Here is Kathy Kirby, social studies teacher at Hollis/Brookline Cooperative High School, talking to 50 teachers in a Common Core town hall meeting on October 16, 2013, during an NEA-NH professional development day.

Highlights

“The objective in our district has always been to graduate successful writers and critical thinkers and people who have developed high reading skills. So those are very much in line with the Common Core….”

How is your classroom actually different as a result of implementing the Common Core?

“We are more focused on primary source material - less on text books. More on actual experience in history. I teach social studies, so the focus has been finding grade level appropriate primary source material that inspires students and gets them to think about developing questions for the author and understanding their point of view, which is a Common Core standard, and be able to turn that around and almost engage in a conversation with [the author] and ask them critical questions. Then they should be able to write a summary the primary source author is trying to communicate the audience.”