# Common Core Curriculum, Theatre Standards



## Chris Chapman (Feb 19, 2014)

NCCAS - Theatre Standards

Follow that link to get to the draft for Theatre Standards for Common Core Curriculum. Interesting read.


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## What Rigger? (Feb 20, 2014)

I threw up in my mouth a little when you said Common Core. Sorry...married to an elementary school teacher, with 2 kids dealing with it. Overall it's bull.

The Pre-K standards on the first page? It's called"playtime" and "imagination", you standardized test loving jerks!!! Good lord. I hate it. Hate. Hate. Hate. Haaaaaaaaaaaate it. (Yes, I am using my Slayer voice. Why do you ask?)

Also, I am not directing "you.......jerks" at Chris. Rather the administrators who had to come up with this language. I rant like this a lot in my house about Common Core. My wife just loves it when I do that.


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## TheaterEd (Feb 20, 2014)

Ugh. Way too early for this. I'll come back to it once the coffee starts working.


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## Chris Chapman (Feb 20, 2014)

What Rigger? said:


> I threw up in my mouth a little when you said Common Core. Sorry...married to an elementary school teacher, with 2 kids dealing with it. Overall it's bull.
> 
> The Pre-K standards on the first page? It's called"playtime" and "imagination", you standardized test loving jerks!!! Good lord. I hate it. Hate. Hate. Hate. Haaaaaaaaaaaate it. (Yes, I am using my Slayer voice. Why do you ask?)
> 
> Also, I am not directing "you.......jerks" at Chris. Rather the administrators who had to come up with this language. I rant like this a lot in my house about Common Core. My wife just loves it when I do that.



No offense taken. I'm not pushing a Common Core agenda, but us folks in Educational Theatre sometimes have no choice in the matter. People should read it to get an idea (good or bad) of what's coming. I was depressed by the lack of specific Tech elements in the Secondary Ed. Piece.


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## TheaterEd (Feb 20, 2014)

Chris Chapman said:


> No offense taken. I'm not pushing a Common Core agenda, but us folks in Educational Theatre sometimes have no choice in the matter. People should read it to get an idea (good or bad) of what's coming. I was depressed by the lack of specific Tech elements in the Secondary Ed. Piece.


I also am disappointed by the lack of specific Tech elements. The Wisconsin state standards really only have one or two pieces that involve tech so I'm not that surprised. I guess this just give me more room to teach what I think makes a well rounded technician.


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## zmb (Feb 20, 2014)

We need standards for teaching theater and other art classes now? What has this world came too? 23 pages of them too.

I can't find "Safety" anywhere in there, so maybe some objectives can include safely executing various activities?

So glad to be in college and done with all the standards being jammed into K-12 schools.


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## StradivariusBone (Feb 21, 2014)

For a long time the powers that create these standardized educational ideals have largely ignored areas such as art, music, theatre, dance, etc. since it is such a blatantly subjective medium. How do we know art is good? How do we know a monologue is bad? "We" all know it, because we've observed the spectrum over the course of our careers and can differentiate between a performance that lacks fundamental qualities or one that knocks it out of the park to create something beyond what we've built as a foundation and framework for our students to build their knowledge upon. 

The problem that the establishment has with these things is how can you put a number on that? And so they glossed over it for a long time.

Years ago (I'm drawing on my band director experience a bit) we used to call the adjudication event for bands, choruses, and orchestras "festivals". It was an event to share and recreate music so that students could observe their peers performing similar literature at a variety of levels (good and bad, high and low, and everything in-between). It was designed to promulgate the idea that all students could achieve a relatively high standard of musicianship and it worked. Over the course of the past decade, it has been renamed "Music Performance Assessment" or MPA as a nod to the testing community that this "festival" is, like their FCAT's and Common Core's, devoid of all meaningful expression and thought and is merely a blunt instrument for measuring perceived success from year to year. I do say that with a certain bitterness, because I feel that the original goal in all of this was lost in an effort to make the event relevant to our test-obsessed society. 

I feel we are losing a battle we cannot possibly win in chasing ways and means to quantify what it is that arts curriculum does for students. There is nothing wrong with the concept of writing standards for our teachers and students to meet. The whole goal of festival was to elegantly establish a perpetually changing standard that could be easily transmitted to students and teachers across a geographic area. The issue with measuring the completion of standards in the arts is that to understand growth and development in this area, you have to possess a unique understanding of it. You have to be in it and be a part of it for some time to develop within yourself the ability to take your subjective and objective interpretation of the performance and create from that a meaningful and useful assessment of the performance piece. The problem there is that your average administrator doesn't have the time nor the where-with-all to develop such traits, so the big-wig idea is that if there can be standards that are observed in action, the teacher must be doing the right things, regardless of the quality of performance that is derived. 

I don't have a solution to this problem. I'm not against the development of a framework to establish better traits and goals for education, but putting a number on a kid painting a picture is not going to help anyone become better at painting, nor is paying her teacher based on that number going to make that teacher any better at crafting artists.


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## What Rigger? (Feb 22, 2014)

As my wife told me last night "It all goes in circles. In a few years Common Core will be gone. Remember _Open Court_ was the big thing a few years ago."


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## Tex (Feb 22, 2014)

I think that often it's about creating a new revenue stream for the Pearsons of the world rather than creating new and improved standards. More standards = more tests = more money. Sigh. 
5 more years... 

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk


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## sk8rsdad (Feb 22, 2014)

Don't get me started on standardized testing. 

The SAT can trace its roots in America back to IQ testing instigated by the American Eugenics Society. The original testing was designed to cull "idiots and imbeciles" from the general population. Eventually 30 states had sterilization laws on the books. This was adapted by the US Army into testing for officer candidates and eventually morphed into the SAT.

Zander Sherman's _The Curiosity of School_ is a quick read on the history of education in North America. Admittedly it is a slanted view but the general message is "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".


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## zmb (Feb 22, 2014)

Tex said:


> I think that often it's about creating a new revenue stream for the Pearsons of the world rather than creating new and improved standards. More standards = more tests = more money. Sigh.
> 5 more years...
> 
> Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk



Don't get me started on how good some university departments are at that. It came out to $130 this quarter for my physics class and I'll need to fork that over again for the next two quarters. And most of it is for the consumable textbooks and single-use online access codes. Math was a bargain at $80 as one-time payment for the homework site and eBook for the calculus series.

At least my university has a really good licensing agreement with Microsoft, I've got Office 2013 Professional Plus, Windows 7 Ultimate and 8 Pro for free. Also tossed in is an Office 365 Enterprise subscription and Google Apps with tons of storage.

Back to K12 Education: Should be glad that the discovery math standards were finally put to rest after finding out how abysmal they were at teaching math.


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## StradivariusBone (Feb 22, 2014)

Tex said:


> I think that often it's about creating a new revenue stream for the Pearsons


This. They make money hands over fist on the backs of teachers AND kids. It is a disgraceful affair.


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## AudJ (Feb 22, 2014)

The standards by themselves are nothing out-of-the-ordinary for education reform. It is the big picture that is completely insane. A bunch of politicians -that have no experience in the field, no vested interest in the outcome for the individual, no education on the topic - not only form policy, and budget, but also the power to appoint their buddies with similar credentials to be in charge of dictating curriculum, materials, allocated $, etc. They steer results to make themselves look good for re-election. This is proven yearly when they change the grading of tests and benchmark scores. Weird how the scores all go up on election years, and down when someone wants to initiate a change (aka: news headline with their name in it). Great job!

Now when do we find out how my child's learning is impacted? Too late... 

Sorry, no accurate data collected on that.


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## misterm (Feb 24, 2014)

this is short compared to GA's 80 pages of standards for theatre. most of which are absurd. https://www.georgiastandards.org/st...ocs/fine_arts_theatre_gps_final_2-11-2010.pdf


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## Tex (Feb 25, 2014)

Here's the standards (or Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) for Texas. Up until this year, there were only Theatre Arts standards that applied to all classes and they were very vague. Starting next year, they've added TEKS for Tech Theatre and Musical Theatre.
http://www.cedfa.org/downloads/Theatre/HIGH SCHOOL THEATRE TEKS.pdf
Texas has not adopted Common Core, and I don't think we will (at least not before I retire).


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## ruinexplorer (Mar 2, 2014)

You guys have definitely cured me of any desire to quit my job and go into teaching. Plus, you have solidified in my mind the desire to determine the best educational materials for my own children.


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## StradivariusBone (Mar 3, 2014)

ruinexplorer said:


> You guys have definitely cured me of any desire to quit my job and go into teaching. Plus, you have solidified in my mind the desire to determine the best educational materials for my own children.



I think the pendulum will swing. In Florida, they just released what are known as "VAM" scores, basically a number for each educator that is based on the performance of their assigned students on standardized tests. It sounds OK, until you realize that most teachers don't teach subjects that have a test metric attached to it, so teachers are then being assessed based on data from their students from other subject areas that they don't actually teach. Plus, teachers are supposed to then be paid accordingly with their VAM score. An overwhelming majority of the press on this here is negative towards the concept and I have yet to see an article that supports this means of evaluating. It apparently was invented by a corn farmer in Kentucky or Tennessee. Go figure.

But that second sentence- If you're a parent, it's your job to make sure your kid is learning, not the school's. The school is just there for the nuts and bolts. You need to be an advocate for your child's education until they can start to be one for themselves. Having been a teacher, I can tell you it's not possible to force someone to learn. There has to be some sort of intrinsic motivation and that starts with the example at home. 

I cannot tell you how angry I get when I hear parents complaining about how they have their kids over summer and then the rejoicing when they get to send their little angels back to the state-run daycares. Think of it this way, I've taught classes will 93 middle school students with noisemakers and you* can't handle your own kid for 3 months out of the year? Plus, I've got my own little 2-year-old monster at home to deal with. The problem with education is not solely rooted in the schools, nor should we be expecting the schools (teachers and admin) to solve all of our societal ills. 

</soapbox>

_*Not any of you, just a general, angry "you" at bad parents. _


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## ruinexplorer (Mar 28, 2014)

StradivariusBone said:


> But that second sentence- If you're a parent, it's your job to make sure your kid is learning, not the school's. The school is just there for the nuts and bolts. You need to be an advocate for your child's education until they can start to be one for themselves. Having been a teacher, I can tell you it's not possible to force someone to learn. There has to be some sort of intrinsic motivation and that starts with the example at home.
> 
> I cannot tell you how angry I get when I hear parents complaining about how they have their kids over summer and then the rejoicing when they get to send their little angels back to the state-run daycares. Think of it this way, I've taught classes will 93 middle school students with noisemakers and you* can't handle your own kid for 3 months out of the year? Plus, I've got my own little 2-year-old monster at home to deal with. The problem with education is not solely rooted in the schools, nor should we be expecting the schools (teachers and admin) to solve all of our societal ills.
> 
> ...


 
I am totally with you. Though, in my family we go to the extreme and home educate.  We didn't start that way, just had that desire to spend with our kids more (and really know what they were learning). My dad quit being a teacher when I was a kid because of the way the mandates came down from the state and school district. He felt he could never really teach his class.

Let me tell you, my hat is off to all educators. I only teach as part of a home-school cooperative and the occasional workshops and it isn't an easy task. There are many gems in the educational world, and I feel that we tend to collect many of them here on CB. So, here's to all of you.


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