A few days ago, a major league umpire blew a call and cost a pitcher a perfect game. Being that the “perfect game” is such a rare feat in baseball, this was a big deal to many in the sports world.

But what struck me about the whole incident was how quickly and completely the ump owned up to his error.

He blew it. He said he blew it. He felt terrible about blowing it and if there was a way to make amends for screwing up the call beyond apologizing, he made no bones about saying he would have done it.

“It was the biggest call of my career, and I kicked the (stuff) out of it,” Joyce said, looking and sounding distraught as he paced in the umpires’ locker room. “I just cost that kid a perfect game.”

This, to me, is a great reminder as to why I often try to bring in “pieces” I find from my random readings into English class. The language arts standards are easy to teach. Aspects of being a high quality human being, much tougher. (And being that the bubble tests don’t even bother to pay lip service to this aspect of a student’s education – beyond the threat of DON’T CHEAT ON THE BUBBLE TESTS, that is – we are sledding up an even tougher hill on this front!)

An article like this is a great way to end the year. Why? Because at the end of the day, kids need to know that no matter what they do, no matter how hard they try, no matter where they work, how much they make or who they partner up with, they are going to one day “screw up big time”.

And how they respond to their errors will determine much more about their lives than most kids really ever give any thought to.

I know I’ve screwed up a lot this year. (School ends next Friday, June 11 for me.) I am sure there are students to whom I have seemed insensitive, peers to whom I’ve seemed self-righteous, admins to whom I have seemed intractable and readers who think I am a bleepity-bleep.

Heck, sometimes when I read what I have written I think I am a bleepity-bleep so how can folks not?

What can I say but, “Hey, I am human… I screw up.” And just like this baseball ump, when we do foul up – and admit it – I find that most people are pretty quick to forgive us and think we are better people for admitting that we have shortcomings. Matter of fact, the people who own up to their mistakes are the type of people with whom most of us would prefer to be associated with.

Do you know anyone who always thinks they are right?
Do you know anyone that perpetually refuses to apologize?
Do you know anyone who feels that they are entitled to behave the way that they do because of… gulp… who they are?

Drive ya crazy, won’t they?

Umpire Joyce, you can call my ball game anytime because I am much more wary of the folks who claim they are not at fault than I am of the folks who own up to matters and say they are when they are.

In life, as in baseball, no one bats 1.000

One question that has longed bothered me about all of the conversation regarding having one set of national standards for all American schoolchildren is, “If we are going to have standards at all, why should these standards be different from state to state?”

Forget the merit of the standards chosen and the text exemplars cited in the latest information released about the Common Core Standards Initiative. (I know, hard to do.) But can anyone explain the benefit to me of Michigan have one set of English Language Arts standards, Georgia having another and then Texas having yet a third?

And this goes on across all fifty states.

Do any two states at all even share the exact same set of standards? Not any two neighboring states like Mississippi and Arizona? Okay, my geography is off — but that’s because I went to school before there were national standards! (Okay, I am straying here…) I think national standards are the solution for this problem. What is the benefit, especially when American families are more transient than ever moving from state to state, of having different content standards in the same content area across the entire country?

Now before I get pounded with criticism of why national standards are bad, I feel the need to say I hear and find some merit in the arguments against them… and am not even going to try and weigh in on those right now. It’s a different question I am asking.

(And yes, I get the nationalizing education is bad for America argument. And yes, I do hear the complaints about how this is a blatant power grab for centralized control of all our classrooms by politicians. And yes, I do see the link as to how this might actually prove to be a chance for monopolistic corporate behemoths to swoop on in and milk every last dollar from the taxpayer kitty with unprecedented efficiency and accuracy — though I think textbook companies are sweating right now much more so than they are jubilant… more on that at another time. All reasonable, solid points to debate and consider for sure.)

But can someone please make a case for why it is better for individual states to have their own individual sets of standards when the gaping holes between the degree of rigor between some states is so wide, and the language used to describe the same basic ideas from state to state is so varied, that to look at all of them on a kitchen table with a bird’s eye perspective would simply leaving you scratching you head?

Forgetting the political implications of it all (and I know, if education is anything, it’s political… though silly me thought it was supposed to be about the kids) why is a state to state to state standards system better than a national standards system?

In essence, am I missing something or doesn’t this put us all on the same page so that Florida doesn’t value metaphors more than Illinois values relationships between main and subordinate characters in a text while Nevada finds value in etymology?

If you agree with standards-based education, the Common Core Standards Initiative seems kinda logical. If you do not agree with standards-based education then certainly, you are in no way going to be a fan of this. But if you agreed with standards-based education yet think that the content standards for math, English, science and so on should vary depending on which side of the state border you happen to be standing on, I’d love to hear your reasoning.

One thing to really ensure that you nail the standards is to start with them. Don’t start with the methodology (as many educators do), start with the language arts standard, figure out the assessment and then determine how you will teach it. This is how you really lock in and make sure you hit your academic objective dead on.

For example, most teachers start with the methodology (i.e. they are going to teach a book like Dracula) and then they figure out what they are going to teach (i.e. they’ll teach symbolism) and then they figure out how to assess (i.e. I’ll give a quiz or project on symbolism.) As a Professor of Secondary Methodology in the Language Arts at Loyola Marymount University, I had to learn to teach teachers that when you teach kids in this manner, it’s not really the ideal way to make sure that you, as the educator, are drilling the core content standards the way you ought to.

Best to go…
1. Standards
2. Assessment
3. Methodology

This way you will know what you are teaching and you will know how you will measure whether or not you successfully taught it before you determine the materials you will use to do the teaching. (And this is why the standards are not text specific — more on that in a minute.)

Let’s look at it…

1. Decide to teach CA Language Arts Standards 3.7 (10th grade): Recognizing and Understanding the Significance of Symbolism in a text.
2. Have students identify, re-create (through a drawing, clip art, magazine pictures, and so on) and present a symbol from the text via the original creation of an independent poster board project.
3. Read Chapters 1 – 4 in Dracula and utilize this material as the basis for the assignment on symbolism.

Or you can use Twilight. Or you can use Monster. Or you can use Speak, The Outsiders or Freak the Mighty.

This is why the standards are, once again, not text specific. Find a book that engages your students and the standards can be a very valuable tool to make sure that you are focused like a laser on real classroom objectives while teaching high interest literature at the same time.

Oh how I wish someone had taught this to me when I first became a teacher. It’s made my life so much easier — and my classroom practice so much more effective.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, the standards are, for me, like a northern star, my unwavering compass as I try all kinds of crazy, far-reaching stuff to stretch my students’ minds.