Makes Me Want to Scream!!

Last night was my first class of the semester as I continue to wrap up this second M.Ed. degree in Reading. Although I've lost almost all motivation and interest in this degree, I plod forward, mainly just to finish what has been started. Unenthusiastically, I arrived for class with a professor that I have had 3 times before and who I can honestly say I haven't learned one solitary thing from in any of those experiences. So needless to say I'm less than thrilled about enduring another semester of this particular teacher repeating the same trite spiels and cliches and hearing the same un-enlightening lectures and completing the same mundane assignments as I have in the previous three courses. It doesn't seem to matter what the course is supposed to be about...we do the same thing and talk about the same thing in every class. So essentially I will have taken the same course 4 times and learned nothing. Sigh. Since last night was the first night, we discussed the syllabus (which I have memorized by this point) for basically 2 hours. My mind was so uninterested, so unengaged, so under-stimulated that I felt I was going to scream before the class was finally and mercifully released. It was literally torture and it is torture that I will have to endure every Wednesday night for the next three months. On my way home, I found myself driving like a crazy woman on the freeway with all the pent-up frustration and boredom of the previous two and a half hours seeking some sort of release. I began to think about our students and realized that more than likely this is how they feel after school each day. I know that there are teachers and schools out there that make learning interactive, interesting, meaningful, and engaging for students....but unfortunately in many environments--especially low-income, urban environments-- the focus is on drill and kill test prep which literally sucks any joy and life out of the learning process. Texas is transitioning from the TAKS test to a new high-stakes assessment called the STAAR this year. It is only the second week of school and I'm already STARR'd out. I'm already tired of talking about it, analyzing it, gearing our entire lives around it, and we are still 9 months away from test-time!

Let me give you an example of how this test is already taking over our school. The district decided to give some of the students some kind of beginning of the year assessment this week. (Teachers are telling me that the test basically covers concepts that the students haven't even been introduced to in previous grades so I'm not sure what the purpose of the assessment is other than to document that students don't know those concepts, which I don't think we needed a test to determine). I'm not sure how other schools are handling this assessment, but our administrator has decided that we need to go into full test-mode this week to model the environment of the STAAR which will be given in late April. The STAAR is going to be a timed test, unlike the TAKS. So our leader has decided that we need to start preparing students for that. Therefore, on the second week of school, we are in full test-mode all day every day this week. The students are not following their regular schedule, but are instead taking two tests per day. One in the morning and one after lunch. Most students are finishing the test within the first hour of being in the testing room and then are spending the rest of the allotted time in forced silence, bored and unoccupied. We have given up an entire week of instruction for the purpose of "practicing" for a test that is 9 months away. Furthermore, we will be doing this every six weeks for each common assessment (Do the math. That's over six entire weeks that will be dedicated to testing or practicing testing, and that's not including the end of semester exams or once a semester Benchmark exams). As if our students haven't been tested to death since they first walked into a school six, seven, or eight years ago. As if they don't know what to do when a test booklet and scantron are placed in front of them. In all reality, they don't know what to do when anything ELSE is placed in front of them.

Just as I wanted to scream last night as the professor said the same exact pet phrase for the one millionth time, I want to scream when I walk around this school. I don't see kids engaged in learning or excited about learning. I don't see creative instruction going on that will set the tone for another year of exciting exploration and discovery. What do I see? Kids testing. Is it common sense to anyone but me that if you test the kids to death, they will get burned out and apathetic before we ever reach April? Sadly, I know this isn't the case in all schools, but for those here in this district, there seems to be an unhealthy obsession with these statewide tests that in my opinion is severely limiting the quality of the education our students are receiving. Yes, on paper, our students are performing at acceptable levels, but I just know there is so much they're not getting that a test score is not going to reflect. And unfortunately this frustration I feel can't be relieved with a few minutes of road rage on the interstate.

And so the torture continues....