Faith in teachers

 

While getting ready in the morning for the Genesee Valley Writing Project, I could not stop thinking about Melissa’s post and her moving story about the Patrick and the impact she had on him. However, her impact did not seem to be valued in the face of state and federal mandates where a test score means more than the personal growth of a student. In my research, I found teachers similar to Melissa whose identities were compromised, or I should say constricted, by high stakes testing environments. Even more is how teachers’ identities are compromised by what they believe and know is good teaching and the reasons they went into the teaching profession in the first place – to teach, to make a difference, to nurture lifelong learners and critical thinkers. However, this is not what they feel they can do in lieu of the amount of tests students are required to take and the preparation that goes with students having to take those tests. Yet, in the current climate of education, teachers are blamed for low test scores and student failure, and are then under scrutiny, surveillance, and evaluation to determine their effectiveness. What other profession does this - where dedicated individuals who have the students’ best interests at heart and do so for little pay are treated this way? In a way that devalues and dehumanizes their experience, education, intelligence, and compassion? Why are state and federal governments not looking at larger social inequities such as poverty and lack of access to resources and technology as barriers to learning rather than be quick to blame the teacher who teaches with little to no resources in an unairconditioned building that may be in need of repair? 

As teachers’ identities are compromised, so are the students’ identities. Students arrive to school with various interests, attributes, and histories that are often not taken into account when they are filling in answers to multiple choice test questions that are completely irrelevant to their lives. In my own school experience, I was a deep thinker. I had to really think about what I was learning, reading, writing, and discussing in order to process the information and be able to articulate it in ways that other students could do easily. I did not excel at taking tests, especially timed tests. I don’t know if I would be where I am now if I had to take the amount of tests students have to take and teachers have to administer, taking time away from the meaningful work they do with students.

In a 2012 address to the National Council of Teachers of English, Sir Ken Robinson stated that education now is based on conformity not on individuality. Education should be based on the latter, not the former. He said, “Everyone’s resume is different. Children are on their own unique journey.” He argues that curriculum continues to be narrowed and people are making decisions on what they think children should do. In essence, those making decisions on behalf of children are trying to plan students’ lives for them. He maintains that the “process of discovery is lost and creativity is as well.” What Robinson argues can be said about teachers and how their creativity and autonomy in what and how they teach and assess learning is lost. Some folks somewhere are making decisions on what and how teachers should teach. As Melissa stated, Patrick is more than a score, a number on a rubric. He is a student who has shown personal growth and learning in ways that cannot be measured by a state test. And like Patrick, Melissa is more than a number on an evaluation scoreboard, and most certainly not ineffective. She is highly effective, qualified, extraordinary, caring, nurturing, creative, intelligent, experienced. She is more than the evaluation measures put forth by individuals who continue to have little trust and faith in what teachers do.