Let's think of test prep and time spent on testing as a single color on your teaching palette--the palette from which you paint the learning that you deem most important, urgent, and satisfying to your students. What color would it be? Does it seem synthetic and lead-laden or made of kind, organic materials? When you dip into it, it is easy to control, or does it bewitch your teaching powers and cause you to create an adumbration of the analogous colors with which you have so carefully painted all year long?
Alternatively, think of it as part of your metaphorical teaching palate. Does the taste linger long after you've taken a bite? If the bitter taste must surely warn of its toxicity, shouldn't you only ingest it in careful increments, lest you develop a taste for it, desensitizing your ability to discern its acridity? As we age, our taste buds do lose their sensitivity, and this is why foods that we once found repulsive suddenly taste "better" to us. Can this happen with teaching practices, too?
The receptors from our taste buds to our brains can actually wear out over time! Can this figuratively happen with our teaching choices/tastes, as well? Can we diminish our receptors that once recognized the most delicious teaching practices to the point that we are willing to ingest and distribute something caustic in nature because we believe it is "good for us?" Or is it more like a salt dispenser without a lid to control its flow, pouring relentlessly onto wounded teachers causing them to cry out in anguish (all while raising their blood pressure)?
"The job of an artist is to take mundane forms of reality...and make those forms irresistible to the human brain (Psychology Today, 2009). Can teachers do this with test prep? Can we do it in our everyday teaching?
"We need to initiate and actively participate in discussions of what else we could be doing with our teaching, so that our voices will be the lead voices in these conversations." (Calkins, 1998)
In 1998, Calkins accurately predicted, "...it is inevitable that scores will go down--people will descend on us from all sides, pushing their instant solutions for improving test scores. With tremendous assurance, people will point out why our methods have led to the demise of standards, and they will present their prescriptions: 'Buy this program.' 'Follow this teacher's manual.' "Use these materials.' " We have seen this in our state, particularly from politicians who have even made laws to that effect.
So whether you think of your instructional decisions/lessons as your artist's palette or as a table from which to sample a world of flavors, realize that teachers must value our own critique of our teaching paintings or plates... we each have "...a special responsibility for looking critically at our own methods." (Calkins, 1998)
Goodness knows we are first in the line of fire for all of the other critics who deem themselves experts by virtue of having once attended school themselves... or knowing all about art because they once had a box of crayons... or being a gourmet chef because they once spread peanut butter on a Ritz cracker... so we need to know our research and be able to explain our teaching. Otherwise, "others end up doing this for us, diagnosing what they think is wrong with our teaching and prescribing their solutions.
So...
How do you choose what to leave in, what to leave out (or your painting or on your plate) when standards are abundant, students are increasingly diverse, and time feels like it's shrinking?
Does crunching mean tossing aside what we know about pedagogy and best practices?
Where is the line between mindfully doing what we know is right for students in the long run and doing what we think/hope will help students be "successful" (as defined by standardized tests) in the short run?
The reality is that calling standardized tests "high stakes" is almost a euphemism these days. In my state, even if students pass, schools can still be deemed ineffective if every student doesn't grow "enough."
Never mind that the tests are norm-referenced--which means that "the goal is to make it impossible for everyone to pass. And the criteria for doing well on norm-referenced tests are usually kept secret for 'security purposes...' Of course, any one individual or any one local community can work hard and come out ahead of the...norms. However, if too many communities succeed in doing this... the test will be redesigned with more difficult questions or it will be re-normed so that, regardless of how proficient students might become, half of them will still fall below the midpoint." (Calkins, 1998 from Cannell, 1987, 1989).
While students will surely have had to make at least a year's growth in order to pass from year-to-year, this still cannot satisfy politicians intent on marauding public education. These scores are then translated into "growth model data" to determine which students might not be growing "enough" (regardless of passing the test). School "grades" are also issued (via an indecipherable formula known only to Jimmy Hoffa). All of these are used as leverage on teachers' evaluations; ultimately, our salaries or even our jobs (indeed, our very livelihood) can depend on test scores.
So what is a teacher to do?
As a coach, what is a rational way to assist teachers when they are living the dichotomy of choosing between "good teaching" and "doing things" that build better test takers? (Being good at taking tests really does require a separate, fairly complex set of skills above and beyond the curriculum, not to mention nerves of steel.)
Philosophically, I believe that if we consistently deliver spiraled instruction via best practices beginning in kindergarten, our students will have every possible advantage for achieving academically as well as becoming prepared to be thoughtful, caring citizens capable of critical thinking in a complex world. As Lucy Calkins stated in her book, A Teacher's Guide to Standardized Reading Tests: Knowledge Is Power (1998, p. 21),"I have come to realize, however, that the fact that some people want a standardized measure of children's abilities as readers doesn't mean that we must turn reading into something that is not reading." (Isn't this also true for writing?)
So what drives our instructional decisions, particularly during the crunch times?
To develop a more sensitive palate while eating, experts tell us to s-l-o-w down. Doesn't that make sense in teaching as well? Does a hurrying a child (or teacher) actually create success or widen the gap? Perhaps time is better used by allowing moments to focus and breathe--time for the mind to process--and actually experience the pleasure of learning.
Don't allow standardized test prep to become that quick-fix pill that you take that results in not being able to taste your food, decreasing the regeneration of taste buds to the point that you lose the ability to discern between excellence and the downright bad. When a patient experiences this, you are supposed to talk to your doctor about changing medications or lowering your dosage. Could you, theoretically, change your approach to test prep or at least lower your dosage so that you can still perceive the sweet, bold, savory flavors of best practices?
Do you just need to cleanse your palate between test prep and "regular" teaching, allowing for more of the latter? Can test prep be a thoughtful, daily consideration (like a garnish) to ensure that the presentation is just right? If test prep were used as a garnish and not as a meal or steady diet, perhaps its aftertaste would not be so bitter or linger for so long.
Did you know that eating the same foods over and over actually diminishes your ability to distinguish taste? Sometimes, you have to step out of your comfort zone in order to discover something that you didn't even know you liked!
Test prep can result in decontextualizing sills, Tmuch like snacking all day long while still eating three seven-course meals.
Perhaps the same holds true in teaching; by changing even one of the "bad" practices that you may have felt you "had" to enact, you can begin to reeducate your teaching palate, allowing time to breathe, focus, and enliven your teaching "tastes" for best practices--thereby energizing students' love of learning (and your love of teaching).
Or, in the fine art of teaching, you might just create a true work of art that creates a new image of what education can look like in the 21st century--a blend of images, from hands-on work to digital, from working in teams to independently, from test prep to projects. The key is the arrangement, the blend.
Carefully choose the sustenance that you provide for learners, the colors with which you paint, and the arrangement and blending of your practices.
Only then will test prep take its proper place, allowing your students pleasure in sampling the best you have to offer as a teacher-artist--or gourmet chef, reveling in the beauty of the landscape of melodious learning that you have created.
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