Scale Your Impact

The Common Core is a national set of standards recently created in the subjects of Math, English Language Arts, Science, and History. In my opinion, it’s the best thing to happen to education in many years. Standards are high, and the progression is well-planned and developmentally appropriate. There is fine balance between conceptual understanding, fluency, and application. It’s an about face from the “mile wide and inch deep” standards that so many states were implementing previously. This is the first step in getting back on track to fulfill America’s promise of an excellent education for all students, not just the rich ones. It’s what our country needs to stay relevant and compete with other nations, and it’s about time.

Enter LearnZillion.

Sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, LearnZillion is an organization that creates online math and language arts lessons related to the Common Core Standards. Think Khan Academy, but more kid-friendly. Students from all over the world can log on at any time to access lessons, and teachers can download and use lessons to teach their own classes. It’s fabulous and, more importantly, FREE.

A few months ago I applied to be part of their Dream Team, a group of teachers to create these online lessons. I was absolutely thrilled to be accepted, and this weekend I flew to San Francisco to participate in TeachFest with 200 other educators. Our goal? To Scale Our Impact. We want to share our passion for the Common Core, to reach students outside our own classrooms, to help other teachers by providing excellent lessons they can use to assist their instruction.

What an experience! I met so many outstanding, inspiring educators who share a similar educational philosophy. We were assigned standards, met our coaches, and worked feverishly to start researching and creating our lessons. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I am willing and I am ready! 

A fierce game of Karate Girl - Indiana Jones - Bear.
Like Rock, Paper, Scissors, but with a twist. 

Here I am with my coach! 

With LZ co-founder Eric Westendorf.

Lucky me, because this was in San Francisco, I got to see my family too!

Renee's daughter was in town from Guatemala on a conference too!