What's the Point?

This past year has helped me put a lot of things into perspective, and has also forced me to re-evaluate some things I had felt were really important.  One of those things is my job.  I love teaching, don't get me wrong, but there are some aspects of it that I don't like.

There are days when I feel like I'm not a very good teacher.  Jason used to do a really great job of letting me know that wasn't the case, and it's been difficult these last few months trying to keep myself from falling into the black hole of doubt.  Recently some things have happened at work that have caused me to doubt my skills as a teacher.  It started out simple enough.  I turned in my tutoring list, which I had based on classroom observations, assessments (we'd had 2) and homework. My list contained 10 students from each class (about the same as last year).  I was told that that wasn't acceptable considering how the students had done on last year's TAKS test.  I had not used those scores completely because I don't feel they're very valid.  I mean, I've taught long enough to know that for the last month before the test schools spend an exorbitant amount of time reviewing and reteaching.  But my philosophy has always been, "If the students don't know it 3 days before TAKS, they're not going to learn it by cramming their brains with it."  I don't feel the results are a really great indicator of how they're doing in class this year.  After all, there have been 2 1/2 months of vacation.  But I still went back and looked at the results and trimmed down my tutoring list to 5 from each class.

Today was the district's benchmark for math at my school.  I had heard it was hard, and it certainly was.  Richardson is well known for making their tests harder than the TAKS test.  This serves several purposes: 1)increase the rigor, 2) hopefully increase the commended rates, 3) help kids think at a higher level, 4) stress out the district, which stresses out the principals, which stresses out the teachers, which stresses out the kids.  I understand making the test more difficult to where the students must think more deeply, but today's test (not just in my grade level) went over the line.

I teach the math, and for a 38 year old it shouldn't be that difficult, but it took me almost an hour to work through 28 questions.  Jack came home from school yesterday devastated because he made 64 on his test. he kept saying how bad he was at math and that he was never going to get it.   I saw the test today, holy moly!  I'm proud of him for the 64.  The sixth grade test wasn't any better.  Goodness gracious!  What does making a test so difficult that you discourage kids do, other than making them feel inadequate?  I feel that I don't really have great data to use other than my kids knew what to do, there was just too much to do.

So that brings me to the re-evaluation part.  It's making me sad that it's coming to this in school.  For an entire school year, kids are feeling horrible about their abilities because on the benchmarks they score low, which puts them in tutoring and in the outcast group at school.  Only to score well on one test where passing is a 65.  I wish it wasn't like that.  Life's too short to worry about 1 test.

Oh yeah, and the kids I had to trim from my list?  All of them bombed the benchmark.  Even looking at their work on the test indicates they need tutoring.  So maybe I'm not that bad after all.