In addition to new classrooms, students and new staff members, teachers in Georgia have another “new” “new” to adapt to: the Common Core Georgia Performance standards. These standards emphasize literacy across subjects, critical thinking and skills needed to succeed in college and/or careers.

Check out this release from Superintendent John Barge for some examples on how the standards can be applied.

Much of what Georgia educators already teach coincide with what is in the new curriculum standards.

Training on the new standards have been extensive. As you know, at any time you can access the archived live streamed professional development sessions led by Georgia Department of Education specialists on our Common Core hub pages. Additionally the DOE produced professional learning webinars you can also take at anytime.

Despite the support and training, questions and concerns remain. Here are some comments I came across:

In a piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Keisha Gibbons, principal of Boyd Elementary, a year-round school, said teachers received the new standards with mixed emotions.

Crystal Moore, a sixth grade math teacher from Boyd Elementary commented: "At first I was frightened. I saw we were doing statistics in sixth grade — before we just did mean, median and mode, but now we will be discussing true statistics, which I didn't learn until college. Now, I'm excited about Common Core because I think it evens the playing field with us and other states."

On the AJC’s Get Schooled blog TeacherMom4 expressed concern about integration “I love integrating; I do it all the time with the book choices I make during literacy, but I can’t teach all of the standards through integration alone because the way the material is tested relies on students knowing very specific facts.”

On the same blog, Jacob complained about the uniformity: “Teachers should be able to basically continue teaching standards as they have. The problem is: Once you get used to something, be prepared for it to change, because it won’t stay around for longer than a few years.”

So what's your opinion? What do you think of the new standards and what challenges or triumphs have you experienced in implementing them? Share your thoughts here.