Powerful Forces
Facing the Need for Standards Knowledge Across All Content Areas
The classroom was loud — the special kind of loud that can only be generated by fifteen or so high school students, working on a homecoming float, at the end of the day on a Friday in September. The room was summer-time warm, bustling with energy and enthusiasm, and filled with tissue paper. Cardi B blasted from a nearby phone where a table of girls sat, twisting said tissue paper into pretty impressive-looking flowers. Everyone seemed to have a job to do, and everyone seemed to be happily doing it. It was the kind of scene that might be featured in a tv drama about a high school, and as I strolled around room, smiling benevolently at my hardworking students, I mentally cast myself as the heroine teacher. Ready to pat myself on the back and settle in to do some work of my own, I stopped when I noticed Kira (*not her real name).
Kira definitely didn’t fit in the scene. She sat alone at a table near the corner of the room, head down on her notebook. I had known Kira for years, and only very rarely was she not in the middle of whatever fun, social activity was going on. Kira was one of those students who had everything going for her, and seemed to really know where she was heading. Smart, funny, and self-assured, Kira was the type of senior student that lots of younger sophomores and juniors admired. To be very honest, it was a surprise for everyone when, last spring, Kira announced that she was pregnant. Of course she was scared, she said, especially when it came to her plans for the future — she wanted to go to college, and she’d been working toward that goal forever. Maybe college would have to wait a bit, but she was determined not to be a high school drop-out. With her daughter on the way, she felt motivated more than ever to finish up her high school credits and graduate, as quickly as possible. Early, if she could. Maybe even before the baby arrived.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said, trying to be casual as I slid into the chair next to hers. She didn’t lift her head.
“I’m screwed.” Her words caught a bit, and it sounded like she was trying not to cry. “I think I’m just going to be done with school. There’s no way I can graduate before she comes, and then it’ll be too hard. I should just quit now and get a job. At least I’ll have some money saved.” She was definitely trying not to cry.
“Kira, you don’t have that much more to go. You’d be crazy to drop out now. Look, I’ll show you on your Grad Plan.” I cracked open my trusty Chromebook, ready to assuage all fears through the power of data. I succeeded, at least, in getting her to raise her head. I pulled up her Grad Plan, an excel file that displayed all of the credits she had amassed over the past three years. Scrolling through each subject area, I narrated what I saw. “Just a bit more English — informative writing and some narrative writing to go, and you’ll be done. You’re done with math…you’re done with health and PE…you’ve got some US history, but not too much!” I kept scrolling, and Kira suddenly yelped.
“Look, there! Look at all that physical science I have left!” I silently counted up credits, and realized she did have a lot left to go. “There’s no way I can do all of that!” Kira’s lip started to tremble.
“Kira, that’s not that much! And honestly, that’s the biggest chunk of work you’ll have to do!” Kira’s eyes narrowed. “Here’s the thing: I can help you get the English credits. You need narrative writing — do you like creative writing?”
“No, I can’t just make up random stories.” Kira shook her head. “Isn’t that what that kind of writing is?”
“Narrative writing is just writing that tells a story. If you don’t want to make up a story, I’ve got a project already built out to help you write your autobiography.” She sat up a little straighter. “And, you can do some research on a US history topic, and I’ll work with you on the informational writing, too. I’ll design some curriculum just for you, so you can earn those credits.” Kira actually started to smile. “You can totally do it.”
“Informational writing?” I could tell that I had her rethinking her dropout plans, but I was still on shaky ground.
“Easy — you’re just reporting out information. You know how to do that!” Now I was feeling excited, too. As Kira’s eyes traveled over the grids on the Excel file, she slowly started nodding, her hands placed on the table in front of her.
“Oh, my God. Maybe I really can do this.” She wasn’t even talking to me, speaking instead to the part of her that held onto the hope that she really could still graduate. That things weren’t already decided for her and her future. “Ms. Swesey, what about this one?” She pointed at an empty line on her Grad Plan, credit she still needed in physical science. “What’s this one mean? What is…” she squinted hard and read the line aloud, “… ‘Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions’?” Expectant eyes turned my way.
“Well, it’s…uh…” I tried to think back to my own high school science days. “…it’s, like, recognizing the different forces that exist in nature, like, gravity, and then…” I trailed off, struggling. What other forces were there? The word “inertia” popped into my head, but I didn’t think I could explain it in a convincingly science-y way. Kira’s eyes narrowed.
“That doesn’t sound like something I can do.” The pitch of her voice started to raise again. “What even is that? Ms. Swesey, what kind of work would even count for that?”
I opened my mouth to answer the question, but no words came out. I was so quick to answer all her English-related questions, able to rattle off explanations of skillsets and standards without blinking. But here I sat, Kira’s big eyes trained on me, unable to explain what I assumed was probably a pretty basic set of science concepts. I hadn’t been trained to teach science, but as someone allowed to grant credit in that area, I should at least be able to answer her questions.
“Honestly, Kira, I can’t tell you off the top of my head. But I promise I can find out for you.” She nodded politely, but my stomach dropped as her head settled back down onto her folded arms on the desk.
This summer, I was fired up about standards and skillsets. I had visions of going into this school year having built out “I Can” statements, clarifying the vision our staff shared for each one. I could imagine our staff meetings, where we’d have eager, academic conversations about what mastery truly means. We’d toss ideas back and for about how we can give students more ownership over how they show mastery of different skillsets. We’d probably create visuals and model artifacts of credit that we could blow up into posters (and laminate!), hanging them in rooms so even the students would be on the same page about earning the credits they needed to graduate.
However, once the school year started in full-swing, suddenly all the time I’d set aside to do standards work was sucked up by emails, curriculum building, and grading. All those, “I Can” statements I had crafted in my head stayed in my head, floating around with all the other items on my mental to-do list. Academic philosophy was set aside as staff meetings focused on the major issues we were facing with students. As with many of the great ideas I’ve hatched over my summers “off,” my urgency and drive to do work around mastery and its relationship to academic credits began to fade. I started telling myself that it wasn’t really that big of a deal, and that I could keep putting it off; I’d come back to it when I was less busy.
But my spontaneous afternoon meeting with Kira jolted me back to the reality that I have students counting on me to help them navigate some pretty choppy academic waters. Earning enough credits to graduate is tough enough — but when you don’t even know what you’re expected to do to earn those credits, the task seems next to impossible. Add to that the notion that maybe your teachers don’t even really know, and you might consider giving up altogether, too.
Working at an alternative high school means that my colleagues and I have the luxury of being flexible and open-minded about how our students earn credit. But it also means that we have the great responsibility to make sure we share a very clear understanding of what we are asking of our students. If I am allowed to grant academic credit in any subject area because of my alternative education license, then it’s time I stop acting like an English teacher who sometimes dabbles in other content areas. Our work with skillsets and credit is not only about philosophy, a universal definition of mastery, and the Common Core State Standards. It’s about students, like Kira, who are counting on us to give them real answers when they ask us questions about graduating, about their ability to succeed, and yes, even about what “Motion and Stability” in science is all about.
So here I am, trying to withstand the firehose of daily tasks that often extinguishes any match I try to light for more reflective, philosophical work. But instead of waiting for next summer to reignite my fire around mastery and skills and credits, I’m going to spark things again now. It’s not gravity, and I’m pretty sure it’s not inertia, but there is some force continually pushing me to do this work, and it’s just too powerful to ignore any longer.
