For the past couple years, you can find my family on most Friday nights at Macaroni Grill for Happy Hour. This tradition started one night when the families from my daughter’s soccer team were looking for a place to go for dinner after a Friday night practice, because no one felt like going home to cook dinner. We all landed at, what all the kids now lovingly call, Mac and Cheese Grill.

This tradition is something her soccer team has continued all these Friday’s later. It’s where we continue to meet with families who no longer play on her soccer team and get to know new families who join each year.

This past weekend was no exception.

Because I’m a teacher, as are several other parents, the conversation often turns to education. This weekend turned to teacher salary and the raises districts all over Orange County are negotiating for teachers this year.

From our hour-long conversation, one comment from a parent stuck with me. He was arguing the merits of teacher raises and amid his many cogent arguments mentioned, “We need to pay well so we can get good teachers.”

This idea has been percolating now for a few days. It’s a ubiquitous line bantered about any time teacher salary is discussed. I began to wonder this weekend -- what do we mean by “good” and is this argument true?

Let’s start with “good.” What do we mean by a “good” teacher? Sure, teachers have a set of teaching standards by which they are evaluated, the CSTP (California Standards for the Teaching Profession). But how do these standards translate to the day-in and day-out in the classroom?

In addition to the standards, I might argue a “good” teacher must, first-and-foremost, love kids. More money doesn’t change this. I might also add a “good” teacher must love their content. More money doesn’t change this, either. From an administrative perspective, a “good” teacher might mean the teacher is coachable. Does more money change or influence this? I think not.

I challenge you to think about what you think makes for a “good” teacher and ask yourself if more money changes any of those key traits.

During this Friday night’s discussion, we tried to equate teaching and teacher salaries to what I call the “real world.” It felt like an exercise in futility. Industry is driven by results -- you perform, get performance reviews, and earn performance increases, or you get fired.  Unfortunately, education isn’t driven by results; both “good” and bad teachers are contractually paid the same. Should ALL teachers be rewarded with an 8 or 10 percent pay increase this year -- just because?

Let’s go back to my friend’s claim that “We need to pay well so we can get good teachers.” I’m going to disagree. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a teacher and would love a big raise, but I think his claim is a fallacy.

I argue that teachers teach because they are called to it. Most teachers are teachers because it’s their passion, because to become a teacher isn’t easy. It’s not a profession that you can just fall into. To earn a credential requires lots of jumping through hoops; it’s an intentional decision. And we don’t have a teacher shortage in California, so many young people are already deciding to teach. Why is this? Could it be that teaching offers something no other career can? Something more than money can buy? How about benefits. Job security. Holiday breaks. Step raises year-over-year regardless performance. Stipends for work above and beyond the contract day. A quality of life that contractually requires a teacher to work only 185 out of 365 days of every year.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I love teachers, and a “good” one can inspire kids to greatness. But I’m not sure pay is the answer to ensuring our kids get one of the “good” ones.

What I wish is that more parents demanded results. What I wish is that more parents spoke up about teachers who cause detriment to our kids. What I wish is that more parents got involved in more ways than just writing more checks.

What I wish is that some of that money going to raises was spent on kids, because, let’s not forget, that’s the business we’re in.
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I don’t claim to know or have a silver bullet for “good” teaching, but I do know that money isn’t the answer. ​

The days of passive learning are over. The days of teachers being the keeper of knowledge, the sage, the owner of content are gone. My memories of how to be a student -- and yours -- are behind us.

With the advent of the Internet, knowledge has become a commodity. It is everywhere, all the time, in any form. The teacher’s role no longer lies in disseminating information and being the stewards of that information; it lies, or at least should, in engaging students in that knowledge to help them make meaning from it. If all we offer to our kids is memorization tasks and rote repetition, we are failing them.

Let me explain.

When I think back to my education, I sat passively in the classroom, diligently taking notes, filling in worksheets, staying whisper quiet, answering questions at the end of a piece of literature, listening to teachers pontificate, and regurgitating information to earn my A on any given test as best my memory allowed. Sound familiar? I will argue it’s the same education most of us received. And it worked because knowledge was hard to come by. We’d spend hours in the library finding content from rows of encyclopedias, magazines and books only accessible through card catalogs and glasses-clad librarians.

But times have changed. Our childhoods do not resemble those of our children’s. And the role of education, the teacher, and the student over the past twenty years has changed because of it. If our students are only being taught in this nostalgic, old-fashioned approach, they are going to enter their adult world at a disadvantage.

Because the world of today requires a workforce who can problem solve, work collaboratively within cross-departmental teams, write about innovations in science, technology and medicine so that humanity can be changed for the better, and be critical thinkers who can take this onslaught of information and make sense of it in a global economy. This doesn’t happen in a “traditional” classroom. It happens when the classroom embraces 21st century learning and engages our kids on a level that is hard for us -- their parents -- to understand.

So how does a 21st century student engage in their learning?

They need to be active in it.

An engaged student reads critically with a pen in hand, writing to create meaning, plan, problem solve, ask questions, and explore an idea. An engaged student interacts with other students in pairs or small groups, listening actively  in order to respond, clarify, challenge, and critique ideas and conclusions. An engaged student experiments with content to make sense of it, applying new-found skills and strategies to think and act creatively. If true learning is to occur, then students have to be engaged participants in the process, and not merely products.

Most teachers pick up on cues as they teach and can tell when a student in not interested or engaged. As a teacher myself, I act on what I see and adjust to try to engage all students -- tap kids on the shoulder, call a student’s name, tell a personal anecdote, vary my intonation, walk around the room, and even ring a bell to help kids find focus. No matter the technique, however, I have come to realize that a lecture is still a lecture. And a lecture is still a passive activity.

The solution is simple -- increase student engagement by increasing student activity. This doesn’t mean more; it means different. Get them moving. Get them talking. Get them writing, discussing, debating, synthesizing. We need to be challenging our students with lessons so engaging and active that it’s hard for them not to participate.

Now that I’ve written it, I guess the solution really isn’t simple at all. And not only is it difficult for a teacher, it is just as difficult for a parent. How do we become an active participant in our own child’s education -- in a system that we’ve all been through, but in which we now feel completely estranged?

The typical question, “Did you get your homework done?” will no longer suffice.

It means that we need to start having dialogue with our kids that helps us engage. We need to begin asking questions about how they learned, what they contributed, when the spoke, and why the content matters.
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The questions are very different. They ask how they have been a participant in their own learning. The better our questions, the more thoughtful and engaged our kids will be about their education -- turning their educational journey from just another commodity into a tool for unlimited success.

That is the question.

Common Core. What is it? What does it mean for our kids? What does it mean for our schools? Our teachers? The future of our society? Do we really want more federal control of local education? 

The questions are endless, and the answers are convoluted. What’s to believe, and what’s to dismiss?

I visited with a chapter of Republic Women’s Federated this afternoon, and Common Core was a hot topic. The members of the group asked very pointed questions about our feeling with regard to the implementation of Common Core.

Some of the concerns in the room:

• loss of local control
• “fuzzy” math
• untested pedagogy 
• children being used as guinea pigs
• outdated and biased textbooks
  

I get it. I’m a school teacher and have been faced with the looming “Common Core” for the past several years. I’ve been on district Common Core Committees, studied the Common Core State Standards, been asked to implement Common Core strategies in the classroom, and been part of numerous discussions about what Common Core means to the future of America’s children.

You know what I’ve come away with? As simple as it sounds, I have honestly come to understand the Common Core as an opportunity to ensure America’s children are college and career ready. Can they read, write, speak and listen? Common Core means literacy across the curriculum. I truly believe it’s that simple. Get kids reading, writing, speaking and listening in all class, and we will have a generation of kids ready for the 21st century world.

That’s what colleges and Fortune 100 companies (P21) have told us … we need students who are globally aware, critical thinkers, collaborators, creative, and able to communicate effectively. Clearly, what we’ve been doing with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) hasn’t worked and has, ironically, left our children behind. Colleges tell us every new school year with incoming freshman that the children they are being sent aren’t ready for the rigor of college. Companies tell us with every new high school graduating class that the graduates can’t communicate or problem solve. So what are we fighting against exactly? Do we really want what we’ve had the past twelve years? Do we really want another generation of students who are only taught how to pass a standardized test?

Common Core simply offers opportunities for our students to demonstrate mastery through well-structured project-based learning, giving them opportunities to synthesize information to solve problems, create, innovate, explore, and build.

I work at Oxford Academy, a nationally-recognized high school in Cypress. You would be hard-pressed to find a classroom still being instructed using the traditional-rows-of-desks configuration, a teacher still using the same old worksheets of fill-in-the-blanks that have been used for the past ten years, students unable to synthesize primary source documents to construct well-organized arguments in history, politics, literature, science and world languages.

Common Core at Oxford Academy means rigorous curriculums, engaged students responsible for their own learning, well-trained teachers to facilitate learning, an expectation that all students can learn and excel, and an openness to believe that our educational system can only get better.

Do challenges exist with the Common Core? Absolutely. No program, regardless the industry, is flawless, but Common Core is a step in the right direction, and I teach at a campus that allows me to say just that. I’ve seen it in action, and our kids excel.

In a nutshell, a Common Core classroom simply expects students will be able to:

• read and comprehend more complex texts
• write arguments supported by text-based evidence
• synthesize a variety of information to solve complex problems
• engage in a global community and be able to communicate effectively 

Can a student more active in their own education and learning be a bad thing? Isn’t this just the type of person who ends up curing cancer, traveling unchartered missions into space, discovering the Autism link, solving the world’s natural resources challenges?

I believe it really is as simple … and complex as this.

Did you know:

• We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist,
• using technologies that haven’t yet been invented,
  
• in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.
  

We are inundated with news and articles about the 21st century classroom. But what does that mean exactly? A 21st century classroom is as simple and as complex as using the classroom as a tool to ensure our students are and enable our students to be successful. However, our technology and data-driven society is evolving every day, so how do we do this? We need students are adept at:

• collaboration
• creativity
• critical thinking
• communication

Information is everywhere. In fact, teaching is very different today than it was when we were in school. When we all went through school, the teachers were the stewards of information. We looked to them for content, knowledge, facts and expertise. They knew their stuff, and we looked to them as the experts. This traditional role of the teacher no longer exists, because information, content, knowledge and facts are readily available. We can Google anything and get answers today. Teachers no longer “own” information; therefore, our "teacher experts" need to experts in their fields in new ways. They need to embrace the 21st century classroom and teach this next generation how to:

• manage content
• discern bias and credibility
• synthesize information being collected and published at a lightning-speed pace
• work in our global society

I want to see our Los Alamitos teachers learn to be the best the teaching profession has to offer, so that our students are ready for the 21st century world. I want our teachers to facilitate learning, use inquiry-based instruction, integrate technology, utilize evidence-based research as a teaching tool, teach using project-based learning and embed cross-curricular skills and strategies.

This means training, teacher coaches, administrative support and board leadership.

That’s where I come in.

Let me help lead our district into the 21st century.