Amy Magnafichi Lucas is a graduate teaching assistant in the English Studies program at Illinois State university. Prior to her graduate work, she spent ten years in the secondary English classroom. In this article, she points out that most teachers are their own worst enemies. Most of the time this occurs during times of educational change because educators have a nasty habit of jumping on the pendulum of reform and riding that pendulum to an extreme without looking back at what is being left behind. She warns that without stepping back to find balance within the newest educational change-- the Common Core Standards (CCSS)--educators run the risk of taking yet another pendulum swing that could leave classrooms off-balance in ways that could be avoided.