REFERENCE
Perry:
One Teacher’s Journey to Higher Standards. Voice from the Middle 10:1
SUMMARY
Perry
reflects on the year that she shifted from teaching facts to teaching
children. In journal form, she gives
snapshots of what was happening the eighth grade language arts classes she
taught that pivotal year. Her students
reading level ranged from 2nd to 9th grade and she knew
there would be standardized testing to evaluate their progress at the end of
the year. She describes how she
dutifully tried to meet state standards each day and how the children would
turn in their incomplete work like faceless robots going through the motions of
school. Then one day, a beloved teacher
was found shot through the head in his car, and Perry used the teachable
moments that ensued as students poured out their feelings for this
teacher. She was surprised at the
volume of writing elicited when these normally unmotivated students had the
opportunity to communicate something meaningful to them. Perry’s LA classes self-published a
compendium of stories about what their teacher had meant to them, sold the
books at school, and gave the proceeds to the teacher’s family. While being busy with this student directed
task, there wasn’t a lot of prep time put into the standardized test. Yet, when the results came back her class
demonstrated improvement. She
concludes:
a good
performance on standardized testing does not have to be separate from good
teaching and authentic learning
a all kids want
to learn …They just don’t always want to learn the way we think we have to
teach them
a make reading
and writing meaningful and performance will follow
a student needs,
not objectives must drive instruction
CONNECTION
I
have also seen the difference that making assignments personally meaningful has
on student output. I used this in the
classroom one time when I had a non-compliant student who rarely demonstrated
his ability and never showed interest.
The assignment was to make an informational brochure about care for a
body system … pretty boring sounding until I assigned him the task of
investigating and sharing sports injuries as related to his favorite: snow boarding. He turned his assignment in on time (a first) and with great
enthusiasm. Though it wasn’t the most
neatly done work I’ve ever seen, he was quite thorough and showed he had gone
the extra mile. I just couldn’t
complain. It was victory.
DISCUSSION
Perry
notes the pressure to meet standards at the end of the school year. She muses about how to meet standards
without reducing her classroom time to drill and kill worksheets. Other teachers warn her that she won’t meet
her standards if she spends so much time on this project. Perry found ways to embed the content of
standards in the work that her students were interested. In the end she was rewarded for her efforts
with measured achievement in most of her students.
Perry
concludes that we must teach to student need, not objectives. What do you guys think? Is it possible to do both? And if so, how do we do it? At some point you have to have a tracking
system to monitor your teaching progress in regard to standards. It seems like management of this over the
long haul would be a challenge. What works for other teachers?
EXTENSION