Paying teachers skilled in Common Core to train their counterparts outside the classroom is one way to better assist learners

As an educator, Christine Chilcott supports the national Common Core standards. As the executive director of Girls Inc. of the Island City, she also recognizes that Common Core is less intuitive, unfamiliar, and possibly even confusing to those who help kids learn outside the classroom.

So Chilcott advocates a funded, coordinated effort to pair professional teachers—ones trained and well-versed in Common Core—with afterschool homework assistance providers to educate them in basic Common Core principles, too. That way, the pros could school the amateurs in how Common Core works so they could ultimately better aid the children they serve.

“Homework assistance providers would benefit form having Common Core training,” she said. “They really don’t always know how to support kids.”

Aligning school-based learning with enrichment-offered programming could build complementary and symbiotic educational opportunities that would better support all learners.

“It would be an incredibly wise thing for school and community partners to realize,” she said, placing the responsibility of education on the community as a whole, not just the local school district. “At the end of the day, they are all our children.”

Civic Drawing Board asks Alameda citizens and leaders to identify a concrete change that would improve their town.