Testing

Although I left teaching in June, I went and walked the picket line with my former coworkers this morning.  Most cars honked and waved.  On woman yelled out the window that it is about money.  When someone replied that it wasn’t, she yelled, “Quit being lazy and go back to work.”  We all laughed. There is no way that we could conceive of being lazy people.  It was simply funny being accused of it.  In fact, the teachers I worked with were never lazy because we were idealists. 

Right now, during Chicago’s nationally famous teachers’ strike, so many of issues seem foggy.  I understand parents are mad because this is inconvenient to them.  Unfortunately, that is the point of a strike. 

One big sticking point currently is teacher evaluation.  The evaluation in current use is practically prehistoric.  It is generally irrelevant to what teaching has become in the last 25 years.  It bears little relationship to how we work.  In fact, it is a triplicate form!  Really! 

This needs to be fixed.  Test scores, however, can’t be the majority of the scoring.  Numerous studies support this.  It just isn’t a valid measure of the effectiveness of a good teacher.   There is so much more than a test score.  How do we grade idealism?

Being an idealist isn’t the easiest way to live.  It is much easier to open a book that gives instructions and follow them.  Or open a workbook and say, “Do page 37.”  I tried both of those routes.  Always, I ended up driving off road in about a week.  I mean, in week six of second grade the basal spelling list included coincidence – a word I can barely spell.  Whose idea was that?  Really?  Coincidence?  Many of them don’t even know what the word means.  That’s the other thing, why give them words to spell when they don’t know the meaning.  Most beginning second graders can read the word “din” but how many know what it means.  They usually think they are having a dyslexic moment and that the word must be “bin.”  They know that word. 

So, given a basal, I am rewriting it immediately.  Why were these stories put in this order? Which can I tie into Social Studies or Science?  Can I use the story to teach the comprehension strategy I committed to teaching this month?  Will the students find this story interesting, compelling, and relevant?   How can I teach a story I hate.

I became known for finding stories that tied units up in a bow.  I love literature so searching for books is a joy and passion.  The class either laughs or moans when I hold up a story they haven’t heard before and say, “This is one of my all time favorite books!” 

That is part of the idealism.  Showing them that it is okay to love books, science, poetry or whatever.  That excitement of looking through an index of a book on whales or discovering the pattern of leaves matches the math problem or realizing the poem they love doesn’t rhyme is the bread of a teacher’s diet.  Not bigger paychecks.

Taylor Mali says a teacher knows things are going right when the teacher has nothing to do while students are working.  It’s true.  But that ease comes after much preparation.  If you take the time, sometimes slowly and methodically, sometimes layering lessons, sometimes practicing bits and bits and bits then you can let go and watch them fly. 

I call the beginning of the year Tai Chi second grade.  We review pencils, then crayons, how we store things, how we use them.  Every year someone has to have a friend cut their work out for them because they don’t follow the scissor rules.  (Boo-hoo, cry-cry-cry.  Hmmm! Did you just tell her to cut her hair? or Do you think it might be dangerous to jump up and down with your scissors open?)  It takes weeks to start moving at a medium pace.  By Halloween, however, you can let partners reading at a similar range pick an appropriate Halloween book, tell them to practice a page to read aloud to the class, ask them to make a poster about their story, first a sloppy copy, then a final draft, have them read to the class and show the poster. 

By December, they are writing their own chapter books about whales (They only need three sentence per chapter topic.) They get to chose how to earn 100 points on whale projects.  Now, you are busy, teaching them to draw a whale, showing them how to make a mobile, how to make a planner for their book.  The projects fill the room.  The books bring tears, laughter and thrown out chests. 

By June, during author studies, the children open up the craft cupboard, discuss project choices with a partner, plan, create, clean up, and share what they have created.  They are learning every minute.  It has become who they are as students.  Not just the reading and comprehension, which is important, but the problem solving skills, negotiating skills, the self confidence to make a choice skills.

That is the joy, joy, joy, run down the hall to find another adult to watch what is happening in your room, smile bringing ease that is the pay back for the hard work. I proudly show their first grade teachers what the former first graders a year later has accomplished.  I share with my grade level team.  I drag middle school teachers in to look.  Yes, I taught them but it is their hard work that I am proud of.  I am just as awed by my low readers beautiful diorama as I am by the character scrap book my top students created. 

Yes, I am an idealist.  I get frustrated by some decision made by some non educator saying I will be evaluated be a test taken on one day.  A standardized test is only as good as the student and that test on that day. What are we honoring?  Test taking or creative learning.   How focused you can be answering questions or how well do you problem solve with others?

My test

1.       Who do you think should earn more money?

          a.  Innovative creative types

          b.  People able to regurgitate facts.

2.       Would you rather work with someone who can:

          a.  creatively collaborate?

          b.  sit focused and regurgitate facts?

3.       If you encounter a difficulty with a task, who would you ask for help?

          a.  Someone who has the resources to problem solve

          b.  Someone who has memorized the manual

When I was getting my teaching certificate, I had a professor who said a teacher has to make a positive difference in every student’s life or else they don’t belong in teaching.  I thought at the time that seemed a little pie in the sky. 

Ten years later, I was torn up by a very challenging class.  In many ways they were a train wreck.  I had 27 students.  By the end of the year ten of them were in some variation of special education.  There were others who were “good students” but were bullies.  I had 7 students diagnosed with ADHD and one of them was on medication.  The class whined, they cried and fought. In the middle was this core of wonderful, sweet, funny students.  They were as frustrated as I was.  I’m tough, bossy, straight shooting and hard nosed and I pushed the group.  I was able to teach but mostly I felt I just was able to manage the group.  It made me heartsick at the end of the year to think I hadn’t helped everyone of those children in a visible way.  I had to remind myself, often, numerous times a day, “You may never know what you said or taught them that will help them down the line.”  I had nightmares about it for months afterwards. I still do.

Test scores in that group would have hurt my evaluation.  It wouldn’t matter that I rearranged the room numerous times to help the class function, that I taught what to say to the mean girl, “You forgot we’re friends and that isn’t how to treat a friend.” I got a family to stop giving their eight and half year old son a baby bottle at night.  I kept my top students reading at middle school level as challenged as my nonreaders.  I got everyone excited about whales, Alexander Calder and balance, the solar system.  

I’ve had teachers I’ve worked with or who taught my son and daughter who I thought could do a better job.  My son’s high school physics teacher at one of the best high schools in the state told me he thought my son was bored. My son had put his name on the scantron, not answered any questions and wrote at the bottom, “When will we study quantum theory?”  Yes, bored.  Very bored.  He was reading books on light and matter and quantum theory at home.  Couldn’t this teacher have encouraged him, engaged him, rescued him from his boredom?  On standardized tests, my son blew everyone out of the water.  Using testing as the teacher’s evaluation would have rewarded a teacher I believe was mediocre at best.

My mentor teacher once said, “You can be the best teacher someone ever saw or the worse teacher ever seen.  It just depends on the moment they walk in the room.”  In a lot of ways this is true.   We do want what is best for the children.  If you walk in the room often enough you can see, however, who we are and what we accomplish.  It is not just measured by that test. It is an intangible measurement.

Teachers are humans.  We care deeply.  We are dedicated.  We don’t want to be striking.  We would rather be in our classrooms. We do not believe, however, that teaching testing is going to make good citizens.  While our negotiations may include pay raises, it is much more than that.  It is about being able to give the students the best tools and environment for learning the skills to have a full life.  A great teacher is just a tool for that end result.