Common Core, or Why Parents Drink

Common Core is not our friend. In fact, if I may blunt, it sucks.
S. U. C. K. S.

Hear me out on this one.  Cause I’m living this nightmare.  I have first-hand experience, and with it, the battle scars, the gray hair, and the high blood pressure to go along with it.

Now, I have quite a few friends who are teachers, including my own sister. Some of them may find Common Core helpful; truthfully, I didn’t ask them. So this rant is purely from a parent point of view.  In fact, let’s narrow it down to just THIS parent’s point of view.  So here goes.

My child learns differently from your kid, and your kid learns differently from someone else’s.  Our kids aren’t made cookie-cutter, so why should we teach them that way?  Education isn’t factory work, churning out identical graduates.  Learning should be fluid and flexible, allowing for different abilities and different personalities.

Look, I get the concept of Common Core: each child is offered the same opportunity; every child learns the same information at the same time; lessons are designed to help students prepare for college and beyond.  Sounds great. But does it work? Not in my house.

Before Common Core, my child was an A/B student.  She was able to complete her assignments with minimal effort.  Yes, I know these were the “easy” first few years of education – before the harder work and the hormones kicked in.  But a kid doesn’t have a complete reversal of ability in two years time.  We are struggling now in all subjects. I try to help with math, but the methods now are so bizarre, even I can’t follow them. English is minimally better, and Science and Social Studies are just luck of the draw.

Our kid doesn’t learn well by rote; the multiplication tables were torture.  Lectures and tests about dates and names are certain failures. But give her something that allows for imagination and she excels!  Give her some freedom and she soars!  Let her be her own quirky self and she can rule the world!!

So here we are, at the end of 6th grade, trying to decide what to do next. We’ve tried private school and public school. We’ve tried helping her pass and letting her fail.  What’s left? Home school?  Will this be any better?  When she was a toddler and we realized she had advanced thinking skills, we never thought we’d be trying to just pass.

So, Common Core, we hate you. I’m sure you help some students, but you’re failing mine.

P.S. To lighten the mood, please read these hilarious tweets! Every. One. Is. Life.

http://www.scarymommy.com/funny-parenting-tweets-about-homework-and-common-core/?utm_source=FB

"Joey"

Today, I am mourning the death of someone that I’ve never met; someone that I’d never heard of until a few months ago; someone with whom I have nothing in common, except the love of family, Tennessee, and God.  Even in those areas, she was so far ahead of me, I would never reach her level.

Joey Feek passed away yesterday at the young age of 40, from cervical cancer.  If you haven’t seen her name in the news lately, she was a country music singer, a devout Christian, and the lead singer of the duo Joey + Rory. Together, they had a 2-year-old daughter, named Indiana.  Indiana was born with Downs Syndrome, but the family never made a big deal of it.  She was just their child. Period.

Joey fought her cancer for almost two years. In October, she learned that it was too aggressive and decided to stop treatments.  It was at that time that her story started being known outside the country music genre.

Rory Feek, her husband, writes a blog titled, “This Life I Live.”  In it, he has chronicled their journey through Joey’s illness, and now her passing.  It is his writing that has made me, and many others, feel that I was a part of their family.  That I was traveling down that sorrowful road with them.  His words made me smile and cry, feel joy and sorrow, ask “Why?” and say “I understand.”  He is a masterful writer, but the reason his words are so beautiful is simple – he loved her.

Joey and Rory were unique. They lived in a manner that evoked the feeling of the 1940s.  A simple life with home-grown vegetables; a farmhouse full of comfortable chairs and fresh flowers; hand made quilts and fresh baked pies.  It seemed an idyllic life, interrupted by sadness and pain.

You could see the love between Joey and Rory. The way she smiled at him, and the way his eyes lit up looking at her.  Perhaps the most telling photo I saw of their love was the last one – Rory sitting by Joey’s bed during her last days. Just sitting.  She was in her final sleep and would never know he was there, but he was.  Watching his beautiful bride slip away from him.

Their story is indeed heartbreaking, but do you know what he wrote upon her passing? “My wife’s greatest dream came true today.”  Through all his unquestionable sadness and grief, he knew that her passing was actually a great joy!  She is in Heaven! She is with Jesus!  He was so happy that she was where she belonged, that he could rejoice for her in the midst of his own pain.

That, my friends, is love.

These are the things that I learned from Joey and Rory:

• Never take life for granted. Every day, every hour, every second is precious and should be cherished.
• Every person deserves to be loved deeply and completely.
• Faith can carry you through anything.  ANYTHING.
• Death is not final. It is not the end, only the beginning.  Our lives on Earth are just a warm-up for the real thing.
• A walk outside, a kiss from a child, holding hands with a loved one, the sun on your face – all of these things are infinitely better than time watching TV or being on-line.
• I am blessed beyond measure.

So here I sit, thinking of people I don’t know; praying for a family I’ll never meet; rejoicing in the fact that this “stranger” is in Heaven.  I think Joey would approve.