Where's the Fun???

I love this new High Stakes Testing!

No teaching...just testing!

So far we have lost three teaching days in the fall, three more this week, and another three more projected for next week. All for state-mandated tests. Add to that the new benchmark tests for marking periods one and three (two days for each) and the mid-terms and finals (two more for each). (Incidentally, in true Through the Looking Glass fashion, the benchmarks test to see how well the students will do on the state-mandated tests. How innovative! Testing to predict performance on the test! In the old days, we just took one test to determine how well the students did on that test. How backward we all were then!

Mind you, these are just the state-mandated tests. I haven't even calculated the quizzes,tests, projects, that I must give in class to determine marking period grades. Yikes!

No wonder those state-mandated tests only test general skills and grade holistically. We don't teach enough hard knowledge for the students to be tested on a real achievement test.

Seriously though, when do I get to teach the "fun" stuff - reading for enjoyment, poetry writing, choral readings, dramatic writing and presentation, media studies, connective/interactive presentations, art and literature, music and literature, history and literature, philosophy and literature, the human condition and literature, etymology and word play, and on, and on, and on... All the things that give school, learning, life meaning and depth - the things that help us to give shape to our amorphous existence on this planet.

I mean it's like teaching students only to add and subtract over and over again. Nevermind the
beauty of defining the world in the specific terms that mathematics requires ...and then comparing it to how other disciplines define or describe the world. Just give us the basics - what is the main idea of the story, what is the meaning of this specific word in paragraph three, who would most likely agree with this story? UGH, what a dry, ugly way to read a story, especially at the academic age and level of my students.

I firmly believe that it is the "fun" times in school that we remember the most (and influence us the most). Few people remember the time that they first learned long division. However, the shock when we realized that Peyton Farquhar really hadn't "escaped", or the puzzlement when we found that Richard Cory had done the "unthinkable", or the hitch in our breath when we first understood (really understood) the vision of a poem - those things stay with us forever. Those are the topics we should be discussing/testing not the facile, superficial questions on state-mandated tests.