I wish every day was a state exam...

So those of you who have talked shop with me know how I feel about No Child Left Behind and the disastrous fall-out that it has had in public education. I'm not going to get going on that because it's an entire dissertation I've been writing in my head, complete with statistics and research to back up my feelings. You also can probably guess how I feel about the emergence of "Charter" schools as an alternative to public schooling and sub-standard test scores. I won't go into that much, but let me throw this out there- just because a school doesn't have to take the test doesn't mean that it's superior. It just means that it operates by a different standard and set of rules (often inferior) to the schools being labeled by NCLB. 

Anyway, I hate NCLB, I hate state mandated exams, and I HATE HATE HATE pretentious charter schools and the snobby holier-than-thou parents who put their kids in those schools because they think the cute little polos and dockers the kids wear to school somehow make them better than public school kids. 

HOWEVER... there is one thing I do like about the state-mandated-exam-a-thon that goes on in public schools 'round the country every April and May. For the past 3 days my kids have had to sit silently in their little chairs staring at a computer screen and answering an 84 question english literature exam. Bwa ha ha ha ha! I'm a really hands-on teacher. I am assigned to teach the lowest functioning students in the school. I'd say a good 85%-90% of my students tell me they hate reading at least once during the first term of school and about 65%-80% of them tell me they've never completed a chapter book. I deal with kids who are functionally illiterate in both their fist languages as well as their second languages. I also deal with students who are gifted thinkers but whom have lost so much content instruction during the process of being pulled out of class to learn English that they are a grade or 2 behind in Math, Reading, Writing, Science, and History. How do you think a child genius (especially a male) would feel if they were placed in all remedial classes because they didn't understand the language? Well, if you want to know, pick up a copy of the Book of Mormon in Italian and try to read it without taking any breaks for 45 minutes straight and see how you feel. 

Anyway, in order to reactivate those angry, frustrated little minds I use a lot of alternative teaching techniques and assessments. My kids get loud, they get crazy, they get moving, and somewhere along the line I can usually get them to read a book or two and to reclaim their little voices that have been silent for so long. Because of this, my class is usually teetering between chaos and some sort of violent creative process. It is LOUD and by the end of the day I'm usually so burnt out that I need an hour or 2 of silence just to regroup.

So the one thing I love about the test is that for an entire week they have to sit still and be silent. It's a nice break from the mental and physical exhaustion that my job usually entails. Don't worry, though. Next week they'll be back and better than ever.