4/15

Movies to see (whenever): Talk to Her, Phone Booth, Chicago (again), The Hours. And, um, the Lizzie McGuire movie. I like Hilary Duff. Sh.

I did three of my cards: 1. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, 2. Anastasia Krupnik, 3. Ramona Forever. Three down, forty-seven to go. Actually I guess we're not restricted to 50, so three down, however many more I can handle to go. The "mature reader" (chapter book) minimum is five, but I think I'll have at least 10 because there are a lot of books I really liked that I want to have cards for. (It's supposed to be a reference file for classroom use.) She suggested that if we had never read a Nancy Drew "novel" to include one of those, and declared it mandatory to read a Harry Potter if we never had. The Nancy Drew was boring and obviously dated, and I'm still working on the HP. Yeah, the one I was working on last year. Anyway the three I have done are books I own, love, and will always recommend. I'm thinking eventually I'll have cards for all E.L. Konigsburg, all Anastasias and all Ramonas, but first I have to get through the stuff I've never read: The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatly Snyder and Holes by Louis Sachar. The latter will be hard to get hold of now that the movie is out (or almost out.) The bulk of the file will be picture books. There will be stuff everyone has (like Where the Wild Things Are, I'm positive) but heh heh I have the secret weapon of obscure picture books from other countries and cool things like POP-UP Carl to spice up my file.

Had math yesterday, it was refreshingly, joyously, wonderfully uncomplicated. The thing about new-New Math is that there are plenty of arguments against it (of course. Why did I think it would be so simple -- that everyone would automatically embrace Constructivism just because it's not the stuff that didn't work for us?) People still want their kids to learn "skill and drill" and are not all that concerned with from-the-ground-up problem solving. Of course these seem to be a lot of the same people who just love the concept of standardized tests. Let me reiterate what I spent 10 minutes bitching abotu to E's B on the way home from puppy school .. there are lots of kinds of standardized tests -- achievement, intelligence, aptitude, etc. -- which ones measure what the students are learning in school at the time? Few. Which ones measure essential life skills (and I don't mean the things Fortune 500 companies want their prospective employees to know)? none. I'm not completely anti-standardized test, I just think it's wrong to administer certain tests in school, I think most tests are utterly flawed, a complete waste of time and no. 2 pencils, and I get really mad (and I think parents shoudl get really mad) when teachers "teach to" the upcoming test. If there's a hard math section with long division on the test, and you spend the week before the test cramming long division down the kids' throats, that tells any observer that what you care about is scores and the reflection of those scores on you/the school, because if their learning long division was all that important in the first place, you'd teach it properly and they'd really learn it. and if it was slated for later in the year, there's no good reason on God's green earth why you should bump it up just because of a standardized test. And the ironic thing is that lower-scoring states receive more funding for programs anyway. Not to suggest that low scores are a good thing or anything, I don't know why I even brought that up. There must have been a reason. Oh well. Anyway what I meant to say earlier was that those tests that measure achievement (essentially and broadly, what academic skills the student has learned in school) should not be administered in school. It might be overly simplistic thinking on my part (hey, that's why I'm still in a teacher ed program -- a progressive one, i like to think) but here are my reasons for thinking so. 1. these tests take a lot of time. whole mornings, and they can last longer than a week, dependning how they're administered. 2. they cause test-taking anxiety because 3. teachers teach to the test and get frantic about scores and that feeling is projected onto the students OR 4. the students don't care about their performance because really, what's at stake? These are not entrance exams, they're not a ticket to anything special. If the students don't care, well, what a waste of time. 5. A lot of the tests are poorly designed. If anything, they teach test-taking skills (which for kindergarteners means "how to bubble in your answer" and "how to erase cleanly,") not measure academic skills. 6. (This one might be specific to the little U.N.-like school that I work at and others like it) They really aren't designed with the needs of second-language students in mind, yet everyone takes them. How meaningless. (OK, some companies have Spanish-language versions for bilingual districts but I didn't see a Chuukese version, a Marshallese version, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, aka Makikian versions.) Hm. Anyway 8. or whatever I'm on, back up to reason 4 -- these are state-mandated tests to assess achievement, compare to other states, somewhere along the line assess curriculum needs, changes that need to be made, etc., presumably, though we all know nothing really changes when it needs changing. OK. So here's the thing (which will be very short because this is a primarily a Complaint entry, not a Solution entry) -- achievement tests should be administered on a volunteer basis, and not during school hours. There can be some kind of incentive for participation, but it shouldn't be mandatory. School time should be spent on instruction and sharing of ideas, not mental vomiting for the sake of having something meaningless to analyze, which doesn't directly pertain to the student whose score it is anyway. And you know, when the test is over, the teachers revert to their regularly scheduled programs. The test is forgotten. (As it should be. But then, it shouldn't have happened to begin with.) Every minute spent in school should mean something, especially because it's a minute not spent outside where real learning takes place. That was not a well-developed thought, but bear with me for a few more. If the government says all kids have to go to school and learn basically the same thing as everyone else on the same track, and not stay home or go to the library or the beach and listen to stories, learn the tides, learn how to cook, garden, sing, or paint, then the government should ensure that those kids are getting something out of those hours -- instruction, time to create, love, etc. -- not giving their precious time sitting at desks trying desperately to remember what their teacher tried to "teach" them the day before about fractions.

The beauty of a journal is, it's not a thesis. You can be pre-service and still opine like a retiree. You can leave holes in your argument if you want to go to bed because you're tired. But I'll cover this one: If you thought "Stay home and learn to cook, garden, sing or paint with whom? Most parents work full-time," I fully acknowledge the reality of necessity, and for many, dual-earner income is a necessity. It wasn't even a plug for homeschooling (I'm still on the fence about that one.) What I meant was, in a perfect world, parents would teach their children the most important things they needed to know (and in my opinion, algebra is not one of them; gardening may not be but appreciation of nature is) and schoolteachers would cover the algebra and things like that. But as it stands, parents work and kids go to school and so schoolteachers' jobs really should include the cooking, gardening, singing and painting, along with the algebra. And I'm not saying parents don't teach their kids these important things. Just that I don't know of anyone who wouldn't want to spend more time with their kids and less time at work. A perfect world, the perfect catch-all solution.

That wasn't even close to to the original issue. but again, that's the beauty of a journal.