An Increasingly Complex Text

            I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been selected to sit on the committee that is writing California’s next instructional framework for English Language Arts and English Language Development. Not only has the state updated its ELD standards to run parallel to the new Common Core, but the very title of the framework tells you that the state is moving in a very bold direction.

Core (and Not Necessarily Common) Values

            I was hired in the Fall of 1999 and charged with shepherding my three periods of seniors through the school’s first-ever, year-long Senior Project consisting of a research paper, a fieldwork project, and a multimedia presentation all centered around a single topic. The Senior Project epitomized our department’s instructional values at the time: embrace any topic the students choose; develop his/her academic perspective on the topic; showcase that perspective in the student’s writing and speech, and ensure it has a practical application outside of academia. This grand, culminating assessment became the common core of our English curricula; all our reform efforts in 11^th-, 10^th-, and 9^th-grade courses would later be founded on these same principles. Even as the state’s new curricular standards were rolled out, I never felt overwhelmed by them because I already had such a clear image of the kind of student that my English team wanted to see at graduation. Truth be told, I may have started by designing my lessons around the standards, but in short order, we all tailored the standards to our vision.