Yesterday, on the last weekday of the February break, I was in my classroom reading a 25-page standardized, multiple-choice test on poetry. All 8th graders at my school will spend two hours taking this test on Tuesday. Its purpose? To help them do a better job on the MCAS!
After studying past MCAS tests at length, however, and now having read over this new test, I found that the content and terms of the two tests are dissimilar in many ways. It remains to be seen whether this test will be useful, or simply a baseline year in which we learn whether this standardized test company can measure poetry know-how as well as it has measured math skills in the past.
In addition to the lost instructional time on Tuesday, I will now spend Monday helping kids to prepare for this new test, reviewing terms (elegy, cinquain) that they have seen but probably did not memorize. Even then, this test expects them to decipher – with no help from the teacher – vocabulary terms and words such as “zephyr,” “realm,” “vesper,” “poesy,” “yore,” “fond conceit,” and (my favorite) “thou wert aye a masker.”
I worked hard to make poetry vibrant and engaging for the last month. I am afraid that students will now feel defeated and alienated by one test, even though we will tell them that this is not a high-stakes assessment. If they didn’t hate poetry before, this test may turn them in that direction.
So Hunter and Bosley’s proposal that we treat school children as creative beings who should learn how to think and solve problems and make connections across the curriculum comes as a welcome “zephyr” to me. In addition to helping students to become better thinkers, it may encourage teachers to stick with the profession and to look for opportunities to score creativity points for their schools.
Here’s an ironic note to end this post: Our principal (who, in her heart, I suspect is not a huge fan of standardized testing) has asked 8th grade teachers to organize a Medieval/ Renaissance Fair for our students, to take place in June. During MCAS testing week(s), when the students are pretty much fried after each day’s test session, teachers will turn to projects such as creating a suit of armor, writing “new” Canterbury Tales, and making “stained glass windows” illustrating visions of heaven and hell.
We get this chance to play, in part, because the kids will be so burned out that they wouldn’t do well if we pursued more “serious” lessons. It will also be too late to do the teaching to the test that no one wants to admit we are doing up until MCAS time. Creative lessons should not be a last resort, once-a-year opportunity. If you disagree with me, all I can say is thou art aye a masker!
Standardized testing along with video games and what have you are killing kid’s imaginations.
<
p>If a kid can’t even have a pretend sword fight with sticks and wiffle ball bats, how can they be expected to come up with lateral thinking solutions to problems they will face when they are adults?
Can anything kill kid’s imaginations? Do you have any evidence that kid’s imaginations are being killed, or do you just observe that kids today — in a world with very different speeds of communication and availability of technology — simply play in different ways than you did as a child?
<
p>When I was a kid, I imagined I was a medieval explorer/archer, a MLB player/manager/team owner, a motorcycle racer, an Olympic athlete, a duck hunter, a jungle explorer, a frog, etc. That’s in addition to all of the quest, puzzle, and other blatant thinking games I had, both electronic and physical. I hadn’t played video games much in the past 10 years, but this Valentine’s Day I became a guitar god. Sure, I also played outside — everything from sand lot sports to assorted self-propelled motion to exploring in the back woods.
<
p>To assert that video games reduce a child’s ability to imagine or solve problems or be creative is just nonsense. It may reduce his or her ability to avoid child onset diabetes, but his or her brain will be A-OK from playing video games.
all the time, but when you separate truth from truthiness, the Digital Natives we are teaching these days are positioned well for their technological future.
<
p>I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Prensky’s writing on this subject, but we’ve spent some time with it as part of Breaking Ranks, and the discussion has been lively, to say the least.
Those games (which similarly were part of my childhood) do not have the addictive attributes of World of Warcraft, Everquest Online, Diablo 2, and many others. I’m not making these claims being an outsider looking in. I’m IN the gamer community. Current project: ESV4 Oblivion. I’m 40 hours in and not nearly finished. It’s pretty clear you’re a little behind on the times, but that’s ok as long as you play guitar hero. I would also recommend you give Rock Band a whirl, if you liked GH.
<
p>You want some evidence? Find a 14 year old, these days, take his Xbox away and tell him to have some fun. More often than ever before, you’ll get the “how” look on faces. Me and you were on the edge of the gamer generation, or at least in the oldest age level that could be considered such. We have the benefit that games we had as children were not so engrossing that they had the real potential to take us over. Think brains are a-ok? Google video game addiction. If I could find my college entrance essay, which I wrote how I overcame it, I’d post it here. Maybe I’ll dig around in some old word doc CDs I have and try to find it.
Addictive attributes? I played Dragon Warrior for hours a day, days on end, and felt a sadness when I beat the game instead of elation. Why? Well, now it had lost it’s magic.
<
p>I also dove in to dozens of the Sierra quest games. Hours and hours and hours of solitude, just me, 22 5.25″ floppy disks, and 16 beautiful colors. Later, how about 10-15 straight hours of Sim City/Sim City 2k/Civilization?
<
p>Who doesn’t remember walking around trying to fit real world shapes — like automobiles or benches or that pair of sneakers — into empty spaces after hours of Tetris?
<
p>I’m telling you, I was engrossed. My parents’ policy of “two calls for dinner, then you go hungry” resulted in numerous bed times without dinner because I didn’t even notice the call for dinner, I was so engrossed.
<
p>I’m not behind the times — I’ve played every cart system from Atari to PS3 and XBox360, and sampled most of the popular FPS games and MMORPGs out there, including WoW, Evercrack, etc. I just don’t buy most of the video game digs folks make. I don’t believe they result in kids with less imagination, and I don’t believe they result in kids with a higher propensity to violence. It just strikes me as ill-conceived stay-off-my-lawn tripe.
<
p>P.S. Not as much of a Rock Band fan — takes up too much space [small home], and it’s not often that I’ve got time to drag a few friends over to play video games. Instead, I just pull out GH and strum a few licks of a song or two before bed, as much for the fun of trying to imitate Billy Gibbons or SRV as going for 5 star performances or hitting the galloping triples.
Because it would be like telling Betty Ford that alcoholism isn’t real.
but the claim that alcoholism is more prevalent now because alcohol tastes a whole lot better now than it did 50 years ago is just as laughable. Likewise, video games.
…was that it was the first baseball game in which some batters charged the mound after a hit by pitch.
It was the guy hitting in the 3 or the 4 spot, and generally (?!) on his second time at bat. Of course, once he charged, both pitcher and batter had to be replaced.
<
p>This was a fabulous weapon, since there was no disadvantage to bringing in another pitcher, but you’d lose the batter for the rest of the game. If somebody tried to do it to you, the best “defense” was to intentionally strike out, since you couldn’t be hit by a pitch if you were swinging.
It’s certainly a noble intention, but as we saw with NCLB, the devil is in the details. I’d my curious to find out:
<
p>
<
p>As long as NCLB is on the books, I see any change in education through this lens…
Of course there are better ways to promote creativity. I guess I was hoping that this would plant a seed with policy makers to show that the MCAS generation is missing something essential in their education.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
That’s relevant.
Our high school is in the process of Breaking Ranks II reform. There is a PDF of the Executive Summary here: http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sslc… (For some reason I can’t get that address to make a link?) Half the faculty is enrolled in a specifically tailored graduate course that is designed to facilitate our implementation of what may be radical change in the way we govern, teach, and assess. As part of the process, btw, we are blogging to facilitate communication with the remainder of the facult as well as the community, school committee, and students.
<
p>Part of what we’ll be doing is putting high-stakes tests in perspective, and for us that means both MCAS and SAT. I am confident (as are most of the people around the room) that as an unintended consequence of our reform, our MCAS and SAT will take care of themselves. Part of our problem with these tests is not in covering content but in instructional methodology. As we move towards what looks like portfolio-based assessment and more meaningful project-based instruction, student performance will ultimately improve. We know we need to do things differently, there’s no doubt about that. Getting there, though, is the challenge.
<
p>At any rate, it’s a lot of fun–as well as deeply challenging–to be involved in whole-school, should-we-bomb-it-and-start-over restructuring. We are fortunate to have administration that understands that the traditional American high school is not equipped to meet the needs of a 21st century society and workforce. Should be an interesting ride.
I especially like the part about adult mentors (I think they called it meaningful relationships in the exec summary).
<
p>A lot of the academic problems at my school are linked to behavior problems. If the kids knew the same person would be paying attention – not handing a report to the Dean of Students who will assign them to a Saturday detention monitored by a third adult – for an extended period of time, it might make a difference in their behavior.
<
p>I hope your elementary and middle schools will support the shift, so the new approach doesn’t wait until the kids are in high school, when it may be too late to change old habits.
is supposed to be on a parallel track with Turning Points, but I’m not sure that that is off the ground yet. High schools in most towns/districts tend to be the rabble rousers in many respects, and I’m not sure that the elementary schools and middle school will be as willing to embrace change as the high school is. I expect we will meet with some resistance from the middle school since our articulation with them in the past has been, well, problematic. I’m not entirely sure why.
Although I realize that we teach in very different systems, it’s nonetheless interesting to hear the pov from the high school.
And I say that as someone who taught middle school for many years. As you know, every school has its own personality. The one I teach in is very different from the one in my community; the former is progressive and the latter extremely conservative. The student bodies are quite different, as well, and the success that the conservative (large and affluent regional) high school has is not seen as much in the much smaller and much less affluent high school I teach in.
<
p>Credit for spearheading this initiative, of course, has to go to our principal and the interim superintendent (!) who are frank in asserting we’re not doing the best job we can for our kids. They have enlisted the faculty in both diagnosing and solving the problems, using BRII as a guide. We’re looking at a 5-10 year process here, by the way. Those who want to stay along for the ride will be in on the ground floor. Conversely, though, the ones who fear change or disagree with the direction will find a way to exit.
The can afford to piss off the people who need pissing off.
If a kid’s imagination of hell includes a classmate being tortured or shooting up a room full of kids, all of a sudden that creative kid could end up being suspended for participating in the assignment. Given the modern news cycle, it wouldn’t even demonstrate a particularly creative idea.
I have a consistent rule banning references to real individuals in creative works. (Lesson learned after too many short stories ignored the assignment to follow a plot diagram and instead simply described pals being hit by meteors, kidnapped by crazy killers and/or run over by bulldozers. No rationale, no motive, no resolution.)
<
p>Their visions of the last judgment will involve invented beasts using the griffin, manticore, unicorn, etc. of the medieval bestiary as a model.
Good observation. We had three first graders suspended for drawing a picture of their escape route out of the school if it were being bombed. Unfortunately the adults reacted to flying bodies and explosions in the pictures and sent the children to counselors in addition to the punishment. There had been a school bombing in the news and the children were not given the opportunity to talk about their fears. Fortunately, the parents got it right.
“No, Miss Hoover.” đŸ˜€
<
p>
In kindergarten, I was kicked out of the teepee for eating paste. I had waited days (which feels like months, when you’re five) for my turn to have naptime in the teepee, and I blew it in an instant of uncontrolled craving. The beginning of my conflict with educational authority figures. . . .