Common Core CPR: What About the Adolescents Who Struggle . . . or Just Don't Care?

The ideal?  Newly minted high school graduates all across the nation, each one a complex text genius, a writer and analytic thinker beyond compare. All on to glorious colleges and careers, thanks to the Common Core.

The reality? The 1.3 million students who fail to graduate from high school each year and the hundreds of thousands more who either gave up or lost interest long ago . . .

The reality is why Common Core CPR is needed. Urgently. Because if we continue to insist that all students meet expectations that are well beyond their abilities and mindsets, these kids will only decline faster. We must be brave enough―and trained enough―to cast aside what we know harms students and apply with renewed vigor the teaching methods we know work.

Releah Lent and Barry Gilmore rise to the challenge, and there are no two authors better equipped to do so. They embrace what is best about the standards―their emphasis on active, authentic learning―and then explicitly show teachers how to connect these ideal outcomes to practical classroom strategies, detailing the day-to-day teaching that can coax reluctant learners into engagement and achievement. You’ll learn how to: 

• Consider choice and relevance in every assignment
• Plan and spot opportunities for success
• Scaffold students’ comprehension of complex fiction and nonfiction texts
• Model close reading through thoughtful questioning
• Teach students to use evidence in reading, writing, speaking, and reflection

. . . And so much more

 It’s not the big sweeping formulas for achievement that will win the day; it’s the incremental growth that teachers need to make happen: that one book, that one writing assignment, to help a student turn a corner. "If we can get that one transformational moment to occur, and follow it up by designing more opportunities for success, that’s the ideal," say Lent and Gilmore.

ReLeah Cossett Lent is an international consultant known for speaking, writing, and providing workshops on various topics ranging from literacy to leadership teams. She was previously a middle and high school English, Social Studies, and Journalism teacher before becoming a founding member of a state-wide literacy project at the University of Central Florida. There, she contributed to developing Florida′s Reading Endorsement courses and coordinated literacy leadership teams statewide. Her most impactful work stems from multi-day residencies in schools, districts, and consortiums, where she has created numerous professional learning initiatives with positive results in student achievement and teacher leadership. An advocate for student ownership and active learning, ReLeah emphasizes powerful collective efficacy as teacher teams engage in problem solving. She has been recognized with several awards, including intellectual freedom awards from the National Council of Teachers of English and The American Library Association, the PEN First Amendment Award, and the Florida Council of Teachers of English (FCTE) President′s Award for her "significant contributions to the teachings of English in State of Florida."

Barry Gilmore was the Middle School Head and later the Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning at Hutchison School in Memphis, Tennessee.  A National Board Certified Teacher, he taught English and social studies for nearly twenty years.  Barry is the author of seven education books and the former president of the Tennessee Council of Teachers of English.  Awards for his teaching have come from NCTE, TCTE, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Tennessee Holocaust Commission. He passed away in 2019 at the age of 50 and is dearly missed by his students, family, friends and fellow faculty.