I posted this article in health,ed,etc., but it was powerful enough that I thought it should get a wider audience. See NCLB/high-stakes testing from a teacher's perspective. Ever wanted to know what teachers really talk about? What really goes on in those interminable staff meetings? What we're really complaining about? This article opens the door to you. It showcases the classroom, the staff lounge, and the staff meeting. The part I snipped is from a staff meeting. I'm an elementary school teacher. The author is a former high school teacher, now teaching 8th grade in a private school at the other end of the country. But his journey mirrors my own, into, and perhaps out of, the profession. It's worth reading the whole thing. There's much more meat than I could snip.
The Best Answer Under pressure to improve his students' Standards of Learning scores, a Virginia teacher decides to: (a) End free reading time; (b) Give more practice tests; or (c) Quit the public schools
By Emmet Rosenfeld
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page W20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48919-2004Feb17.html<snip>
"What's SBI training?" someone shouted.
"Standards-based instruction," she began. "Remember, that's the class you all have to take with me and do a portfolio -- ." There was a spray of laughter, and she realized that the questioner, along with every teacher in the room, was acutely aware that in addition to our normal teaching and extracurricular load, we were required to take a 16-hour course to create a unit that was "backwards designed" from the SOLs. In other words, craft specific lessons to hammer home the factoids for which our kids would soon be held unequivocally accountable.
Finally, it was time for the main attraction. The principal, Cathy Crocker, stepped to the dais, a Midwesterner whose indefatigable cheer belied the pressure she was under to raise our school's test scores. She thanked us for our efforts, describing her joy at seeing such caring, dedicated professionals working so hard with students. My spider sense started tingling. I should have known what was coming as soon as I saw the chicken wings. We had to raise our scores, she told us.
One way to do that, she said, was "bell-to-bell teaching": Every child's fanny in a seat from the moment the bell rings until the end of class 90 minutes later. I wondered if the controlled chaos of the writers' workshop in my room qualified as bell-to-bell teaching.
"And another thing: no hobby teaching," she said. I had never heard the phrase in my professional training, but I could tell it was something that only dilettantes would dare while on the county's clock. No hobby teaching, I wrote in my notes and underlined it. Did free-choice reading count as a hobby?