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I’m very familiar with the seventh-grade standards,
and they're all common sense standards.
There’s one that says that students should be able to critically look
at two different sources from the internet and determine,
you know, whether they're valid, whether they're scholarly, and,
you know, be able to write and speak to that.
There's another standard which said that our kids should
be able to figure out compound and simple interest and, you know,
be able to do things like figure out a tip in a restaurant or what
interest you'd pay on a car payment.
They're very common sense. They're not prescriptive.
It’s not nationally driven from, you know, the government.
There were so many people involved in setting them.
There were so many people involved in vetting them or, you know,
saying that these are good things.
Forty-five states adopted them, and they're not scary.
And there’s a website, and if you look at the standards for
your child’s grade level, they're something that
anybody could look at and go, oh, I want my kid to know that.
But how you teach that simple and compound interest is up to you.
You could have the kids pretend like they're going and trying to make
the best deal with a car dealership.
You could have the kids pretend they're going to a fancy restaurant
and give them a menu and have them figure out how much the tip should be.
But it’s up to you how you teach those skills.
I teach social studies, so I’m really looking at the literacy standards
in my classroom and how I can support literacy for my kids across the board.
I've always done that, but it’s nice to have the language to be able
to use the same verbiage, the same words, that our
language arts teachers use.
It gives everybody a common language.
There’s also a lot of really good organizations out there that are
in the process of publishing, you know, lessons that have been
tried by teachers and found to, you know, work.
And they're out there, and they're available to share.
And the collaboration that’s possible for a teacher, even in a small district --
if you’re the only person who teaches the content
that you teach, you’re not all alone anymore.
You’ve got a nation full -- or 45 states full --
of other people that you can, you know, communicate with and collaborate with
and get lessons from and share lessons with.
And so it’s really a powerful thing that hasn't existed in education before.
To go back after teachers have been, you know, working on implementing this
and seeing the benefits and seeing when I use common language
with the language arts teacher in my classroom, the kids are getting it from me.
They're getting it from the science teacher.
They're getting it from the technology teacher.
They're getting it from the language arts teacher.
And we’re all using similar language with similar expectations
at a level that is correct for kids at that point in their lives.
[ Silence ]