Source of Joy:

Everyone likes to feel like they did well.  We like it when we do something well and we need someone to tell us we did well.  If someone else doesn’t say it, you’re just giving yourself a pep talk.  Often we’re unable to see when we did well because what we do isn’t like making a basket or catching a fish.  We don’t physically do anymore when we either do well or poorly.  Today, we mentally do (? not quite the right word because doing also involves a kind of physical action?) and others evaluate us.  Often we may not see a final product.  Then we are utterly reliant on the observations of others in order to know whether or not we are doing a good job. 

We feel good when we’re doing a good job!

Source of Pain:

When we don’t feel the joy of doing a good job we still feel something.  That something runs the range of feeling contentment or sorrow.  Sorrow can fill the void of joy for hope building in our minds to hear words unspoken.  Through grand recordings and observations, we’ve been shown what an optimal condition looks like on paper.  A standard will be set and everyone must measure up.  To not meet the mark means censure of some kind.  Doing well means being among the best for whichever standard interests us at the moment.  Doing well may become a race from the pain of praise ceasing to exist followed by a series of official and unofficial warnings.

The Teacher’s Situation:

The standard is arbitrary from the very beginning.  I’m not trying to invalidate the standard, but rather to recognize one standard does not make or break an education.  Teachers are given standards to teach. 

Students should be able to describe a character in fiction based upon a narrator’s words, the words of other characters, the character’s own actions or thoughts.  Every group of students arrives for instruction and the teacher greets them all with the same standard. 

Students should be able to identify word meaning based on Greek and Latin roots as well as affixes.  Students should be able to define multiple meaning words based on context.  Students should be able to identify bias in persuasive text.  Students should be able to summarize the main idea and critical details in expository text.  Students should be able to describe the effects of persuasive strategy.  Students will be able to use graphic organizers to help with comprehending text.

During our second 8 weeks together I greeted my students with these standards.  In first hour, the kids want to drift and wander but they’re manageable.  One on one they mostly become rational.  Second hour is my largest class but they are the most on track.  The kinds of disruptions arising during this time are what you would expect.  3^rd hour loses their minds from start to finish.  They just waste time with nonsense, but I have them before lunch.  I mark the time for them where time is being wasted.  I’m very annoying about it too. 

“This is where you’re wasting your time.  So when we’re sitting here during lunch finishing today’s task, remember, this is where we wasted our time.  Don’t be made at me.  You’re doing it to yourself.”

4^th hour has settled in and been doing good work.  It has taken probably the first ten weeks of school to get them set into a routine they can work with, but I expect the rest of the year to run smoothly.  5^th hour is just batty; very capable students, but a strain of insanity running through some of them.  On any given day, there is one of three students I need to eject from my classroom in order to get anything done.

My Specific Situation:

We just completed the 2^nd Quarter and my students took the quarterly benchmark test.  The results of 8 weeks instruction, as measured by a 35 question multiple-choice reading test, are below.

Students will be able to use graphic organizers to comprehend text

I liked this standard the best this quarter because we also tested it on the first quarter benchmark test.  Across the board there was tremendous growth from each of my class’s first to second quarter.  This is an intangible kind of standard as well.  What is a graphic organizer and how many are there in the world?  How might you approach teaching the 8^th grade ones?

Students will be able to describe the effect of persuasive strategies

We spent a lot of time on this standard.  I had the kids reading Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X speeches.  We trudged our way through an article from Robert MacNeill (co-creator of MacNeill & Lehrer) “The Trouble With Television.”  We used a crazy diagram for weeks analyzing an argument in terms of speaker, message, audience, emotion, logic and character.  We talked about persuasion a lot and my classes did pretty well considering 62% is a Meets on the state test.  Teachers in my school say our benchmark tests are much more difficult than the state test.

This is where the district’s crazy grading scheme comes in.  75% is the unspoken goal, but a Meets on the state test is 62% or higher so that’s also our goal.  With the district test though, there is an added bit of mystery to the results.  Someone has a magical formula which changes individual student percentages into some kind of developmental growth score.  No one knows exactly how it is calculated or even what it means, but we are supposed to care about it and make the students care as well.  This number is calculated even though the standards tested on the first quarter test are mostly different from the ones tested second quarter.  Until I receive this magical development number, I don’t really know exactly how my students did on this test.

Therefore, I presented this information to my students as compared to the school’s overall average, the district’s overall average and standards on the state test.

Students will be able to define meaning based on roots and affixes

One of the five questions asked was to define “aspiration” based on root word knowledge.  The base word of aspiration is “aspire.”  Base words are different than root words though.  To define aspiration you have to know aspire means to dream of something.  A root word question would be something more like define democracy based on root word knowledge.  The root words of democracy are demos and cracy.  They are root words because the can be used to form other words.  Aspire, on the other hand, is a base word because you can add prefixes and suffixes to change its meaning.

It’s a technical argument but it pissed me off anyway. 

One of the distracter answers gave the definition of aspiration as breath.  Therefore, students confused by aspiration and respiration would select that answer.  I had many students select that answer.  How can you teach a student every word like aspire in eight weeks?  With a large number of primarily Spanish speaking students, as well as a significant Special Ed population, I’ve got students who have never heard the word gloomy used before let alone aspire.  I’ve got students who have largely never heard the expression “more often than not.”

I’m happy with my results when another one of the questions asked students to use their knowledge of root words to define the word logic.  My first year teaching I instructed seventh grade students in the root words: logos, ethos and pathos when I taught persuasive strategies.  Afterwards, my students were very confused about the more basic stuff they needed to learn like bandwagon, loaded words and peer pressure after trying to understand logos, pathos and ethos.

Students will be able to define multiple meaning words

I think we did pretty well here except for 3^rd Period.  In 3^rd period, we had a good long talk about motivation and performance.  They don’t focus well, but they focused on numbers like these.  Their first responses were statements like: “we’re stupid” or “I’m retarded.”  They make excuses and too many of them lack focus so they take everything off track before they have the opportunity to learn it.

Students will be able to identify bias in persuasive text

This is where I start to get discouraged a bit because we focused a lot of our time on identifying bias.  So then I have to look at the school’s average and the district’s average.  When barely 50% of the students taking a test pass a certain section, it may be more of a statement about the test than the students.

Students will be able to summarize main idea and critical details

Again, see my comments above.  In this case, less than 50% of students in the district passed this section.  There’s at least three ways to interpret these results; either: most of the teachers in the district are doing a poor job as educators; this question set wasn’t clear; or the students in this district are not capable of summarizing main idea and critical details.

Students will be able to describe character based on thoughts, words and actions

This particular set of 5 questions I went back through the test and analyzed.  This is certainly, in my eyes, a bad test set for the following reasons.  All five questions were about a two and a half page excerpt from an Anne Bronte novel written in 1827.  I didn’t have to read Emily Bronte until tenth grade.  It was difficult to follow even then.

In an informal class survey, less than 40% of my students even read the whole passage.  I don’t think the questions should’ve been dumbed down, however, I think the interest level of the passage could’ve been better selected by choosing an excerpt that uses language more current than 150 years.  That’s not even mentioning that having all five questions based on one passage may just be testing whether or not students understood the one passage rather than whether or not they can describe a character.

Final Reflection:

We have another twelve weeks until the state test (after we get back from break.)  In that time poetry and functional text are the primary standards of focus.  We will use 2^nd Quarter data to build on improvement and motivation in the 3^rd Quarter so students feel successful enough to do well on the state test.

For better or worse, the state test is the test which matters most to the short-term future of my students and me regardless of what they learn this year.  Pushing that aside for the moment, by the end of the year I know my students will be familiar with Hal Roach’s Our Gang in the early 1920’s through the 1940’s.  My students will have a new familiarity with Malcolm X, Jim Croce and the Lone Ranger.  They will have been asked to think about what they want to do with their future.  They will be asked to consider the past.  By the end of this school year, my students will have been exposed to a lot of background knowledge which is seemingly random and trivial, but without which I believe they will be held back more than by anything they can circle on a multiple choice test.