On the way back to the DMV office, the test administrator casually informed me, "You know, you could have just backed up and straightened out to park." Um, no, I didn't know. No one had told me that! I was stunned by the unfairness of it all. If I'd only known that one little rule, I would have easily passed the test. (For what it's worth, I went back a few days later and passed easily, and I've been terrorizing the roads ever since.)
What happened to me that day? I didn't know the rules. Despite everything I'd done to prepare, my ignorance cost me my license (for a few days, at least). In the grand scheme, it wasn't a huge loss, but to 16-year-old me, it was nearly the end of the world.
Imagine if the stakes had been higher. What, if, for instance, because I made one mistake, I hadn't been allowed to take the test again for 6 months or more? What if I wasn't given any help when and where I needed it? What if all my peers passed their tests and were able to motor off without me? What if the tested material or rules changed again and no one told me that, either?
These questions might sound a little melodramatic when posed by a teenager taking a driving test, but they are a very real analogy for the testing situations our students face on an almost daily basis. In the 2011-2012 school year, over 140 of our 180 student contact days were devoted to some sort of testing or other--tests which would be determining factors in course placement, promotion or retention, remediation or advanced studies, and even some students' ability to graduate.
I'm entering my ninth year of teaching. Since 2005, I have taught Intensive Reading to low-performing 9th, 11th, and 12th graders, English I, English II and English II Honors, English III, AP Language, and AP Literature. I've been a color guard instructor and taught Leadership. I've been involved at every grade level in a student's high school career, seen every assessment, taught every ability level.
I begin in 2005 with no specific curriculum, following the textbook in more or less chronological order; the only classroom "strategies" I had were loosely based on Kagan strategies (though I didn't know at the time that's what they were called). Then came Learning Focused, with its curriculum maps, Unit and Lesson Essential Questions, "vocabilary" Word Walls, Activating Strategies, and Shoulder Partners, all packaged and endorsed by Max Thompson. Next, we moved away from the brand name Learning Focused, but still used many of the strategies, especially Collaborative Pairing, with a special focus on HOT (Higher Order Thinking) questions. A few years ago, we began to attend PLCs, where we are expected to align our strategies both Vertically and Horizontally; train to administer the FCAT, EOC, AP, Discovery, MAZE, PERT, and PSAT exams; disaggregate the data received from those exams (especially to identify the Bottom Quartile); and Unpack Common Core Standards. Three years ago, we adopted a whole new Language Arts textbook series and changed our curriculum maps to reflect the change. Last year, we implemented the dreaded SpringBoard curriculum district wide, which required the purchase of all new books for every student in middle and high school, plus extensive training on what promised to Fix all of our Problems. We were assured that this time, we would see it through for a few years, at least long enough to see if it actually worked.
Seem like a lot of buzz words, acronyms, and strategies in just 8 years? It gets better.
When this year rolled around, we returned to school rested and ready to go, only to discover that not only are we NOT using SpringBoard again, but we are getting entirely NEW curriculum maps and lesson planning guidelines (which, of course, are not complete and are not available for use during pre-planning week). All of the hours spent in training and planning an entirely new and completely foreign curriculum, all of the dollars spent on training and materials, all of the times we teachers had to reassure students that this, unlike all of the other Next Best Things they've seen over the years, is here to stay...wasted. Gone. Back to square one.
What do you think this is doing to our children? If teachers are so turned around that we don't know if we're coming or going, what do we expect from our students? Teachers are more than just experts in our fields; unlike other professionals who are required to have a certain amount of knowledge related to their jobs, we must also know how to convey that information to others in such a way that they comprehend and retain it. We have to know what all that jargon, all those acronyms, mean, and we have to be able to apply that knowledge. But how can we do that, when we are constantly being ushered onto a new playing field? It's hard to play the hand you're dealt when you get new cards before you've even had a chance to look at the old ones. Children crave consistency; whether they are four or fourteen (or forty), children (and adults!) thrive on routine and stability. Every parent who's raised a child through toddlerhood knows this, so why, WHY are we constantly changing the rules? How can we expect to truly and meaningfully measure our students' growth and success when the scale changes from year to year? How can we measure students, teachers, and entire schools on scale that's adjusted according the whims of politicians who've never set foot into a public school classroom?
One of the things I hear consistently in professional development is to "plan with the end in mind." When planning instruction, first determine your objective. Do you want students to write an analysis essay based on a passage you've assigned? Begin your lesson plan with that goal, and determine what skills your students will need to be successful in achieving that goal. Sounds simple, right? In theory it is...except, how do you plan to hit a moving target? How do you create a plan for success when you don't know the goal from one year to the next, or from the beginning of the year to the end?
Let's give our kids a chance. Leave them, and us, the teachers, alone, and let us do our jobs. Give them, and us, the time and resources to prove that we can play by the rules...I promise we won't let you down.
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