Mr. Teacher

Panic a-TAKS (continued)

by John Pearson

As a result, all of us nose-to-the-grindstone, salt-of-the-earth, other-generic-cliché-fulfilling teachers reap the penalties. Tomorrow, I will be in a fourth-grade classroom while my kids take their test under the watchful eye of another teacher whom they occasionally glimpse in the hall, but do not know well. Does this teacher swap have any effect on their mood or performance? Imagine going to your doctor's office, and seeing your mail carrier walking in to examine you, and you may have some idea.

Another requirement for test day is that everything with print on it must be taken down or covered up. Not just writing relevant to the test. EVERYTHING. I even have to cover up the number line and cursive alphabet on my walls. I guess the district personnel are afraid of the scenario where a child is stumped on a sequence question but then looks up, sees the scripted Q, and suddenly knows the correct answer.

I find it very ironic that the TAKS Administrator Guidebook states that all these things must be removed or covered, but the very next bullet point states that there should be no aspect of the testing room that causes discomfort to the student. They really need to add an asterisk and a footnote that reads, "except for the colored paper on the walls and the unknown stranger walking menacingly around the room."

If you read this today or tomorrow, please say a little prayer for the kids and their success on TAKS. And if you could, throw in a little request for a decent breakfast as well. I shudder to think how well they'll do after feasting on frosted-pancake-sausage-wraps on a stick.

John Pearson is a third-grade math and science teacher in Dallas, Texas.  He has degrees in mechanical engineering from Duke University and Texas A&M, so most consider his math abilities adequate enough to teach nine-year olds.  He is also the author of Learn Me Good (Lulu, 2006), a funny, fictionalized account of his first year in education.  Read more at www.learnmegood.com

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