School subjects are no longer independent of one another, and students are being asked to think in new ways.

With the K-12 transformation, children are now required to think harder and in new ways to be able to apply what they know to more than one discipline at a time. Under the "Implementation Framework for School Transformation," a guide to the K-12 transformation occurring in Oregon as well as across the nation, curriculum had been described as "disciplines independent of one another."

In other words, you do math in math class, you learn to read and write in an English class, and you are taught science in a science class. But with the current changes taking place in K-12 education in Oregon, disciplines such as math and reading are no longer being taught as individual subjects. They are being integrated in an effort to maximize learning.

"What we have to teach is so big," says Helen Thomas, a teacher at Robert Frost Elementary School in Silverton, Ore. "There's reading, writing, math, social studies, science, technology, drug awareness, health. It just got too big."

So the state decided that the best way educators can teach all these separate disciplines is to teach two, or more, things at once. "If while you were reading, you would read something about immigration, then that would also count as social studies," says Thomas. "Then if you could calculate how many people immigrated and put that on a graph, then you can call it math"

Along with the integration of disciplines, students are being asked to think in new ways. Take the traditional math story problem so many children despise. "In the traditional story problem it used to be that once they knew that you had to add in the story problem, they'd just add them all, and they would have to do very little thinking," Thomas says. Now children are asked to use what they know in math to solve a problem that they might face in the real world. "It's a higher level of thinking and a higher level of communicating, because they are also expected to say how they got that answer and how they checked to make sure that answer is right," says Thomas. With the new state guidelines, children must show proficiency in both areas. "If they don't communicate how they got it [the answer], they can't pass, and if they don't say how they checked to make sure it was right they don't pass."

The expectation of the K-12 transformation is that all students will reach higher standards that will prepare them for even more demanding requirements in work, life and post-secondary education. Many of those involved in the education system share a positive attitude toward these new ways of teaching and thinking and believe they will bring improvements and benefits, such as a more productive workforce.