to share ideas if you ask. But at the same time, I feel that educators in my own school are often so wrapped up in what they have to do that they don't take the time to help out a colleague who is struggling.
I think the Common Core Standards and national standards in general are an attempt to give teachers a common curriculum and language for talking about learning. However, there is still not enough spirit of helping each other - too many teachers just stick to their own classroom and a small group of friends like they are on individual islands. I think what needs to happen to remedy this situation and develop better communities is that educators need to be forced out of their comfort zone and into professional development that will help them achieve common understanding of concepts and vocabulary.