We're all Growing: A Positive Spin on Testing

If you are involved in the world of education or not, you have probably heard your fair share of talk about the amount of testing that is done in schools. Particularly in schools deemed "high need" such as the majority of Chicago Public Schools.

Let me begin by saying: absolutely, there is a lot of testing. Too much testing is what many would argue and I would have to agree. Every year I watch my kids go through a battery of tests that are designed to measure student achievement. The ISAT, my least favorite, is given to students each March. The testing period is two weeks long and the pressures that kids and teachers feel are unreal.

I am a special education teacher and I work with a group of wonderful students who have a variety of disabilities which impact their ability to learn. My students, most of whom work at a 2nd or 3rd grade level, are given a test which is written at grade level. In their case, this means the test is written at a 7th or 8th grade level. My students are given extra time and I am allowed to read the directions to them, but after that, they are on their own to "do the best they can." It is heartbreaking. I spend most evenings during ISAT testing drinking wine on my couch, usually in tears. It's awful.

But, because you probably noticed the title of this post as a positive spin on testing, allow me to follow through on my promise and talk about one assessment that does give my students and I something we can grab onto. It is called the NWEA MAP test. If you are a teacher reading this, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. If you are not, in basic terms, it is a computerized test which asks students questions and then adjusts up and down as the students answer correctly or incorrectly. It is not one size fits all, and for my students, it is encouraging for them to have questions that they are actually able to read.

Now, the thing is, there are big negatives to the MAP test, particularly in how it is administered in many CPS schools. It takes up a lot of time and it definitely takes up valuable computer lab space. I am not discounting any of these points and I think they are very real concerns that I share.

But, in that I promised a positive spin, let me say that the results can be really, really powerful. At my school, we take the test twice a year. Once in the winter as kind of a "practice" round and once in the spring. Results are compared spring to spring and here's the really great thing. We get to talk about student growth.

Yes. Growth. We aren't talking about how far they are away from grade level. We aren't talking about who meets, who exceeds, and in the case of my students, who is in academic warning. Instead, we are talking about how much each individual student grew.

This past week, my students took the MAP test. They take it one by one and while it is a reading test, so I obviously can't read any of it aloud to them, we sit together to ease the nerves. At the end of all the testing, I realized that all of my students had grown from the previous spring. Yes, all of them. Some by very little, some by a lot, but they all moved forward. They all grew.

When I shared this news with all of my bright eyed students, one student's response was my favorite. "Well of course we grew. We work really hard! Can we go to the prize drawer now?"

If that isn't a positive spin on testing, I don't know what is.

Meanwhile on my end, I am growing too...in the pool! At the start of 2014 I decided to start tracking my running, biking, swimming miles. While my running miles weren't much to speak of (goodness, it has been cold), and I have been avoiding the bike (we don't always like each other), I did manage to get in 26,800 yards of swimming during the month of January with my local masters swim team. This is equivalent to 15.2 miles. In the words of my dear students, I think that deserves a trip to the prize drawer!

Welcome to Teaching in my Tennies!

Hello!

Welcome to Teaching in my Tennies!

This blog has been floating around in my brain for the past six months or so and I am very happy to finally have it up and running. This blog, like many wonderful things in my life, came about at the suggestion of really wonderful people.

Last summer I accomplished something big. I swam, biked, and ran my way to being a 70.3 ironman finisher. At the finish line and in the days following the race, I felt on top of the world. I couldn’t stop smiling, talking incessantly about my race, and telling anyone who would listen the details of my tire popping, how miserable I felt on the run, and how I had swam under people to make it through the choppy water. I couldn’t stop talking because I didn’t want to forget.

After listening to my endless ironman chatter over phone, text and email, two really fantastic women suggested something to me: why not write about it?

Write about it? For who? Nobody wants to read that. Where would I post that? Nobody wants to read that…

Well, I went ahead and wrote about it and while a hugely rewarding part of the experience was that I received a lot of heartwarmingly positive responses (thank you, by the way, if you were a part of that), something else happened that made me start to think about this blog. Something that I would call magical. When I wrote that race report, it became mine. It became permanent. It became something that nobody could ever take away and that I would always have. And truth be told, I’ve read it a couple, well hundred, times since the race.

Fast forward to now. It is snowy, cold January in Chicago and the idea of writing a blog keeps creeping into my mind. Partly because we’re going on day two away from school and teachers start to go a little batty around this time, but also because those same two fantastic women keep telling me that I could do this, there is plenty to write about, and it will be an incredible experience...and so, here I am.

I have a lot of hopes for this little blog. I hope to write about my experience as a teacher in an urban, slightly dysfunctional but somehow charming, school district. I hope to share thoughts on current education policies that I’m learning about through an amazing policy fellowship I have recently started. I hope to give a window into doing crazy things like triathlons and marathons as a fairly normal person. I hope to talk about the many events and experiences that give meaning to my life. But more than anything, I hope to grow and learn and change through this blog. I hope to give a positive spin on subjects that don’t always get a lot of positive light, and I hope that just like my race-report, it will become something permanent that I will love.

Oh, and the name? Well, I’m a teacher and I run, so I basically teach in my tennies all the time. Just kidding, not all the time, I have some fashion sense!

Stay tuned...