Pro-Common Core Math Instructor: Kids Are 'Clean Slate,' Parents Must Be 'Retrained' (+video)
Photo Credit: APThe frustration and confusion over the Common Core math curricula aligned with the nationalized standards has opened up the role of parent “instructional coach,” educators who are teaching not only students, but also parents, in the strange and non-instinctive ways of the nationalized math standards.
Lyndsey Layton at the Washington Post reports that elementary school parents, especially, are upset because the Common Core way of math leaves them unable to assist their children with homework. Throughout the country, school districts are holding special classes for parents and offering “homework hotlines” to help them understand Common Core math.
“The kids who come to us are a clean slate,” states Jennifer Patanella, an instructional coach with the Rochester, New York public schools who teaches parents in the strange ways of Common Core math. “It’s the adults who have to be retrained.”
“Almost every parent comes in and says, ‘This is not how I learned math,’” states Melissa Palermo, a fourth grade teacher who also now coaches other teachers in math in the Nathaniel Hawthorne public schools in Rochester.
Palermo is a proponent of the Common Core and says her students are reaping the benefits of being able to show a more sophisticated understanding of math and an ability to perform operations they would otherwise not have learned until they were older.
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