Curriculum and Voice

This is my response to October 15th's Prompt (which can be found here).  The issue that I wrote about was the pressure that teachers have with standardized testing going unchecked and, in many ways, running rampant in our system.  Additionally, this poses a large toll not only on teachers but on their students as well. I had a couple of teachers come up to me and tell me that they understood this poem very much.  I am posting a link to the video of it.  Please note that it is somewhat loud, so turn down your speakers a bit!

After the poem, I will outline some of my thoughts for how we can change this.  If you'd like to view more of my poems, please click this to link to my YouTube channel.  If you like what you see, please subscribe!

Curriculum and Voice

0 – [Sign Language] This is the voice we teach our students to use when authority speaks

1 – [Whisper] This is the voice we teach our students to use when whispering with the partner at their elbow

2 – [Quiet Talk] This is the voice we teach our students to use when the unravel the mysteries of their quizzes in small groups

3 – [Normal Voice] This is the voice we teach our students to use when they interact in the classroom

4 – [Outside Voice] This is the voice we teach our students to use outside to manage teams and make plays

5 – [Screaming] This is the voice we teach our students to use when it's an emergency!

Our students have a belief that their voice travels
only as far as their arms because actions speak
louder, and a fist is far more formidable than they've been taught
their voices can be because
we shut them up. Say, “sorry, but
there's no time in our curriculum for your questions”
because finding an answer to “Why
am I the way that I am?” will never be featured on any state sanctioned test.

We don't give them time to digest all the facts but seem somehow surprised
when they throw up the rest. Teachers are taught to teach to the test
because numbers are our only measures of success, and standards
have been removed from a point of high esteem and only seem
to hang above heads like the sword of Damocles. Teachers
are punished when kids can't remember facts they never cared to know.

They are statistics.

And numbers are the only things on which we can count because
the same can't always be said for parents or society – we
are failing our students,
not the other way around.

With drop out rates soaring higher than the system says our kids ever could, we've
waged a war of attrition on our educational institutions but are somehow surprised when our students
only know how to shoot. We
hold them back by becoming the clasped hands of politicians
who've never set foot in a classroom but still make dangerous generalizations
without understanding that their voice and actions reach farther than their arms, so
we should raise our voices to 5; we should scream emergency because
our schools are punctuated by the shrill cry of bells designed to turn
students into workers who slave to the tune of minimum wage.

No, there is still no time in our curriculum for your questions like
Why do dead bugs litter our buildings or
Why are my textbooks older than me or
Why won't my legs move as fast as my dreams or
Why is 5 grades ago the most I can read or
What do these tests actually measure, but
all I can say is we have a system that says your
questions will not fit into our curriculum because
we've got a status quo to keep, and this
consuming society by which we must abide, so
critical thinking is the first to get pushed aside, and I'm

sick and tired of the silence we push upon our students because

5

This is the voice we should be teaching
so our students can see change

can't result solely from the swing of a swift fist but can come

with the power of their words

4

but

3

this is the voice

2

I'm required to teach

1

my students because

0

authority

has spoken.

Writing a poem and speaking it is not enough.  We must also offer solutions.  Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Decrease class sizes

"Sorry, but there's no time in our curriculum for your questions"

Students need personalized attention.  No student learns the same way as another.  The amount of variability in one classroom in terms of learning style is absolutely astounding.  Teachers, while amazing, cannot do it on their own IF the class sizes are too large.  The optimal number is about 20 students per teacher.  In order to decrease class sizes, we need more teachers.  It is plain and simple.  Unfortunately, this would require a lot of money to achieve.

2. Reduce our dependence on standardized testing

"Teachers are punished when kids can't remember facts they never cared to know."

Not every student is a good test taker.  While there are strategies one may employ in order to become a better test taker, it takes time to employ those strategies, explain them, and have the students practice them.  Time is one of the many things that teachers don't have enough of.  

Additionally, the way that No Child Left Behind currently focuses on standardized tests, including its punitive ramifications, are counter-intuitive and disgusting.  By 2014, schools are supposed to have 100% passing grades on their tests.  This means that every student must be proficient or better.  This is an impossible feat to accomplish.  Hercules could not do it.  In addition, if these standards are not met, entire schools can be shut down.  Teachers can be fired.  Granted, I can see where the logic comes from.  But this logic has not shown improvement, and it does not make sense to punish schools that have low test scores in the way that NCLB does.

For those who don't know, NCLB affords schools national government funding.  However, if test scores are not proficient, that funding can be taken away.  One of the best ways to bring scores up is through personalized attention.  As mentioned earlier, this is expensive.  NCLB all but ensures failure. 

Beyond school performance, in 2013, a teacher's evaluation will be based almost 50% on their students' test scores.  As a teacher with whom I worked has said multiple times, "I can't control if my students had a good breakfast, or if their parents struck them the day before - there is just too much variability in students for these tests to be a good measure of learning."

Finally, tests are not actually all that standardized.  States determine what constitutes a test.  In other words, the states determine what should be on the test.  For a time, one state's test didn't even have science on it.  Therefore, that curriculum was pushed to the back burner.  When the test was changed to include science, the school systems had to try to educate their students through a massive deficit.  

"Teachers are taught to teach to the test"

3. Shift our focus to students

"Because finding an answer to 'Why / am I the way that I am?' will never be featured on any state sanctioned test."

Knowledge availability is not like it used to be.  Today, one can find information about almost anything he or she wants to find via the internet (or library if you're 'old school').  Thus, we MUST shift our focus from teaching everything one way and hoping that our students pick it up to teaching to the students.  We MUST shift our focus from "teaching to the test" to "teaching to our students".  In order to do this, we need to make sure that the first item on this list gets taken care of, but we must also strive to engage students more.  Some kids love facts and are aces at memorizing statistics.  Others want to create.  Others want to argue.  Others need to understand how everything works; they must break it down to put it together.  Our curriculum must be free enough to allow this to happen.

The caveat:

In order to fly, you must first be grounded.  In other words, we cannot let students simply go into the world on their own.  While this is a viable method for learning, it is also a slow one.  Students need mentors to help them guide their way through this world.  They need discipline to keep them focused.  They need someone to help them; they need to be encouraged to ask questions, and they need to have the drive instilled in them to actually go find the answer.  We sometimes forget that everything we are was put there by someone else.  Yes, we are ourselves, and we are the only ones who can be that, but we had help finding the materials to make ourselves along the way.  We both build ourselves and are built by others.  It it difficult to find time to encourage questions with so little time in the day and a test that is always looming.

4. Our schools need to be safe places

There is a line that I cut out of my original piece which said

"During a tornado drill, I saw students sit with knees and foreheads pressed against the wall, and I couldn't help but think that this is a little too close to home for some: sitting execution style."

We must not forget that life for students is very different.  It most certainly is a scary time to be alive as a students.  Bomb threats.  Shootings.  Standardized test.  The economy.  There are several different ways to fix these things, but I don't have answers to those.  Unfortunately, the answer to this point hinges on the answers to those questions.  Getting into those answers would turn into a book.

Anyhow, if a student feels unsafe, that student will have a much more difficult time learning.  Every student deserves to have a safe place.  Schools should offer that, but they can't do it on their own.  Our culture needs to examine itself very thoroughly here in order to come up with a comprehensive solution.  And this change WILL NOT come overnight.  We need to be stalwart and demanding.  We have high standards to uphold, after all.

5. We need to empower our youth

"Our students have a belief that their voice travels only as far as their arms"

We need to empower our youth to ask questions and think critically.  If a student can think through a question, he or she will find much more value in the answer than if he or she is told that answer.  This is why the "Socratic method" of teaching is so powerful.  Students learn that questions lead to understanding, and they begin to see their voices as tools for reaching information.  Along with this, we MUST change our tests up to focus less on right or wrong answers.  These kind of questions (true/false, multiple choice) do not engage a student's mind very thoroughly.  Only by asking questions and having students seek out answers (synthesizing knowledge, evaluating, and critiquing) do students come to a better understanding of what they believe.  

Generalizations are dangerous.  They force us to see the world as a binary switch.  Yes or no.  This is not how the world works.  The world is, to use a cliche, grey.  It cannot always be completely quantified.  In order to understand this, students need more time with a teacher who is not buried by grading papers.  One of the best ways to get our students to where we want them to be, contributing members of society, is by giving them personalized attention and time.  Time is worth more than money, but money, right now, is the only thing that we can trade for time.  It's an unfair system, and it needs to be looked at.  Possibly rebuilt, but definitely changed.