This Week in EducatIon February 10th

What Is This World Coming To

This was an easy week for a teacher. It was the benchmark testing. Four days of test, test, and even more tests.  They are tested in English Language Arts and math.  I take my entire class out for a bathroom run and a drink of water.  This way they cannot disrupt our class or any class during the test.  They seemed to try very hard for the most part.  The difficult time is what comes next.  So if you know any cures for the bright lights and rubber hoses that administration will use on we teachers, please let us know.  If you don’t think we are tortured you’re not watching the trends in education.  We will be called in at grade level meetings and shown the results of the test.  We will be told to reteach those content standards that the students didn’t do well on.  There is a heavy emphasis that the teachers are inadequate because the students do poorly.  It is not uncommon for whole societies to blame groups of people for the ills of the society.  The Irish, the Chinese, the Mexicans and just about every group has been blamed over the years in the United States.  Try to remember how the Jewish people were blamed.  I hate being told that I have to reteach a content standard.  It's not the fact that all the students didn't learn the skills the first time that bothers me.  It is the implication that the teacher didn’t teach it well enough.  I would prefer that they would call it relearning.  That is where the problem mostly resides.  The student was unable to, or had no desire to learn the necessary skills to be tested on them.  Blaming the teacher is like a diabetic who doesn’t try to control his blood sugar and blames the doctor for their poor health.

Girl Cootie

Boy Cootie

In the classroom, it was a better week.  Behavior was better.  The biggest problem is the Love bug is biting.  Maybe with Valentine’s Day and spring so close it was to be expected.  I have taught for many years and I have found this Love Bug epidemic has moved into fifth grade more each year.  It use to be that boys thought that girls had them and girls thought boys had them.  I’m talking about Cooties.  You remember Cooties.  Now fifth graders cannot go in to separate classrooms without hugging each other.  Boys are patting girls on the butt.  The boys’ conquest scoreboard is tallying up the girlfriend accounts.  The girls also are in the action.  The notes and gossip is hopping around like crazy March hares.  Unfortunately not all the battle of the sexes has happy outcomes. The students aren’t old enough to handle the rejection and broken hearts.

I had groups of students make historical flags of the United States.  Some of the groups had no success but others were hard workers and completed their projects.  They asked for help and I created star templates for them to trace.  They started with white construction paper and used red and blue to complete the flags.  They created an original 13 star flag, a flag known as the Great Star Flag with 20 stars, and a 34 star Civil War flag.  

Well, I found ou that I have an old pair of welder glasses to protect me from the bright lights.  For the rubber hoses I've learned that these are just a metaphor.  So there is no real torture.  There is only that feeling that you are being blamed for an outcome that was done by someone else.  Every losing coach who is let go because the players weren't as good as measured against others.  I know that I have done a good job teaching and many of my students have done a good job learning.  So have those who haven't learned let's give them another chance to do so.  Until next week, stay alert, because their still could be cooties.