Teacher: The existential crisis we all should be having
Melissa Halpern is a longtime Palm Beach County teacher and founder of the Florida Professional Teaching Force, an organization that advocates for restored dignity and efficacy in the teaching profession. She recently graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She recently wrote about a $44 million program passed by the Florida legislature that will award big bonuses to teachers who got high SAT and ACT scores before entering college — even if they took the test decades ago and can somehow locate their scores. Here’s a new piece by Halpern on teaching and testing.
By Melissa Halpern
Last week was the beginning of standardized testing “pre-season” at my school. It’s nothing compared to what happens in the spring, but as usual, schedules were mangled (as deftly as our overworked administrators could manage), eliminating some periods and extending others to as long as four hours. Teachers with small classes were recruited to administer tests, so instead of teaching their students on those days, they had to “farm them out” to larger classes.
For many of my at-risk high school seniors, last week was the beginning of the end. If they came from out of state or if they didn’t pass the exams last year, they had to take up to three high-stakes exams in one week, which meant missing six hours or more of class. The stress of having to catch up with class work only compounded the anxiety brought on by hours of graduation-determining testing; by the end of it all, my already-struggling students were exhausted and apathetic.
Even students who didn’t have to test used the general disruption as an excuse to skip class; on some days I had several classes with less than half attendance. Instead of wrapping up the first quarter with culminating projects and meaningful reflection on their learning, students are physically and Teacher: The existential crisis we all should be having - The Washington Post:
