Beat

There is no enthusiasm, excitement, or happiness left in the school year.  We teachers are trying to muster up all the energy we have, get our kids into each new assignment or project.  It is near impossible.  We are beat, they are beat.  The sculpture teacher and I have been talking about this a lot.  Her kids are normally super psyched for the current assignment.  I sit in on second period.  They are blah.  They are merely going through the motions.  They are doing an excellent job - the effort has not wavered.  the eavesdropping on the planning discussions is still interesting.  However, there is a lack of enthusiasm.  They are normally bouncing off the walls with excitement for this assignment.  Not this year.  And through absolutely no fault of the teacher.  My student teacher has introduced a couple of new assignments that I had been contemplating for this year:  Surrealism for Photo I and Artwork recreations in Photo II.  This is the stuff the kids salivate for other years.  This is something that appeals to their tastes and age group.  Not this year.  Oh, the lack of excitement.

Is it our fault?  Hell no!  I see a few kids on my route to signing out every day (can I please get some recognition for being the ONLY one who does this every day? PLEASE?) and we have some little chit chats.  Tuesday, I saw this group of three.  The boy looked tired.  I said hello and asked how they were.  He said they were worn out.  From what?  All the testing was his answer.  Bravo legislators.  Bravo private companies pushing their testing and text book products on us.  You are killing the magic and the spirit of education.  It is a struggle to keep many of our kids engaged anyway given the outside life factors faced every day.  Now you throw all this testing into the mix and the result is a quick death.  Not slow.  We teachers saw this coming, so in our minds it might be slow.  But to the kids, it is a rapid change and thus a very quick death.  To see some of my more challenging kids start to like coming to school for my class, choose not to drop out because there are a couple of us who have kept them engaged and convinced them they can succeed at a little something.... And to force them to sit at a computer and spit out answers to inane questions that are not pedagogically, age, or grade appropriate.  Well, bravo.  You have shot these kids down in a matter of a few months.  It might not be a visible violence, but it is a violence of spirit.  And we teachers are still going to keep trying to keep the kids going until June, but it will be hard.  Really hard.

What did I tell that kid on Tuesday?  I told him to go to meetings.  I don't know that most Boards of Education know that this is going on.  How would they?  There is not normally a dialogue between students and board members.  Go to our governor's town hall meetings.  And do not back down when he tries to berate you.  Write to your legislators.  Let them know the ramifications of their decisions.  Who are they beholden to?  You or Pearson?  My last words to the kids is always this:  You have a voice.  Use it.  All of you need to use your voices and speak up.  He nodded.  They always nod.  I hope they get it.  Soon.