Educating juveniles in the justice system by Micah J. Miner
To read this article on the Chicago Tribune website, click here.
Each day as I enter my classroom, I ask myself: Are we rehabilitating juveniles or abandoning them to become lifetime offenders who will be incarcerated for most, if not all, of their lives? And if we’re rehabilitating them, what should their education look like?
It is that time in the academic year when we focus on measuring our students’ educational growth. The Common Core State Standards assessments, and new teacher evaluation systems, have profoundly impacted how I teach and what my students learn. Despite the inherent difficulties of implementing Common Core in the environment in which I teach, I have embraced the new standards and the ways they can improve student learning and my own performance.