The Common Core, Or At Least My Understanding Of It

After doing a little bit of technological surfing, I can finally say that I have a little better understanding of the common core and why it's such big talk these days. Here's the mission statement from the home site for the Common Core States Standards Initiative (CCSSI):

"The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy."

So basically, the states want to be more consistent with each other on how they are educating their students and preparing them for secondary education or the workforce. This definitely makes sense to me because as a member of the next generation to enter the real world and start having real influence over others in our careers and other aspects of our lives, I want to be on-par with others my age and education level from across the country. When I have to work with and collaborate with my peers from other states, (in whatever setting that may be), we should be able to relate on what we've learned and know because of the past 15-20 years of school. Additionally, when it comes to competing for jobs, there should be a fair playing field in the education sense, because for one person to have an advantage or disadvantage based on what state they grew up in is not fair at all.

(please ignore the bad audio)

Some things I didn't know:

• The Common Core is based off of a lot of real experiences/ideas from teachers, content experts and, the general public.
• The Standards are internationally benchmarked
• The Standards aren't a set of vague markers for what students at each level should know. In fact, they "include sample texts that demonstrate the level of text complexity appropriate for the grade level and compatible with the learning demands set out in the Standards. The exemplars of high quality texts at each grade level provide a rich set of possibilities and have been very well received. This provides teachers with the flexibility to make their own decisions about what texts to use – while providing an excellent reference point when selecting their texts."
• The CC incorporates other disciplines (ELA, Math, Science and History) into all curricula, but not in the sense that Art teachers now have to teach math; rather, different disciplines should be teaching their respective subjects with the same curriculum as before, just through different lenses, some being literacy based, others mathematically etc. The standards help build knowledge in different subject areas while preparing students with the reality that reading, writing, and math will always pop up in their everyday lives, and that a knowledge of history and science will be significantly more important and beneficial to their lives in a much broader sense than the tests taken in the classroom. Hence, the importance of including them in all subject areas.
• The Standards do not tell teachers what to teach. Rather, they tell teachers what students need to know. NOTHING ABOUT HOW THEY SHOULD ACHIEVE THAT KNOWLEDGE -that's still up to the teacher and the school!
• ^ That has already been implemented in the classroom, because every school has a set of curricula for each grade and each class that students need to know in order to pass. This stuff isn't new, people... it's just a new lens of teaching, a new way to frame your lessons and objectives.

Now the question is... how exactly to I implement the CC in each lesson I've written in the past, and every lesson I will write in the future?