My talk from November at UW-Madison is now available on their YouTube page. Close to 400 of you attended in person and online and the School of Education wanted to make the talk available to you to share.
In it I discuss two diverging decisions we can make in our schools about how to approach the ELA Common Core Standards, we can take the route of initiatives simply for initiative’s sake or we can take the route of our students, seeing their needs and responding to them.
I also take on the topic of CCSS “aligned” products, including exemplar modules and rubrics found online. I discuss where the creation of those modules began and how they miss the mark of both good classroom practice and the standards themselves.
I then describe promises we must make to our students and ways of aligning your instruction to their strengths and needs. Throughout I include the comments of our fellow educators and how they are navigating these challenging waters.
My sincerest hope is that you feel empowered to make the decisions that are best for you and your students. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to your insights and ideas.
Christopher Lehman 
I so enjoy your blog that I nominated it for the Sunshine Award, an award created by bloggers for bloggers. For more information please see my latest post for rules. Thanks for all you do.
Tomasen
Chris & UW-Madison,
Thank you for choosing to share this talk with others! It has been the most well-spent professional learning opportunity of my winter break! I am happily sharing the link with as many people as possible! Thank you for making sense of the storm that is right now! I think the best way to navigate this storm is by putting kids as learners first! What a wonderful message!
Thank you for sharing, Chris! We all need to be sure we never lose sight of the reason(s) why we’re here: our children, our future :-).