December 18, 2012
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English Rocks.
The Daily News
1 We had a Christmas party a few years ago at work, and picked names for presents.2 I picked our department chair, who was an awesome teacher and Chair.
3 I got her a present, and saw the above picture on a blank card at some store or other.
4 I took my best pen, and took to writing.
5 I wrote simply, "English rocks."
6 One of the best presents I ever gave anyone. I also got her a knitted scarf and mittens. Every now and again we get that way fun present. 'Tis the season.
7 Moving on, Part One: Ah, finals. Torture for students, vacay for teachers.
8 What, you say? 9 Okay, I'll blow the lid off finals here. 10 Some teachers make fierce finals, with hundreds of questions dating back to the last monsoon in California. 11 Some have a complete revenge mentality. The attitude, "So...you thought I was easy, eh?" happens to a few. 12 Others will think, "So I will prove to you that I am the most rigorous teacher in the universe!" 13 I have a written final, just an in-class essay in which they have to produce their finest piece of writing. It always works, at least in my eyes. It's not like I'm new to this. 14 I protect their grade. If they write a final that is extraordinary, they get a plus. This moves their semester grade up one-third. If they had a B+, for example, and wrote an extraordinary final, their semester grade would become an A-. If they had an A-, their semester grade would move up to an A. If they had an A+, they would simply want the A+ for validation, and in my heart, they would have an A++. 15 If they had an F, they would get a D-. This works for some people. 16 I never believed in rote memorization of all the work in the semester. 17 Our district Benchmark determines this. 18 Unfortunately, I had an entire week where preparing for the Benchmark somehow took billions of hours, which I didn't have. I had issues with the program used to create the answer sheets, particularly with pulling down the answer sheets, which are able to get the students' names, periods, and which could key the test so that when you put the finished bubble test back into a special printer, it would grade them as well. 19 It was one of those things that took two hours after school every day last week. At least a quarter of our department teachers went through the same thing. We were trained in how to access this program and set it all up a couple of years ago, but many of us forgot how to do it, or lost emails, or were brand new or brand old to the process. 20 When you take two hours away from a teacher, papers get backed up; lesson plans go haywire, and friends and family become non-existent. It is frustrating. During the school year, teachers work long hours to remain accurate with grades. It dominates a good teacher's entire school year. 21 So I don't exaggerate when I say that trying to access the answer sheets took literally two hours each day, ten hours for the week. It stole my world. 22 Anybody reading this would roll their eyes, but when you consider one hour for organizing the day's events, planning for the next day's events, walking to another building, setting up camp, trying to juggle passwords, and working with instructions that leave one step out, it became like a bad game of golf. 23 On Friday, after an immensely stressful day, I found myself once again facing off with trying to run those answer sheets. On Thursday another teacher and I figured out how to access the answer sheets, but wound up putting the English 2A students' names on the English 1A students' answer sheets. 24 The English 1A answer sheets had bubbles for 33 questions. The English 2A students had 39 questions. So we fixed THAT on Friday afternoon AFTER the students had already taken the test. I told them to simply answer the 33, and that we could take care of everything Monday. 25 I went to school early to make sure that the answer sheets were still on the podium where I thought I had left them. 26 <basketball buzzer> 27 I became frantic, and started looking everywhere for them, but at the time, they were not appearing. Ever do that? Happens. 28 Towards the end of the period, one student asked if I could give her three letters of recommendation for a scholarship, and that she needed three by the end of the day. I said that I would. Another student asked if he could use my computer to print a document he needed by the next period. I said yes. I do those sorts of things. 29 The clock continued to tick. I needed to get back to the copy room with my flash drive which had the English 2A answer sheet link saved on it. 30 I started the girl's letter of rec, got off, left this guy at my computer while I ran to the copy room. 31 Our school has over 2500 students and was designed originally for 800. My room is relatively near the copy room in the library, but getting there when the bell rang took longer than I figured. I was caught in an undertow of students, and had to take a muddy path in order to get to the building more quickly. I was a cartoon. 32 I got in, ran the copies beautifully, and dashed back to my class. 33 The kids didn't even notice I was gone, but already five minutes had cut into their test-taking time. 34 I then had to redistribute the old sheets that had 33 questions on them and then hand out the new sheets with 39 questions on them, AND hand out copies of the missing questions, because we have to share test booklets. 35 Don't try this at home. 36 Technically, teachers have no business copying test booklets, but on Friday I had no choice. I had to get the last six questions run off so the students could transfer the grades from the 33-question answer sheet to the 39-question answer sheet. 37 On a Monday, this is a difficult and time-consuming ordeal, and hideously nightmarish. 38 Metaphorically, I missed about twelve putts last week, so my game was already ruined. 39 By the time everything got settled, they didn't have enough time, and were jammed. 40 In the afternoon I took that mess back to that infernal computer and had them scored. 41 The scores were clearly lower than they should have been. 42 One of my best students scored an 87%. I was completely mortified. My English 1A students did fine; the scores were consistent with their grades. 43 The scores of my 2A students weren't even in the ball park. 44 I have no access to test booklets for a re-take, so yeah. 45 Fortunately, those tests measure how well the teacher covered the standards, and have no affect on the students' placement, as far as I know. 46 If they do, I'm going to protest. I know my students better than some program that had confusing instructions. 47 My written finals are going to be some of the most glorious writing that young people can do. They always are, because students have a built-in tendency to rise to the occasion during finals. 48 And I know this. I'm always on their side, and they always do their best work for me at this time of the year. 49 Moving on, Part the Second: Speaking of computers, my spell check this morning has gone awry. 50 It marked the following words as misspelled: finals, hours, teacher's, their, juggle, myself, early, looking, tick, business, putts, students, occasion. 51 Nice. 52 You gotta love technology. 53 So that's my story about finals and teaching to the test. Never was a fan, and I'm REALLY not a fan now. 54 The nice thing: because I got everything graded, and stayed WAY up on my stuff this entire semester, I finally get some peace. I know that my students learned an immense amount this semester, and because of a bad round of golf, it wasn't reflected in this test. 55 My computer just spell-checked "reflected." I am going to begin beating it with an umbrella as soon as I am done writing this. 56 Okay I'm done. Looking forward to the whooping. 57 Have a wonderful day. 58 Keep the faith. 59 Peace. ~H~
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