Teacher World

True confession: I don’t love teaching as much as I did when I first started in this profession. It pains me to admit this, but I don’t think I am alone. In conversations with other teachers, I am hearing the same complaints. Teachers are increasingly overwhelmed, overworked, and unappreciated.

Why are we overwhelmed? Because instead of being able to teach children to love learning, we are now in the business of teaching them how to take tests. Those of you who have moved to standards-based report cards know what I am talking about. In our district, we have created three formative assessments for each standard we cover in a trimester. We are required to administer these tests at the beginning, sometime during, and at the end of the trimester for each standard. The goal is to show improvement towards mastering each concept. After each test, we intervene with those who are not grasping the concept in a variety of ways before testing again. This is all above and beyond the normal testing that has always occurred in a classroom.  Is this what I signed up for when I became a teacher? Is this how you pictured yourself making a difference in your students’ lives? Is this really the way to get children excited about learning?

I am in my thirtieth year of teaching, and most people probably think that means I am coasting along doing less than I did when I started out. But I am working harder and longer hours with each passing year because so much more is demanded of teachers than ever before. Now, I don’t mind working harder if I feel I am working smarter. But I contend that we are losing sight of simple truths. Like the fact that repetitive testing is turning our kids off. And that teachers need to believe in and love what they are doing in order to be effective in the classroom. And that I can assess a student’s progress in a variety of ways, and testing is just one way. And that working harder doesn’t always mean working better.

And I feel unappreciated. No one will ever realize the additional hours I put in to try to meet my districts’ and state’s expectation that somehow I can get every student in my classroom to pass a test that has no real significance to them. We have even heard students voice the opinion (that they obviously have heard at home) that the tests are really to see how well the teacher is doing, not how well they are doing. When my students do score well, does anyone congratulate me on a job well done?

Again, I am working harder, enjoying it less, and not even recognized for the extra efforts I make. So, sadly, I find myself thinking more and more of retirement because my job is gradually become more work than it is a labor of love.

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This school year started with a gift from the Department of Education for those of us who teach social studies in Ohio. Due to budget cuts, our state will not be administering the Social Studies Achievement Test for the next two years. Excuse me while I yell, “Yahhhhhhhh!” What a gift! Especially since those of us who administer the fifth grade version of this test feel that it is more of a fourth grade test then a fifth grade test anyway. So life is good, right?

Unfortunately, this news, while very welcome, is strongly reinforcing the downfall of state achievement tests. I have been bombarded with questions from my fellow social studies teachers about what I am teaching or not teaching this year. There has been talk of leaving out chunks of previously taught subject matter. And, to make matters worse, there is a general feeling from those who do not teach social studies, that those of us who do should be picking up the slack and volunteering our services in other ways.

First, whether we are administering tests for social studies or not, it is our school’s curriculum, not the tests, which dictate what we must teach, and this is based on our state standards. So why are teachers questioning what to cover this year? Before we administered these tests, were we not accountable for the board approved curriculum? Unfortunately, we are all so bombarded with the continual message that we must get our students to pass state tests, that it becomes our focal point.

Second, if we accept the premise that it is about teaching for mastery of the curriculum, it goes without saying that those of us who teach social studies will clearly be too busy covering our own curriculum to help other teachers cover theirs. So, while I am grateful for the test break, I respectfully decline any additional duties since my job really has not changed at all. I’m just breathing a little easier for the next few years and enjoying teaching social studies a little bit more.

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As I work to prepare for the upcoming school year, I always write up the first two weeks of lessons plans. Yet even as I write them into my lesson plan book, I know that everything I write is subject to change as there will be countless interruptions to our normal schedule from handbook assemblies to picture day to ear and eye checks, It is one of those annoying issues we complain about every year to no avail. We have even suggested that they bundle all of these interruptions into one day and be done with it. Obviously, this suggestion has not taken root.

But as difficult as these countless interruptions are, at least they are at the beginning of the year. Unfortunately, we find ourselves complaining about the many interruptions that occur throughout the year, especially the ones that inconveniently get scheduled in the weeks prior to state assessment tests. This is a time that should be adamantly reserved for the most intensive review and preparation. It is not a time for programs and assemblies, follow-up eye and ear exams, etc. that could be scheduled at other times. Our principal has developed better hearing over the years and cut down on many of these interruptions, but many still remain.

What gets me is this: all year long we have meetings about how to improve our test scores, spend hours poring over last year’s test results to target weak areas, provide intervention for those students who did not pass tests the year before, create pre-assessments and short-cycled assessments to track our students’ progress, work through test prep materials to familiarize students with test format, and create various review activities to increase learning. We are inundated with the message that it is critical that our students pass these tests. There is absolutely no doubt, as far as teachers are concerned, with the necessity to get students in their classroom to do their very best.

Then here is the big question: if this is our school systems’ goal, if this is as important as we have been repeatedly drilled that it is, then why isn’t every attempt being made to limit interruptions which distract our students and derail our lessons? Come on, principals, if high performance on state achievement test is so important to our schools then please help us to make it the priority you want it to be!

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On Monday mornings in my classroom we spend the first few minutes reconnecting after the weekend by sharing something exciting we did over the weekend. One memorable morning this past spring, we were making our merry way around the room sharing our happy tales until I reached one young man, I will call Tim, who had been absent on Friday. Thoroughly expecting to be told that Tim spent most of the weekend in bed, I inquired, “So, Ted, I know you were sick so I assume you didn’t do much this weekend, right?”

To my utmost surprise, Tim boldly proclaimed, “I wasn’t sick on Friday.” Okay, so now I expected to hear that perhaps he had a doctor’s appointment or a family obligation, so I asked him if either of these two possibilities was true. He very patiently replied, “No.”

Now I was stumped. So I pursued the matter a little deeper by asking why he had stayed home then on Friday. Now get ready…His exact words were, “I had to stay home and help my mother set up the pool.” This happens to be a student who has struggled academically all year and whose mother I had been in regular contact with for support, so it took awhile for this proclamation to sink in fully, not just for me, but for the rest of the class as well. When I trusted myself to speak, I asked if he had begged to stay home to help. Tim retold the story that his mother came to his bedroom door in the morning and asked him if he would like to stay home and help her with the pool. Again, I had to take some time removing the shocked look from my face as I asked if this pool work could not have waited until he got home from school or over the weekend. He just smiled and shrugged. At this point I questioned whether setting up the home pool qualified as an excused absence. The only thing that saved me from a complete melt down was the fact that I was not the only one in that room that was amazed at the craziness of this situation.

I tell this story because it is indicative of a serious problem we face in education today. So many activities are becoming more important to parents and their children than school: sports, movies, computer games, vacations, concerts, and now I have to add pools to this list. For those of us in the business of educating and trying to get students to pass state tests, it is frustrating to say the least. I’m sorry, but when parents believe that setting up a pool is more important than getting their children to school, our schools and our students take a real dive.

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On July 2, Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke to members of the NEA at their national convention in San Diego exhorting them to stop fighting the idea of student achievement as a consideration for teacher pay. While he did say that test scores should never be the driving force behind teacher compensation, he also stated, “But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible,”

Well, the dreaded words are being spoken! Every time I hear the concept of merit pay linked in any way to state testing results it frightens me! Let me add that most of my students’ test results over the last several years have been well above passing, but I fundamentally disagree with test scores being used as the litmus test to judge teacher quality. Teachers understand the wide variety of factors that affect test results: parent involvement or lack of; parent concern or apathy for their child’s test results; the student population which covers everything from discipline problems, the number of students who are gifted, SPED, ADHD, on 504 plans, etc.; class size; home situations; and when the tests are taken to name a few. (This year, we administered the tests in our district the week students came back from Easter break!) What about teachers who work in intercity schools with the multitude of issues they face daily? These are all factors we cannot control, but they certainly impact test results.

Is there any tangible evidence to support the assumption that student test scores determine the competency of a teacher? How do we figure in all of the extraneous factors over which teachers have no control?

There are a plethora of characteristics that make an exceptional teacher, some measurable and some not. Certainly with the myriad specimens of obtainable evidence which attest to a teacher’s merit, we need not resort to test results as evidence of anything but how we were able to rise above all of the countless issues and distractions we face in education every day and still facilitate student progress.

Take a stand and get vocal! Post some comments here and on other sites on this volatile topic. This is not the time to be complacent.

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Preparing for and awaiting the results of State Achievement Tests are a lot like the processes of pregnancy and childbirth. It starts, just like pregnancy, with the anticipation and the preparations that must be made for the imminent arrival. Instead of getting our houses ready, teachers spend months getting our students’ minds ready for the plethora of information they are required to glean before the tests are administered. In your homes, this sometimes requires renovations and additions to make room for your little one. Those of us who work with children’s minds spend a lot of time doing the same thing. We often have to rip out and remove information or thought processes that will get in the way of the new information or processes they will need to be successful. As you parents tear down walls, we tear down bad habits and lazy attitudes. As you slap up wallpaper and paint, we slap up skills that will increase their arsenal of knowledge. This stage of pregnancy is a busy yet exciting time, and the same can be said of this stage of test preparation.

The final weeks of test prep are very similar to the final weeks of pregnancy. Like expectant mothers, we are tired and just want to see the fruits of our labors. Just as expectant mothers spend more time in their doctor’s office trying to predict how soon they will deliver their little bundle of joy, teachers fervently administer sample tests to predict if their students are ready to deliver as well. We, too, find it more difficult to sleep and find it harder to stay patient in the morning.

Finally, the long awaited labor pains begin. We watch in silent submission as it is finally and irrevocably out of our hands. Like mothers who simply have to trust in the capable hands of their obstetrician, we must trust in the hopefully capable heads of our students and the myriad bits of information we have painstakingly planted in their brains.

Here is where the analogy falls apart. Most parents are rewarded within a day (or for some poor souls a little longer) with a beautiful, healthy baby. They are able to find out the baby’s sex immediately (if they didn’t already know) and can count all the little fingers and toes. Teachers, on the other hand, are not done agonizing until weeks later when their delivery final arrives; the official test scores. The counting we do is a little different; it’s more about how many passed, who didn’t pass, and how close they were to passing, which standards need more focus, which skills need more practice. And if we are very fortunate, it’s time for a Congratulations sign on our front lawn and a good cigar.

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