We spent yesterday doing the maligned whole-group instruction, but I did not see an alternative. We went over the ideas in the bubble test, one by one, along with strategies for multiple choice tests when you don’t even have a clue where to start. A few of them had most of the ideas at the end. We’ll see how it goes.

Eduhonesty: Bubbles here, bubbles there. They probably see bubbles in their sleep. I’m sure they do. I know I test in my sleep.

All I have taught for the last couple of weeks is how to do test problems on the next set of tests. That might be alright, if the problems were the right problems. But these problems are preparing my students for seventh grade PARCC exams when the average academic level in one class is third grade. The students in this class need to learn fundamentals. They need more time for fundamentals than I am able to provide them because I need to keep them from failing these impossible exams. Scratch that. They are going to fail. I need to provide them with some successes, an occasional right answer.

Personally, I don’t think I am testing math skills. If I were testing math skills, I would be filling in the gaps in their knowledge base and testing them on that material. I would be laying a foundation for future work. I doubt I am doing that because my efforts are too specifically focused on narrow sets of materials needed to pass required proficiency exams written by people who have watched “Field of Dreams” too many times. If you write the test, they will not magically leap the missing four years of mathematics that previous tests have documented.

No, I don’t feel as if I am testing math skills. I feel as if I am testing resiliency. How many times can a given student survive being made to feel stupid? When I regularly hand that student a test filled with questions that are pitched years above that student’s operating level, I make that kid feel stupid. I keep giving pep talks, but those pep talks might as well be bandages on third-degree burns. What are we doing to our students’ self-images when we make this kind of testing a way of life?

Between the no class parties rule and the number of students not expected to be in class on Friday, Secret Santa has been unceremoniously put to rest. My poor, sparkly pink tree sits in a corner of the room, decorated with sheets of cut-out white paper, courtesy of a boy who has been suspended. Too bad he can’t see his tree. It’s the only vestige of any holiday spirit in the room, a poor ill-favoured thing that will be quietly carried out to the car on Friday. I can’t even teach a geometry lesson and use that to make ornaments; geometry has not been incorporated into the math team’s lesson plan for the week.

Meanwhile, the Assistant Principal threatened me again today. I let two students out to get their notes since we were taking a test in which I was letting them use hand-written notes. I went and stood in the doorway since they cannot be out alone without official passes. (But they weren’t alone. I was monitoring the locker run.) He told me he would “talk to me later” about my violation of protocol. Sigh.

Eduhonesty: Looking forward to break. So are my very-well-tested students.

Because of extra tests and grading and endless meetings, this appears to be the time to start all the failure documentation that is due today. I collapsed last night. My obligatory paperwork did not disappear while I slept. It didn’t help that I stayed late to help students. But somebody has to help the students and woman tutoring was clearly overwhelmed when I first saw her. So here goes.

Eduhonesty: Yucch. I want to go to bed. But I have to get this done and I had better start NOW.

I printed the pertinent page from my email to show the kids. I don’t want them to blame me for this. We are not allowed any class parties on December 19th, the last day before break. I’m not sure how secret Santa will be managed. I will have to talk with my coworker who mostly set this up.

This morning, I also printed the twelve pages of lesson plans for the week since I like to have a copy on my desk. I have been grading my standardized test, and grading and grading and grading that test, so I didn’t have time to print the lesson plans yesterday. I’ve had zero time to prepare a study guide for the quarter exam in science. I am going to use the eight-page test as a study guide. I’ve already cleverly whited-out the part that would tell them they are receiving the actual test. If they listen and study what I hand them, they should ace this test. I’d really like some fun games for this week, a little grouping-like-terms Jeopardy. But I’ve had zero prep time available for actual lesson planning so far. I may be able to steal a game or two from a colleague. We have one more standardized test to give this week, though — I kid you not, I have the bubble sheets — as well as two tests, including the 8-page science final. I still have make-up tests to give from last week’s standardized test, too.

Let me note that last week’s standardized test and this week’s standardized test are being used to gather data by the administration. Only one of these tests factors into my grades. My tests are supposed to factor into my grades, with students allowed to retake tests to boost scores. Only if you did not come on Saturday, you are in trouble. I have no time to give these tests again. I can do this after school, but yesterday I was busy with standardized test grading. I managed to give one girl a solid half hour of my time so that she could redo a project. I got three others who essentially wasted that hour after school to agree to come in again today.

But “failure documentation” is due tomorrow. That will take the whole evening to prepare easily. I am trying not to cut too much sleep since I don’t want to get sick for the holidays. So many kids in the school are walking around sick right now. I guess the life lesson for my students will be this: Don’t plan to try to get help at the last minute, because the teacher will have no time available to use to help you. Her documentation needs are going to leave you on your own.

Eduhonesty: This post was typed as fast I could type. But I want to get this stuff down. Maybe later I’ll clean it up. Fundamentally, the time demands for this week contain an impossible number of items to get done, mostly due to test demands. These demands are compromising instruction, reteaching and learning. Reteaching? Hell, I don’t even have time to go over their failed tests with them. In the meantime, they can’t even have a single class party on the last day of the semester because they are not supposed to waste any instructional time.

Note to admin: You can’t cram 150 hours of work into 75 hours. You simply can’t. You can’t make students diligently work on the last day of the semester, either, for a variety of psychological reasons I can’t take time to go into. You might get some goodwill from a party. The way you are testing these guys, I guarantee that you will need a little goodwill to keep at least some of these students on track in the long run.

For the sake of clarity, I loved my last Principal. I’d have followed him to Mars if he had said the trip was necessary. I never hesitated to give up an evening for him. He was the coach I needed.

Eduhonesty: Administrators are team-builders. The art of building a team, like teaching, requires an understanding of the players on the field. I work well when asked. I will work furiously for someone intelligent who treats me well and listens to me.

I sure do miss that guy.

(I’m mostly working furiously anyway. The kids need me. I spent 2 1/2 hours tutoring them on Saturday morning. We made some good progress, too.)

I think about leaving education and I end up pondering the private school system as a possible retreat after this year. I don’t want to leave teaching. I want to leave public education. I am tired of irrational testing. I am not tired of teaching. I am tired of administrators who don’t listen or who can’t understand. I am tired of scary administrators who threaten people to get what they want.

I am not tired of my students.

Eduhonesty: I have a full day’s work ahead of me to get ready for school tomorrow. Much of it relates to a standardized test I had to give this week which is not a bubble test. It’s a tough set of tests to grade, although at least I get useful information from the process. But I am buried in tests. These tests are taken directly from instructional time. I would like my instructional time back. My students would know a lot more if I could teach them more and test them less.

I’m beginning to sound like that proverbial broken record on this topic. Do our students even know what a broken record is? I doubt it. Vinyl has become vintage. I fear I am becoming vintage as well, but I still know a great deal of useful information. I’d like to find someplace to share that information with kids if I could.

I bought the little, shiny pink tree from Urban Outfitters nine years ago. I know the tree’s age because the first class to decorate the tree was in Skokie, Illinois. The next year was the first secret Santa year. The tree is definitely not PC. Church and state are colliding when I carry in my Christmas tree. The tree will enter the classroom on the 15th of December for the last week of school before break; I don’t want to give admin too much time to notice or think about the tree. Ornaments will be simple this year. In a time of bell-to-bell, scripted instruction, I can’t be caught making tree ornaments that don’t directly relate to the lesson. Maybe I can think of a way to turn ornament-making into grouping like terms. Maybe I will have students decorate bodily organ systems and hang them on the tree. Whatever. We’ll work it out.

We’ll have secret Santa, too. The kids have drawn names for my class and the class across the hall. They are excited.

No one in my classroom will be offended. They are all Christian, mostly Catholics. If I had a student from another religious group, I’d be sure any activities honored multiple traditions.

Eduhonesty: This tree has seen classrooms with chalkboards that used real chalk, overhead projectors, computers with floppy drives, new laptops, Chromebooks, and smart boards. It has seen kids from 11 to 20 years of age. (If you start school at eight in Mexico, we will let you finish high school.) It’s been decorated in Play-Doh and geometric, paper shapes. I like the idea of bodily organ systems for the year 2014.

I am happy to pull out the tree for what I believe will be the last time. I’m a little sad, too. I have loved the kids in these classrooms. I will miss them.

I just finished “I would love to teach but” by Valerie Strauss, December 31, 2013. She does a great job of describing a time when no students are allowed to fail — whether they deserve to fail or not.

Eduhonesty: School districts have begun trying a system where no score is below 50%. I have worked under this system. If work is completely wrong, or even if work is never turned in, the student receives 50%. The rationale behind this system lies in the desire to keep students engaged in school. If they fall too far behind, I have been told, they will not be willing to try to catch up. They have to have a chance to succeed. At 50% minimum, everyone has a chance to “succeed.” Students who hack out an occasional assignment can at least pass.

But what have we taught? I believe we are teaching skiving. At www.oxforddictionaries.com, skiving is defined as “avoid work or a duty by staying away or leaving early; shirk.”
“I skived off school”: /skīv/ British informal gerund or present participle: skiving

The word’s scope appears to be expanding. From the Urban Dictionary:

skive — Doing anything but that which you are supposed to be doing during a specific time frame.

E.G Pretending to do something for which you are being payed for, such as a your job, but instead doing other things (like having a laugh, phoning your friends, hiding from your boss, surfing the internet, playing computer games, having a sly cigarette) that are totally unrelated or unconected to that which is within your job description.

Taking 2 hours for lunch instead of 1 and getting a collegue to cover for you.

Leaving work earlier than you should, and hoping your boss doesn’t notice.

Calling in sick to work, then going out for an all day pub crawl. by Siona Beht June 22, 2004

The 50%-for-breathing grading system has to be one the best techniques for teaching skiving that I can imagine.

Differentiated homework is a phrase I invented for the gradebook to indicate days when students receive homework based on what they already know and could stand to practice. Rob might get adding fractions while Amy might get one-step equations. I’m the only one who can do this for my class. I know my class and I know what they can and cannot do. Here’s my not-exactly-stunning observation on these homework days: I get back a far greater percentage of the homework than I usually do. I may get it all back. This never happens when I give out the assignment associated with the lesson plan I am required to give because of the curriculum-selected-by-the-East-Coast-consultants. What they can’t do, they don’t do.

I put a catch-phrase in the blog a few days back that I like: Whoever is doing the doing is doing the learning. If they can’t do, however, they don’t do, at which point no learning takes place.

Eduhonesty: We don’t improve America’s test scores by working years above student’s academic operating levels. Differentiation can’t fix the problem of lower-scoring students if a teacher can’t differentiate materials. Sometimes those materials need to be changed. In the meantime, I’ll keep giving handing out my varied homework assignments. Interestingly, the kids don’t seem to mind at all. I say, “You do this one,” and they happily take the sheet. They like being given something they can do.

One interesting reason why I am trudging forward has to be the lightening of my workload. If I do what everyone else plans, I don’t have to plan. I find the Master Plan saves me an enormous amount of time. They tell me where to march. I march. They tell me what hill to take. I gather the troops and head for the hill. The troops whine. I take command. I rearrange seats. I give pep talks. We trudge forward.

Eduhonesty: The Do-What-You-Are-Told-Or-Else regime requires little actual brainpower on my part. Today I thought of a couple of quick ways to reinforce the lesson plan that allow students to get up and move. I actually did a little creative thinking. I’ll share this with my special education colleague. All this sharing cuts down on the cognitive load. The new regime has a great deal to recommend it, except for its lack of flexibility.

But perhaps flexing is overrated.