It was a beautiful, sunny day, unfortunately. The kind of day that begged to be enjoyed, in a take off your shoes and run in the grass sort of way.
That was precisely why Anne forced her eyes away from the beckoning windows and toward the faces of her nervous fourth graders. If she wanted to be outside, they probably wanted it ten times more. She smiled at Javier, who was fidgeting with his number two pencil. Everything will be fine, she told herself, and took a deep breath.
“You may begin working now.”
It was standards testing day, and Anne was just about as apprehensive as she was when she had agreed to move to fourth grade from first grade in July.
“I really need you in fourth grade,” is what Principal Reed had said, and Anne had accepted, knowing many challenges would lie ahead.
One of those would be the standards tests. As a first grade teacher who was only two years out of credentialing, she hadn’t been sure she was up to the pressure. But here she was ten months later, facing it head-on. As she walked around the room, she thought about the last year and the things that had prepared her and her students for this day.
* * *
“Let me rephrase the question: how will you prepare your students for standardized testing?”
Anne stopped mid-sentence and stared at her master teacher as he calmly erased the white board in his fifth grade classroom. She had been placed there for her preliminary student teaching, and while she appreciated the discussions he facilitated to help prepare her, they sometimes reminded her why she wanted to end up in first grade.
“I-I’m sorry?”
“You were telling me your opinion on standards testing. I want to know how you will prepare your students for it.”
This wasn’t the first time Anne had misunderstood one of his questions. She had this bad habit of reading too far into things and saying what she thought people wanted to hear. It was a tactic that did not often work well on Mr. Amadi.
“Oh, of course, sorry. Um, I guess…practice tests?”
Mr. Amadi smiled. “Come over and write on this board,” he said, presenting her with a dry erase marker. Anne took it from him and stood in front of the board, waiting for further instructions.
“What if I told you that you must use this board to teach? This is the resource we’ve been given to help students learn and improve, and you are required to use it. Would that bother you?”
“Um…probably not,” Anne replied, unsure, as usual, where this was going.
“Go ahead and write the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Anne began writing on the board as neatly as possible. She knew that wasn’t the point of the exercise, but he was her master teacher, after all.
“Ugh, I hate white boards, they’re awful,” Mr. Amadi exclaimed, and Anne started with a jolt.
“Keep writing,” he said. “I don’t think they’re nearly as successful as people seem to think. In fact, I believe they contribute more to leaving students behind than helping them. Keep writing. I can’t believe we have to use white boards, they’re terrible!”
With liberty and justice for all. Anne underlined “all” for a bit of added flourish, set down the marker and turned to face Mr. Amadi.
“Still feel good about that?”
“Not really,” Anne laughed, “But you made me keep writing, so…”
“What if another teacher walked in and said white boards are great? That they have been specifically designed to help illustrate concepts to students and studies are constantly being done to improve them further?”
“I guess I would have to use it for myself to find out.”
“Sure, but that’s not the point I’m making. Obviously, it’s an imperfect comparison. A white board is a simple object used to teach, and standards tests are complex tools used to assess learning in our schools. What I’m saying is, telling you whether I think a white board is inherently good or bad doesn’t help you. If I wanted to help, I’d teach you how to use it.”
Anne considered his point for a moment, and for once the silence Mr. Amadi seemed to strategically place in the middle of his lessons wasn’t a nerve-wracking one.
“No matter what your opinion is on the subject, sending your students mixed signals about something they have to do, something we all have a stake in, doesn’t help anyone,” Mr. Amadi continued, picking up the eraser and sweeping it over the words Anne had so meticulously written. “So don’t tell them why they should love it or why they should hate it, or even why they should fear it. Just teach them how to tackle it to the best of their ability.”
“By the way,” He said with a smile, tapping the clean board for emphasis. “Drawing simple pictures to go along with the words sometimes helps more visual learners connect with your lessons.”
* * *
It made Anne smile just thinking about it. She had really respected Mr. Amadi, and she was glad he was her first master teacher, despite the fact he had been extremely good at intimidating her.
Still, she had taken his lessons to heart.
She didn’t have extremely strong feelings against standards tests, but she had her doubts. She knew Thomas was a bright kid who had learned a lot, but he wouldn’t do well. He was still on the second page of the Language Arts test. He couldn’t get far when things outside the window kept catching his eye.
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And Rosa still struggled with reading comprehension. Her grasp of English compared to her first day was an astronomical improvement. She always participated, she was eager to learn and Anne was so proud of her. But her score would still be low. It wouldn’t accurately measure her success the way Anne could; there was no way.
But Anne had refused to be discouraged. In the months and weeks leading up to testing she had kept it positive. They had taken practice tests, she had asked them questions to help them self-assess, and she had coached the class on their weak areas. And through it all, she had thought of Mr. Amadi.
“Teach them how to tackle it to the best of their ability,” he had said, and that is what she did.