April 26, 2013
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The Daily News
1 Ah, Friday!2 Hard not to love Friday.
3 It's been a nice week.
4 Hectic, but nice.
5 Yesterday I was in the middle of throwing out all my classic cornball stuff when this girl in my Disney class stopped me and said in front of the entire class, "Mr. H, last year we read Romeo and Juliet and it was sort of, you know, just there. You made learning Shakespeare fun, and I want to thank you for that."
6 I stood for a moment honored. The class gave me a huge round of applause.
7 Naturally I coaxed more.
8 Great moment. I just didn't feel I did anything, really.
9 I didn't do that any more than I do this.
10 I have been teaching for a bajillion years and I am still insecure, every single day.
11 So applause?
12 What'd I do?
13 I plan things like mad, and practice, and I still slip and slosh through each day.
14 Anybody looking?
15 Yesterday I felt like something the cat drug in.
16 Too much insomnia and open manholes for this Toon.
17 Fortunately, I go in each day with one major intention: to have fun.
18 People who are miles from the classroom are always dictating what we should do.
19 Let me share something: when that starts happening, we begin what we Old Timehz call "teaching to the test."
20 I remember the teachers I admired in the early days railing against teaching to the test.
21 I sort of knew what they were talking about.
22 About what they were talking. <yeesh>
23 Whatever they feared has finally reached fruition.
24 When those not in the trenches begin dictating what we should be doing in the classroom, we're all in trouble. They start demanding a thing called "summative assessments."
25 "Summative" is newspeak for "data-based testing."
26 For the layperson, that means more and more and more and more bubble tests. Bubble tests are those tests that you used to take where you needed a Number 2 pencil to bubble in the answers. STOP. DO NOT GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. Remember those? Did it ever get you a job? Did it ever help you learn how to change a diaper? Did it ever stop you from enjoying an outdoor Shakespearean evening in Carmel? Just sayin'.
27 These people invent stuff for us to teach, throw a hodge-podge of convoluted things they feel must be taught at us, and then demand accountability and rigor.
28
29 What they forget is that students aren't machines.
30 They are human beings, not science experiments.
31 After having our students go through California High School Exit Exams, a visit by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, STAR testing, and now three weeks of Advanced Placement testing, the WASC people would like to see us giving mastery tests on every nook and cranny of our lessons.
32 After spending a ton of time teaching my students that Shakespeare is a show, and not some irrelevant thing in a literature book, I have been asked to give a 150-question bubble test on Romeo and Juliet, just so that the WASC people have a record that we are measuring the learning through data.
33 These students are so burnt out that their faces are literally morphing. They look like exhausted puppies.
34 It all sounds good on paper, and the people in the ivory towers are all doing a grand job of protecting their phony-baloney jobs, but on a human level, I see it all as an enormous failure, and it is coming down from the education gods who haven't taught in centuries.
35 I defer to my own ability as a professional to know what is best for my students.
36 I believe that if I reach the standards, but do it in a way that involves fun, laughter, music, friends, groups, and celebration, that the learning will naturally take place.
37 I also believe that teaching grammar is an essential. But grammar takes a LOT of time if one takes it seriously, and I do.
38 I hammer that stuff on the students. I should never see a student leave my class saying things like, "I seen these two dudes..."
39 Or not realizing that "a lot" is two words.
40 So all of this stuff is demanded of us, but then we have weeks and weeks of testing, all of which prevents us from teaching what we need to teach.
41 Does this all make any sense?
42 It happens in all businesses.
43 Somehow people in charge feel that the people in the trenches need more meetings, which really serve to exhaust people and bash their morale to smithereens.
44 I just take in a breath and never fail to exhale.
45 What is tough is that I know more about education than most other people who are telling me what to do because I have LIVED it passionately. For what seems centuries.
46 And trust me, I'm not some old geezer set in his ways. I just know from experience how to reach students.
47 I am a better teacher now than I have ever been, and I am STILL insecure, every single day.
48 But I know that I am right in loving Shakespeare, for example, and allowing my love for the language to inspire my students.
49 I am also thoroughly convinced that if I suddenly dump a bubble test with 150 questions on my students, that they will no longer see Shakespeare as incredibly entertaining art,
but potentially as a subject that they will choose to hate for the rest of their lives.50 As John Miller, the Giants' venerable announcer once put it, "IMHO."
51 In my humble opinion.
52 Man.
53 I feel like some guy in a war bunker telegraphing things behind enemy lines.
54 "O Captain, my Captain!"
55 Anybody looking?
56 I'm going to continue to close my doors and kick ass with my students.
57 Know why?
58 Because I know it works. And they need to be set free from all of this idiotic testing that is devouring their minds and souls.
59 Just another day in the life.
60 Thanks for listening.
61 Gottago.
62 Be seein' ya. Hope I still have a job a' Monday.
63 Peace.
~H~
www.xanga.com/bharrington
