Sometimes educational jargon makes me a bit crazy. I understand that most academic educators want to make sure the level of educational terminology remains professional. I understand that. However,  I am often frustrated with the jargon used in standards for early childhood education. I was recently going through a document of proposed science standards for the new Common Core State Standards. Even at the kindergarten level, I felt like some of the standards were written in such a confusing manner and with terminology that many early childhood educators rarely use or understand.  Fortunately, there were clarification statements included so that you could fully understand what the standard was actually asking children to do. I think it is interesting that we needed to have a clarification statement next to the standard. Could the actual standard have been written in a clarifying way instead? Perhaps that would have made the standard more usable for a kindergarten teacher. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand that we want to use professional and educational language for official documents. I just sometimes feel that we get so high and mighty that we forget about the teachers who are on the font lines every day working directly with children (which is our focus…isn’t it?). I don’t mean to pinpoint only the new science standards. I find this same issue with almost every “standards” document that is published. When the new Head Start Early Childhood Framework came out last year, I learned some new words. After 30+ years in early childhood, I guess it is wonderful to learn new words. I just hope the skills described with those new words actually find their way to children.