Happenings

I just finished reading an responding to the first round of published writing pieces for my class that was prompt based. Wow, what a tough job. It’s amazing how I can sit and read each piece, knowing where the child has come from in terms of their writing ability and feel so proud of what they are doing with their words. Then, I look at the state rubric, or I ask a fellow colleague and it never fails that I find more weaknesses in their writing than strengths. I suppose it’s simply a product of our current culture of assessment that we can’t celebrate tiny steps forward, but instead we expect all of the children to write at the same level for the state test. So instead of praising the compositional risks taken in an attempt to be more creative, I am reminding my children to “stay focussed and address the prompt”. YUCK! I understand that we have to “prove” that the children are learning, I understand that we have to hold teachers accountable, I understand that we have to test every child in the state the exact same way in order to have valid results. What I don’t understand is how we can take something as subjective as writing, especially writing from 9 and 10 year olds and “grade” it as of all of the children come from a level playing field. Beauty (or in this case skill) is most certainly in the eye of the beholder. I don’t care to read, certain authors, and if I had to score them on the rubric I would certainly give them a low grade. Does that mean they are bad samples of writing? NO! It only means that in my eyes they aren’t high quality. But who is to say that my “eyes” are right or wrong? Other people may find the writing fascinating and inspiring.

I don’t mind the assessing of the skills so much, I just wish there was more objective way to go about doing it.

Last weekend, we took the kids on a day trip to Carlsbad Caverns. It wasn’t a first for either of them, but the last time we went they were both so young (5 & 2) that they really didn’t remember much of it. Now, at 11 and 7 they were much more engaged in the trip itself and surprised me by how interesting they found the entire experience.

We took the long route and walked down into the caverns as opposed to taking the elevator down and simply touring the Big Room. We also rented the audio wands…intending to share them but the kids monopolized them the entire time! They were both thoroughly enchanted on the way down. Christopher kept whispering “This place is amazing!” and Carrie used it as an opportunity to “teach” us. The little turkey would listen ahead on the audio wands and as soon as we approached the site she had just listened to she proceeded to explain it to us in GREAT detail (let’s just say that my dear daughter is NOT a woman of few words!).

All in all I was pleased at how they did…they were willing to walk AWAY from technology for a day (no ipods, no DS, no TV, no internet, no movies) for the day and walked the entire way with little to no complaining about being tired. They both walked away awestruck by the beauty of the caverns and having learned something about nature.

I suppose this simple family outing shows that you can find a balance between our technological and natural world…we may just have to work a little harder to do it!

After an extremely short Christmas vacation, I head back to work tomorrow for 2 days of teacher inservice and the kids come back on Monday. I must admit that I have enjoyed the week and a half off but do wish it were longer. The older I get, the faster time flies. That’s a good thing I suppose in certain situations, but in this case I wish it would have gone at a slower pace.

The second semester is always met with mixed emotions. The “testing pressure” is felt much more when we return from Christmas, as our first TAKS test will be March 4. It’s so hard to find a balance between adequately preparing the kids while avoiding “teaching to the test”. In reality, every thing they are tested on is important for real life, so consequently teaching to the test isn’t entirely a bad thing…but yet it’s such a horrible thought to teach to a test! I can only wonder how long this current evaluatory mindset will continue…at some point someone somewhere is going to say that what we are doing is hurting more than helping. The state has already decided that they will phase out the TAKS test at the high school level-yet at this point I’m not aware of any discussion of changes at the elementary level. It’s bound to happen though-all in good time I suppose.

So tomorrow, it’s back to the daily grind…back to rising early…back to lesson plans…back to grading papers…back to the politics of teaching…and yes…back to the opening and growing of young minds! Maybe the daily grind isn’t so bad after all!