A Balancing Act

Isn't that what using the NJCCCS in our lesson plans is all about? A balancing act? Well, at least some of it is. I read through the Language Arts Literacy section because I'm going to be an English teacher and most of it seems pretty straightforward. Some of the writing requirements for "by the end of Grade 12" section under 3.2.12 B "Writing as Product" seem a little over the top to me and I kept thinking, I didn't do half of this stuff until my college English classes, how the heck am I going to teach/assist my students to do some of this?

And that's where the balancing act comes in. Maybe all of my classes won't get to "write a literary research paper that synthesizes and cites data using researched information and technology to support writing" (#6 under the above mentioned section). There are going to be times when creating a cool research paper assignment for some of my classes will be warranted but there will be other times when teaching a cause/effect essay format is more important to help my students pass the standardized exams.

So, I think as long as a school recognizes the needs and can find balance in using the NJCCCS it can be useful. I worry I'll have a supervisor who will expect to see all aspects covered over the course of a year and I just do not see that being possible. Part of me also wants to burst the bubble that surrounds these standards and say, "how many of you actually use these to guide you, help you with your lessons vs. how many of you use these and put the obnoxious little numbers in your lesson plans to please a supervisor?" I fear I'll fall into the latter description and not that I probably won't actually teach what the standards are requesting but I just don't need to mark it with a grocery deli counter tag or a USPC code to validate it.