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The First Circle of the Inferno


AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!! I am screaming. Today was one of those days. I haven’t had many in my 18 years of teaching. However, today was one of those days I questioned why I didn’t go into the business of selling mattresses. When things get a bit hectic, I could just disappear into dreamland for a bit. Instead, I chose the world of middle school teaching. When things got hectic today, I disappeared into a nightmare. A nightmare of defiance and EOG preparation.

As I step into the First Circle of EOG Hell, I find I am becoming anxious along with the students. We have been encouraged to really focus on preparing the students for this test. Practice. Go over test-taking strategies. Practice some more. Have them read boring material for hours on end. I look at the targeted score for my students. In two of my classes, the state predicts only ten percent of my students will pass it. The voice of reason in my head is drowned out by questions of the irrational, NCLB (No Child Left Behind) induced paranoia. Will they be ready? Do I need to prepare more? How much can I cram into their heads in the next 8 days? Target scores for my students are low, which means lots of waiver hearings if they meet the state’s expectations. (I have set my expectations of them a bit higher.)

I listen to the hype that surrounds it all. The pressure to cram more practice in. I hear a small voice inside me saying, “Shouldn’t we have been doing that all year long?” Different groups of students test on different dates. The EC students test next week. The entire school will run on a ‘long test schedule’, which means I will have my homeroom for THREE HOURS before having them AGAIN in the afternoon. More time to cram more in, I suppose. I put myself in the shoes of a 7th grader. There is NO WAY I want to be sitting in the same classroom for three hours. My body wants to move. Thank goodness, we were able to get together as teachers and look at some options to change it up a bit for them.

Testing begins on May 12th for three days, followed by remediation and a chance to retest for those students who don’t pass the first time. The schedule has been crazy and will continue to be so for the rest of the year. The students expect to pass the EOG and be done with schoolwork for the remainder of the year. In the meantime, the behavior of the students is reminding me of what I have seen in other schools during the last week of school. I am sure in the next six weeks, I will continue to question the necessity of this high-stakes multiple choice testing three-hour reading test.  I wonder how many of us sit down and read for three hours when we are not interested in the material. Are these tests really showing us what the student has learned and how s/he thinks? I am waiting for the data before weighing in with my opinion.

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