Yes, standards are important. We need to be teaching kids the knowledge that they need to be successful in life. They need to understand how and why things work. That’s important.

As I reflect on who I am as a professional and who I was as a student at no point do I think, “Learning how to find a derivative in calculus was important.” I do however often think that learning calculus taught me how to think step by step in small chunks to achieve big things. In my professional career it is not how well I memorized the standards that makes me successful, it’s all the other stuff I learned while building my understanding of the standards.

Recently I asked students to do a chalk talk about “What skills do composers need to write good music?” I was looking for answers like “an understanding of form”, “Harmony” etc. Here’s what they thought:

– Be humble
– Understand how to plan
– Have inspiration
– Reflect on their work
– Edit
– Persevere
– Revise
– Think about what other people want
– Be social
– Be passionate
– Be a good writer
– Be a good poet
– Have confidence
– Tech skills
– Research
– Teamwork
– Patience
– Humor
– Trial and error
– Use their resources

Oh, yeah…. And they need to have a good singing voice or play instruments

As the chalk talk was unfolding I was thinking about how these far better answers than what I was expecting. They’re right. Having a good singing voice and playing instruments does not make a good composer. What makes a good composer is their ability to grow as a composer. To not give up the first time they get a bad review. You can learn anything if you keep working at it for long enough.

I think that we need to be must more conscious about how we teach kids the standards. We need to help our students grow as thinkers and learners. Teach them all of these important life skills through the standards in whichever subject we teach. Help them learn that failure is the first step to success. Life is not a constant string of “the next, little bit harder thing that you can be perfect at.” Making school that for our students is doing them a disservice. Every once in a while, something really hard takes me a while to fix. We need to teach our students how to break down these huge tasks for themselves and show them the pride they feel when they’ve accomplished it, on their own.

As I was re-reading Making Thinking Visible, the authors say that one way to hear students thinking about deeper layers of a text is to ask “What is the other story?” I think our classrooms have another story. Yes, we’re teaching the standards but what is the other story?