The Common Core and Effective Literacy EducationOpening the Conversation The Common Core and Effective Literacy Education Editorial: ... think about who or what underwrites occasions

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Opening the Conversation

The Common Core and Effective Literacy Education

Editorial: Lisa Scherff and Leslie S. Rush

A year ago we wrote about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in our editorial, noting with trepidation that its primary authors were not teach-ers. Since then we have had many ongoing conversations about the CCSS, the assessments to come, and what that means for us as literacy educators. We have also followed the discussions and debates between and among our colleagues at professional conferences, in academic publications, on social networking sites, and through email discussion lists. In this editorial, we want to take a different direction and consider what the CCSS means for us as literacy educators and, more specifically, as “sponsors of literacy” (Brandt, 1997).

In her essay The Sponsors of Literacy (1997), scholar Deborah Brandt suggests that the notion of sponsorship is useful for us to explore the “eco-nomics of literacy” (p. 3). She writes,

Sponsors . . . are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, or model as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way . . . it is useful to think about who or what underwrites occasions of literacy learning and use. (p. 2)

We note the importance of this concept of literacy sponsors for multiple reasons; chief among those is that two critical points were on our minds at the time of our writing this editorial: our nation was gearing up for a presi-dential election, which could bring even more sweeping changes (positive and/or negative) to education and the cradle to prison pipeline. As noted by the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) (2012) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (2012), school policies and practices routinely discriminate against

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Copyright © 2013 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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students of color. This discrimination is one large factor in the cradle to prison pipeline: Black males represent only 5 percent of the total college student population but 36 percent of the total prison population (CDF, 2012).

In their report, Portrait of Inequality 2012: Black Children in America, the CDF writes, “The overrepresentation of poor and minority children in grade retention, out-of-school suspensions and special education have interacted with low teacher expectations to contribute to these children’s discouragement, low self-esteem and disengagement from school” (p. 3).

In this editorial we want to explore Brandt’s (1997) concept of literacy sponsors. As literacy educators, in what ways are we sponsors of literacy? To whom? In what capacity? With the growing presence of the CCSS, how do we help ensure that our teacher candidates move beyond narrow lists of skills to be checked off and provide all students with the quality literacy education they deserve?

The Common Core: Looking at the Bright Side

Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman (2012) suggest that we read the “Com-mon Core State Standards as if they are gold” (p. 7), looking at what is good in the document. We admit that it took us a while to do this. Like the NCTE Review Team (Bomer et al., 2009) and others, we were (and continue to be) quite concerned over the standards’ focus on the canon and lack of at-tention to diversity. With a focus on dissecting texts would a New Critical Stance only inform teaching? What would happen to critical literacy and creativity? As a “sponsor of literacy,” what role will the CCSS play? Will it “support” the work that literacy educators do, or will it “suppress” (Brandt, 1997, p. 2) our practices?

When we started studying the actual language of the standards, we were encouraged. In the spring of 2012 I (Lisa) was working on revisions to my content-area literacy course in light of the CCSS and reading in the disciplines, and I was struck by how the questioning skills I regularly taught my students (e.g., QAR, reading level inventories) seemed to fit the skills listed in the reading standards. Immediately, I called Leslie and told her what I was noticing and sent her a draft of a chart I had worked on. With her feedback we came up with Figure 1.

As the chart shows, the critical and higher-order questions and discus-sion starters that we hope teacher candidates will put into practice align with the newly created anchor standards (see Figure 2). There is no reason to fall back on simple, rote question-answer schemes. For example, standard 3 asks that students “analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop

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O p e n i n g t h e C o n v e r s a t i o nCCSStandards

QAR (Raphael, 1982, 1986)

Self-Questioning* (Buehl, 2011)

Reading Level Inventories (Hillocks, 1980)

Four Resources(Freebody & Luke, 1990)

Critical Literacy(Lewison et al., 2002)

1 Right ThereThink and SearchAuthor and Me

EvaluatingCreatingApplying

Stated RelationshipsSimple Implied RelationshipsComplex Implied RelationshipsAuthor’s GeneralizationStructural Generalization

Code BreakerText ParticipantText Analyst

Disrupting the CommonplaceInterrogating Multiple Viewpoints


Analyzing UnderstandingEvaluatingRemembering

Key DetailsStructural Generalization

Text UserText Analyst

Interrogating Multiple Viewpoints

3 Think and SearchAuthor and Me

AnalyzingApplyingEvaluating

Key DetailsComplex Implied RelationshipsStructural Generalization

Code BreakerText UserText ParticipantText Analyst


4 Right ThereThink and Search

EvaluatingUnderstanding

Simple Implied RelationshipsStructural Generalization


Disrupting the CommonplaceFocusing on Sociopolitical Issues


AnalyzingUnderstanding

Key DetailsStructural Generalization



6 Think and Search

AnalyzingEvaluating

Author’s GeneralizationStructural Generalization

Text ParticipantText Analyst

Disrupting the Commonplace

7 Think and Search

CreatingEvaluatingApplying

Author’s Generalization


Disrupting the Common-place Interrogating Multiple ViewpointsFocusing on Sociopolitical IssuesTaking Action and Pro-moting Social Justice

8 Think and SearchAuthor and Me

EvaluatingUnderstandingAnalyzing

Complex Implied RelationshipsAuthor’s GeneralizationStructural Generalization


Disrupting the Common-place Interrogating Multiple ViewpointsFocusing on Sociopolitical Issues


EvaluatingUnderstandingAnalyzing

Key DetailsStated RelationshipsSimple Implied RelationshipsComplex Implied RelationshipsAuthor’s GeneralizationStructural Generalization

Code BreakerText UserText ParticipantText Analyst

Disrupting the Common-place Interrogating Multiple ViewpointsFocusing on Sociopolitical Issues

Figure 1. CCSS Reading Standards and Questioning Approaches (*Buehl, 2011, p. 181, builds off QtA and the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy)

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and interact over the course of a text.” To do this through QAR (Raphael, 1982, 1986) teachers have to move beyond “right there” questions to “think and search” questions. To approach questioning informed by Hillocks’s (1980) work, teachers could use key details (level two) as the starting point, skipping level one (basic stated information; actually, none of the nine stan-dards would call for this lowest level; we omitted number 10 since it seems to be the overarching goal).

Admittedly, we have only had time to look at the nine anchor stan-dards for reading, and this is just our first draft of the chart, so there might be other places to be discouraged that we have not yet seen. However, for now, we have some hope. We have to. As sponsors of literacy at the college level, it is our duty to be agents who “enable, support, teach, [and] model literacy” (Brandt, 1997, p. 2).

Extending Our Editorial

In continuing with our theme of sponsors of literacy and our mission to include a variety and range of voices in English Education, we invited two doctoral candidates in English Education at Ohio State University—Allison Wynhoff Olsen and Emily A. Nemeth—to collaborate with us on this edito-rial. Like the October 2012 issue, we gave both Allison and Emily an article from this issue to read and respond to. In particular, we asked each author to consider not only our editorial but also the content of the article and how that fit in with their roles as teachers, turned doctoral students, who are soon to be sponsors of literacy at the university level to future classroom teachers.

1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from text.

2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key sup-porting details and ideas.

3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative,

and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of

the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quan-

titatively, as well as in words.8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the rea-

soning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence. [mainly non-fiction]9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to

compare the approaches authors take.

Figure 2. CCSS Anchor Standards 1–9 for Reading

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Both Allison and Emily address the Common Core State Standards and an article from this issue in their commentary.

Allison Wynhoff Olsen: Reframing Practice in Light of the CCSS

In a time of standardization and accountability, students and teachers need to be foregrounded so as not to get lost amid the hype of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). While I do not frame the CCSS as the school experi-ence, I also know that for teachers, the mere mention of “standards” can send chills and shivers. Fortunately, I had my visceral, negative reaction years ago and am now prepared to help others avoid such a stress or, at least, move beyond this initial concern and toward a working relationship with the CCSS.

I well recall my first year of teaching. I was confident in my prepara-tion, yet nervous about my pedagogical moves; as a result, I foregrounded academic content and threw myself into consistent work habits: reading and rereading, preparing mini-lectures, creating worksheets, writing as-sessments, and grading essays with abandon. I diligently and passionately tackled the challenge of my teaching assignment: senior British literature and 11th/12th-grade advanced writing. Exhausted but surviving, I found mo-ments to relax and enjoy conversations with my 120 students. And then, the ground underneath me shifted. Our school began a close study of the state standards, and we were tasked with aligning our curriculum to standards I had seen but not studied, standards that drove me to tears.

I recall sitting in my mentor’s classroom one afternoon, desperately trying to understand how to make sense of the various strands, benchmarks, and tasks listed across grades 11 and 12. I could not fathom covering all of them in a year, let alone understand how they could mesh into my curricu-lum (or how to rewrite a curriculum using concepts I could not discern through the bureaucratic language). Through tears I watched my mentor begin making notes: circling and color-coding aspects and tasks that could be bundled—aspects I could combine. As simple as it seems now, the concept of bundling, rearranging, putting together in a way that made sense for me as a teacher, for the students in our school, and with the materials our depart-ment had amazed me. How had I successfully graduated, student taught, received my teaching certification, and did not know how to bundle? Why was it that the state standards were giving me fits?

During my first three years of teaching I never liked our state standards, though I learned how to work with them and create large units that infused them; however, near the end of my third year, the standards began to change, creating new work for teachers. Unfortunately, we teachers cannot control

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the speed at which standards change or even the initiatives that are handed down year after year. Note that by saying this I do not mean that we are powerless; I firmly believe teachers and teacher unions (in those states that are unionized) need to advocate for the profession, for themselves, and for their students. I want to be clear that I believe that educators are in the best position to make decisions concerning education; however, as we advocate and make our voices heard, districts, states, and the federal government will forge ahead and pass initiatives that we must incorporate into our teaching practices. As we fight back, we must also work within.

We owe it to our students to understand the CCSS and work with them, rather than against them. I take this stand because with the way the CCSS is written, educators have agency to help all students work toward power-ful literacy education. For example, the reading standards call for critical thinking and the writing standards call for a multidisciplinary, K–12 use of argument. As one who believes that all students deserve thoughtful, creative learning opportunities (Bloome, Beierle, Grigorenko, & Goldman, 2009), I appreciate that the CCSS require that all students be challenged. The ex-periences I described earlier were a part of my tenure as a secondary ELA classroom teacher and reading specialist. Teaching in a small rural school I had the opportunity to get to know my students over time: I taught them as ninth graders, juniors, and seniors. I watched them grow taller, solidify friendships, enhance both their appreciation and their distaste for reading and literature, and grow as writers. Because I taught them over time, I was able to respect their learning tempos with more calm than had I only taught them one semester or one year. I did not always feel rushed. In addition, I was confident that I was teaching lessons and units that worked to build new knowledge on old. We were able to build social relationships, so I also felt we could work together to meet expectations on a variety of levels and contexts. Though I am not currently teaching high school students, I am teaching preservice teachers aspiring to be secondary English teachers. I also supervise my students’ work as tutors at a university learning-place. Youth come from local schools to receive one-on-one help in an area of difficulty or to receive enrichment. Hearing the concerns of parents, helping tutors provide the best teaching for the individual, and talking with a student who is beaten down by the system breaks my heart. Driven to move away from a deficit-approach to teaching and learning, yet knowing we are within an era of standardization and accountability, I find that Simon’s article “‘Starting with What Is’: Exploring Response and Responsibility to Student Writing through Collaborative Inquiry” offers a practical and helpful reframing: a “collaborative inquiry process called descriptive review of student writing”

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(Simon, p. 117), taking up a practice of looking for “what is” in student essays. Well in tune with the pressures on teachers and the difficulty of navigating formalized assessment, in-class writing, and class sizes, Simon illustrated how a group of preservice teachers began discussing student essays collab-oratively rather than evaluating them individually from a deficit perspective.

I was struck by Simon’s simple description of what we do when we evaluate writing with a deficit approach: “The comments are not contextual-ized. There is no mention of an author or her intended meaning. There are no questions” (Simon, p. 116). Although his words are not new, they haunt me: “no questions.” Later in the article, Simon shares how teacher Sylvia made efforts to reframe the experiences for her young writers by starting a writing center at her school. An excerpt of her reasoning offered perspec-tive: “treating their [students’] ideas and words with conversations before red pens” (p. 138). By offering a polarized approach, conversations and red pens, Sylvia’s perspective begs the question: What is the purpose of writing in school? Do we teachers have students write so we can grade or do we have students write for a plethora of other reasons? Likely I am taking Sylvia’s thoughts and making a binary when she did not intend one, but as a heuristic exercise, I think it pertinent that we literacy educators help our preservice teachers think deeply and critically. What does grading or evaluating offer? Is it the antithesis of a dialogic experience in the classroom (Fecho, 2011) or do they work in concert? Whose voices are being heard and whose are being silenced (Schultz, 2003)? One of Simon’s implications speaks well to my own goals for (re)situating writing in our classrooms: “Teachers’ interestedness can support adolescents to regard themselves as interested and able to rhe-torically express their interests. This can form the basis for individual but also broader social change” (Simon, p. 141).

The CCSS aim to bring common experiences to our students, but the ways in which these experiences will be embodied will continue to and need to be contextualized. It is here that space is carved out for teachers and literacy educators. As a literacy educator in a state that has adopted the CCSS, my needs are two-fold: I need to give my preservice teachers tools and experiences working directly with the CCSS, and I need to explicitly model and offer collaborative efforts to critique it. It is neither a prescription nor a pedagogical guide; rather, when considering it as a literacy sponsor (Brandt, 1997), teachers’ agency and students’ uptake or resistance enter the conversa-tion. The CCSS need not reify a concern that teachers’ professionalism and agency are being lessened. As delineated in the documentation, the CCSS is not demanding a particular set of novels or readings that teachers must use to help students achieve proficiency. Sample titles are given as illustrations,

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but footnotes state, “texts need to be selected around topics or themes that generate knowledge and allow students to study those topics or themes in depth” (p. 58). How to select, generate, and allow are all roles of teachers.

As I read through the literacy standards, I see a document created with the hope of bettering (and making “equal”) academic experiences for our youth. Simultaneously, I critically pore over the mission, standards, and learning progressions across grade levels. As a literacy educator, I need to work critically with my preservice teachers and critique the CCSS. We need to carefully look at the language used and the assumptions placed on adoles-cents (Lesko, 2001); then, we can problematize what is written and begin to work with and within. We also need to put the CCSS in conversation with our own expectations and guiding theoretical tenets for teaching. In addition, we need to put the CCSS in dialogue with other positions (e.g., Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999 IRA’s Adolescent literacy: A position statement) and gatekeeping mechanisms (e.g., ACT scoring guides). Expecting the CCSS or a particular teaching method to “just work” or act as a “one size fits all” is both naive and negates the ideas of socially constructed classrooms (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, Shuart-Faris, Smith, & Madrid, 2008; Bruffee, 1986; Gergen, 2001; Gergen & Gergen, 1993). Students and teachers will take up or resist the CCSS organically in classrooms across the United States; while I recognize this, I foreground how the CCSS can act as a literacy sponsor to students and the educators who work with them. Drawing across divergent sources helps literacy educators and preservice teachers tease out how we position our students and how we navigate the influences and constraints of varying literacy sponsors.

Using Shultz’s (2003) listening as a framework, I hope to help preser-vice teachers understand that teachers still need to listen to their students and their class dynamics. We can plan and build assessments with the CCSS in mind, yet it does not teach for us (thank goodness!). Teaching is not a fixed framework to learn and apply with any combination and level of students. Because preservice teacher education can be overwhelming and because there are so many stakeholders involved in education, I think it important to have blunt conversations with those entering the field. Education is one topic for which numerous people have an opinion they feel the need to voice; it is easy to lose sight of the goal when inundated with pressure.

About ready to begin my fourth year of doctoral work, I am consider-ing what may be next. Though I anticipate the completion of exams and an upcoming dissertation, I am invigorated at the thought of merging my research and teaching interests. As a literacy educator, I need to be prepared to help my students navigate the torrent of media hype on a range of topics

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surrounding education: students in deficit, teachers who need to do more, and well-meaning policymakers who are working to do the best for the na-tion’s children. My tongue-in-cheek aside, teaching is stressful; teaching when being watched and evaluated via test score and student performance, possibly debilitating. It is my duty to help preservice teachers understand a variety of policies, standards, and initiatives so they can make meaningful conversations with those and not be railroaded by the CCSS.

The work of Simon (this issue) and Anson (1999) mark all evaluation subjective. Whether within writing or reading instruction, helping preservice teachers understand that they enter their classrooms with and promulgate ideologies and subjectivities may be a way to help them work with rather than against the CCSS: it is not the only ideology at play; rather, it is one with which we need to dialogue. The CCSS holds ideologies made visible through its language; if literacy educators and preservice teachers critically review it as a sponsor or as a partner, and take up some of Simon’s reframing, I think we can move forward with promise. It is possible that the CCSS may help preservice teachers have more opportunities to work together toward common goals; perhaps the CCSS as a literacy sponsor is a unifying aspect that we literacy educators can harness.

Emily A. Nemeth: In the Midst of Federal Transition: The Roles of Literacy Teacher Educators

This summer, I was the project director for a literacy program that serves K–12 public school students in the state of Ohio. Because I have had limited contact with students over the past three years, I was elated by the oppor-tunity to direct a program that allowed me to reconnect with students in meaningful and authentic ways. For the past three years, I have also been working on my doctorate degree. Thus, my involvement with young people was minimized to occasional volunteer work and classroom observations for research projects. Considering that young people and my interest in their literacy lives were the reasons I went to graduate school, I was thrilled to have a chance to spend the summer reading, writing, and dialoging with students across the K–12 spectrum.

Many of the students in the summer program were from the surround-ing area and some from more distant cities, visiting aunts, uncles, mothers, and grandmothers for the summer. As our mission intends, the majority of our students were from low-income households. We all came together in one space to build one another’s capacities to succeed in school as engaged readers and writers and, ideally, to identify those texts which we were most

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passionate about producing and consuming. As I worked with children and youth during the summer program, I was reminded of the brilliance each student brings to the classroom. With my interest in the literacy lives of young people, I paid close attention to the relationship each of them had with texts, both the ones they were reading as well as the ones they were producing. Monica, a seventh-grade student whom I frequently observed, was a prolific writer. Unexpectedly, she brought me copies of her poetry and asked me to read them. Her poetry revealed a deep understanding of, and experiences with, race and place relative to home and school as well as a strong investment in using storytelling to preserve our shared histories. There were many students like her who thrived in a literacy-rich classroom environment and took hold of every opportunity to read, write, and discuss. I also met students whose relationships with texts were seemingly tenuous. Nardez, for example, often talked about how bored he was when we were reading or writing during the program. However, when given the opportunity to write independently, Nardez demonstrated great talent and a creative mind. He just was not fond of the formal classroom structure and instead preferred the freedom to choose what he wrote about—not an uncommon desire among many students. Both Monica and Nardez were strong writers. They differed, though, in the ways they chose to participate in the activities of the classroom. While Nardez was resistant, Monica went along with the classroom reading and writing activities. I was reminded that school and the formal school structure can be challenging for some students—regardless of the brilliance they bring to the classroom.

Directing a summer program, I discovered, is not an easy task. One of the most challenging responsibilities was to bring community partners on board to implement sustainable structures and partnerships for years to come. Early on in the process, we (project staff members) held informa-tional meetings to talk about the program, and we invited any interested individuals to attend and ask questions. These were successful meetings for us and tended to warrant our preparation for the next one. In one meeting, a gentleman asked how we planned to connect the program and its academic mission to the goals outlined in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Luckily, I had just attended the program’s national training, and I had an answer. “It’s directly connected,” I said. “The curriculum was designed with the CCSS in mind.” As I tried to recall the specific connections our trainer had mentioned, I looked at the man’s face to realize he was satisfied with my response. The fact that it was connected was all he needed to hear. I was familiar with the CCSS at the time, but not as familiar as I needed to be, so I read up on it. Then, I returned to our curriculum guide to note

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the language that clearly evidenced its relationship to the CCSS: “deepen understanding of a topic or issue,” “compare and contrast,” “find the main idea,” “analyze,” “argue,” “develop,” “describe.” Our curriculum develop-ers were also attentive to the CCSS’s focus on literary nonfiction—we had a lot of it. Yes, it was definitely connected.

Now, as I wrap up my final report of the summer program, and turn my attention to the fall semester (and my dissertation!), I am glad our program made direct connections to the CCSS. Perhaps as Delpit (1995) urges, our program began to familiarize our students with “discourse patterns, inter-actional styles, and spoken and written language codes that will allow them success in the larger society” (p. 29), particularly those embedded in the newly designed assessments for CCSS. We made those necessary connections while simultaneously supporting the literacy practices our students brought with them to the program, like in the case of Nardez. I also wonder about the direct connections we, as a teacher education program, have made to the CCSS, as well as what role our faculty, and we as future literacy teacher educators, will play as the CCSS become situated in our schools throughout the country. The individuals who developed the CCSS invite “teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how these goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed” (Common Core State Standards Initiative). One of the groups missing from this invitation (though perhaps it is implied in one of the categories) is literacy teacher educators. Perhaps we must insert ourselves if the invitation is not implied because the role of literacy educators is indeed necessary and multifaceted. We are not only responsible to our preservice teachers’ needs and expecta-tions, but also to the state-mandated teacher certification requirements and the empirical research in our field that speaks to the core tenets of good teaching. Therefore, we must do our best to provide learning opportunities to preservice teachers that privilege documents like the CCSS, which will be central to their teaching practice, while simultaneously creating equal time and space for important theoretical and pedagogical framings that might not be captured in the documents. Clearly, literacy teacher educators are important. Below, I offer some of my ideas on the potential role of literacy educators in the discussion of the CCSS.

I believe one of the roles of literacy teacher educators is to call atten-tion to the sociocultural dimensions of students’ lives that are not fully rep-resented in the CCSS—which is a limitation of any decontextualized federal document. It is an impossible feat to account for every need of every teacher and student the CCSS will encounter, which is why those who developed the document invite individuals, such as teachers, curriculum developers,

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and states, to collaborate on localizing and personalizing the CCSS. Further, literacy educators, particularly those grounded in sociocultural theories of learning, can disrupt attempts to conflate the CCSS with stages of learning. Beach (1999) notes that prevailing theories of learning frequently reduce learning to the acquisition of facts and ideas and the transfer of those facts and ideas across tasks. Such theories purport that learning is time-bound and that human beings move through a series of sequential developmental and cognitive stages that lead to full, adult, human selves. Scholars grounded in sociocultural theory (Beach, 1999; Bloome et al., 2009; Gee, 1989; Heath, 1983; Lave, 1996; Newell, Tallman, & Letcher, 2009; Street, 1984, 1995, 2003), however, have pointed out the sweeping generalizations of these theoretical frames, which have little to no regard for the social and cultural nature of what it means to know and to learn.

Despite clear, empirical evidence that learning is social and cultural, the stage-like framework prevails across educational institutions and has infiltrated school structures. The standardization of instructional approaches is one of the ways the stage-like framework has become embedded in our schools. An example of this would be if someone were to allow the CCSS to be the only guiding document and framing for classroom teaching; in this case, student voice, local context, and teacher expertise (of that classroom) are just a few of the elements that would be missing from the equation.

Literacy teacher educators will play an important role in emphasiz-ing and privileging these important dimensions of students’ lives during this federal transition, given how the CCSS website inches toward stage-like language: “Consistent standards will provide appropriate benchmarks for all students, regardless of where they live.” Benchmarks, which denote stage-like learning, imply that each student will experience a linear developmental course, reaching each learning goal at the same time as his or her peers. Those of us who have worked with children and youth in educational settings know that they learn at different rates. The use of “regardless” also echoes a stage-like learning theory. No learning is done “regardless” of where one lives, but in relation to it. Space, place, people, and cultural practices are all important factors in a student’s intellectual growth. No, space should not be a determinant of the opportunities someone has, but we cannot begin to understand teaching and learning without also understanding the spaces from which students come.

Smagorinsky, Rhym, and Moore call attention to another role of literacy educators during this federal transition, which is that literacy educators must continue to be mindful of the conflicting settings in which a preservice teacher finds herself as she develops “a conception of effective teaching”

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(p. 148). Smagorinsky et al. explored a preservice teacher’s pedagogical tools, identifying the sources to which she credits their development and if and how various pedagogical tools conflicted across settings. They used the concept “centers of gravity” to explore their inquiry, which implicates space, time, texts, and people as forces in a preservice teacher’s concept development. Attending to the complexity of a preservice teacher’s experi-ences, like Anita’s, the preservice teacher in Smagorinsky et al.’s research, will inform literacy educators’ own pedagogical practices and how they engage preservice teachers in discussions about sound educational theory. As Smagorinsky et al. allude, recognizing the complexity of the preservice teacher’s experience will also inevitably keep everyone humble about their ability to shape preservice teachers’ concepts about teaching and learning.

I witnessed these competing ideologies this summer as I worked with preservice teachers who, like Anita, had already begun to shape their con-cept of “good teaching.” I was not going to shift their thinking during our 10 weeks together—they had 13–20 years of school-based experiences that contributed to their concept of “good teaching.” However, this did not stop me from planting a few seeds. I took opportunities to talk about the work of scholars such as Ladson-Billings, who deepened my own understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy; Delpit, who pushed me to think about the importance of language and students’ right to their own language in the classroom; Freire and hooks and their commitment to a student-centered classroom; and faculty on my dissertation committee who have shaped my thinking around multicultural education, creative pedagogies, gender and sexuality in the classroom, and the ideological implications behind the texts we select for students to read. I planted these seeds because I recognize con-cept development as a social process (Beach, 1999; Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1978)—one that cannot be controlled or limited to one experience. Learning is a dynamic, historical, and political phenomenon that happens in relation to space, time, people, and culture.

Finally, literacy educators should be attentive to documents like the CCSS and help preservice teachers to understand the impact these documents and policies will have on their teaching. Preservice teachers will undoubt-edly be writing lesson plans directly connected to the CCSS, and so they should gain experience while pursuing certification perusing the document and making connections to their lesson plans. Literacy educators can also encourage preservice teachers to read these documents through a student-centered framework. This might encourage preservice teachers to take up the invitation from the authors of CCSS “to determine how these goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed” (Common Core

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State Standards Initiative, 2012) and begin to work toward contextualizing a decontextualized document. While tending to the functional elements of the CCSS, literacy educators can simultaneously use the CCSS as an example of an ideological text—a document layered with beliefs and values about good teaching and important knowledge. Smagorinsky et al. recommend that literacy educators provide teacher education candidates with opportunities to read and analyze these kinds of curriculum documents and identify how the writers of these documents conceptualize good teaching. What are the assumptions and what are the consequences of these assumptions?

To take one look at the authorship behind the CCSS, it becomes clear that a great deal of work went into its development; to then read the content, it becomes equally clear that the authors have outlined the kind of education we want all students to be able to access and experience. As the group disclaims, though, “of course, standards are not the only thing that is needed for our children’s success” (Common Core State Standards Initiative). In other words, they too recognize the limitations of such a document and disrupt any attempt to position the CCSS as the sole actor in creating a high-quality educational experience for all students. Creating a high-quality educational experience for all students will require much more than one document can offer, which brings me back to the necessary and multifaceted roles of literacy teacher educators. I have outlined just a few of the roles they might play, and later, that I might play, as we move forward with the CCSS and any other initiative that comes down the pipeline within individual states and districts. To stay involved and relevant in the conversa-tion, though, these roles must continue to change and evolve as the actors change and evolve. That is to say, “teacher educators thus might benefit from considering how their programs work in the reality of the intersection of universities, schools, and teacher candidates” (Smagorinsky et al., p. 180), and to add, the CCSS. So as we begin to consider, and then articulate, each of our roles in this federal transition, we must also continually be aware of the complex nexus of stakeholders, documents, and centers of gravity into which we and our voices enter.

Editors’ Note We welcome your feedback as we continue to try to map out the CCSS against our teaching practices.

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Allison Wynhoff Olsen is a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University. Her work focuses on school experiences of youth, building relationships with and across students, and instructional practices that facilitate students’ deep engagement in argumentative writing. Emily A. Nemeth is a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University. Her work focuses on the literacy lives of adolescent youth in school and com-munity spaces.

NCTE Literacy Education Advocacy Day 2013: April 18

Join NCTE members from across the nation for NCTE’s Literacy Education Advocacy

Day on Thursday, April 18, 2013. NCTE members attending Advocacy Day will learn

the latest about literacy education issues at the federal level and have a chance to

interact with people highly involved with those issues. See http://www.ncte.org/

action/advocacyday for details.

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Documents

The Common Core and Effective Literacy EducationOpening the Conversation The Common Core and Effective Literacy Education Editorial: ... think about who or what underwrites occasions