The story you're about to read is real. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Benchmarks are upon us.
For those of you not in the teaching or education sphere, a benchmark is a test we give kids before the state exams that is as much like the state exams as possible so we can judge how well kids are going to do on the state exams. It's a very important assessment tool, and is extremely helpful in determining what we need to cram into our kids' brains in the two months we have left before the Big Test.
Because I'm a special education teacher, and I'm always in a classroom with another teacher, I ALWAYS get pulled to give tests like these. Also, because I'm a special education teacher, I usually end up administering the test to students who need it read aloud to them. Before all of you who are not special education teachers freak out, telling me high schoolers should be able to read, let me assure you that this is perfectly legit. All the tests except reading comprehension can be read aloud to students with documented learning disabilities related to reading, like dyslexia. My kids CAN read. But when their reading is poor through no fault of their own, we don't want that to affect their scores in math or biology. We read it to them to prevent exactly that. So chill.
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Just chill. I got this. |
So it's a lovely Wednesday morning. I'm testing sophomores today, and I arrive at 7:45 as usual. I put my lunch in the teacher's lounge, lock my purse up in my classroom's filing cabinet, buy a cookie from the cafeteria, and check out my tests. Yes, I eat cookies for breakfast. Don't judge. My kids file in, moaning and groaning about the test they are about to take. I counter their whining with obnoxiously over-cheerfulness on purpose, and we get down to work.
The kids have 4 hours to complete the test. They usually are done in about two hours. I'm walking around, reading questions to anyone who raises their hand and asks, and I have to tell a student we'll call Adam to wake up. He rouses, and gets back to work. I make a circuit of the classroom and have to wake Adam again. And again. And again. I wake Adam 12 times in the first hour. At this point, another teacher comes in to relieve me, because I have second hour conference. I wander off down the hall to a disused classroom to file paperwork and call parents and design a lesson for 7th period.
2nd hour is about to end, and I prepare to return to my test takers. As I walk down the hall, I see another student from my group, Eddie, exiting the boys washroom, giggling. Now that's always suspicious, so I go ask him what's up. He tells me that Adam is asleep, in a stall, in the restroom. Now this is a first for me. Eddie tells me no one else is in the washroom, so I open the door wide (I can't see in) and holler "Adam, wake up!" as Eddie laughs his head off beside me. I am reward with some incoherent mumbling, and direct Eddie back to class, leaving Adam to finish whatever business he fell asleep in the middle of. I swear folks, I couldn't make this up if I tried.
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I swear it's true. |
I get back to my classroom and the teacher I'm tag teaming with informs me that Adam has been in the restroom for 45 minutes, but when she called the office, she was informed that he had some kind of doctors note indicating that he might need long restroom breaks and to let him be. I don't think anyone expected him to fall asleep in there.
My students had all begun to write the essay portion of their exam at that point, so I had time to contemplate whether if we had been taking this exam by computer, the artificial light would have helped Adam stay awake. About this point in time he returns to the classroom, and stays awake and actively working on his test for almost a whole hour.
Now most of my students have finished. I have been instructed to let them play on their phones when they finish, so they'll stay quiet. You may or may not agree with this particular tactic. All I'll say is that it is effective. John and Ashley are brother and sister. They're both finished, they're both on their phones. John clicks his tongue, and looks at Ashley who is smiling slyly at him. A second later he looks at her and hisses "Stop!" I give him my evil eye, and they both fall silent. Now it's Ashley who is giving silent signals of frustration to her brother. I look over at him and catch him hitting two buttons in rapid succession, over and over, as he grins at her evilly.
They had been texting each other. Sending the same random one letter message over and over and over so that the other's phone had a rapid fire alert going constantly, and I'm assuming, preventing them from being able to play flappy bird. I suppose this was the high tech equivalent of putting your finger an inch from your sibling's face and saying "I'm not touching you!" over and over. I really hope they have unlimited texts.
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Must've looked something like this. |
Third hour passes. Some of my students that are finished are allowed to leave for lunch, because their next class has a teacher that isn't testing. Some have to stay with me. Adam is still testing. He falls asleep, and I wake him. Again. James is lying on the futon. (I've no idea why there is a futon in my classroom. It was there when I moved in. Sometimes teachers who stay late grading papers come and take naps on it.) Whatever media site James is on has a video with sound. It pops up. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as Adam, begin the only one still testing, has fallen asleep, and the noise wakes him. James apologizes, and shuts off his sound. Now, I have several options at this point. I could chew him out. I could chew him out and take up his phone. I could ignore it. Instead, I walk over to my cabinet, grab one of the three pairs of dollar store headphones I keep there, and toss them over to James, who then switches to Netflix and silently watches some cartoon for the rest of the testing period.
When fourth hour ends and Adam still isn't finished testing, we all go to lunch. He has about half an hour left to test, but we all need a break. The rest of the school is finished testing, so all my kids go back to their regular classes. After lunch, Adam and I return to my class, and for half an hour he furiously attempts to finish an essay and two short answer questions. I've given this test at least 20 times in my career, and I've never had to tell a kid they were out of time, until this day. I suppose if he hadn't spent two and a half of his four hours asleep, he would have finished on time. The rest of fifth hour is consumed by checking test materials back in, and filing paperwork.
6th hour is academic support. This is a math class for freshman. It's designed as a supplement to Algebra 1. Students who either didn't pass math during 8th grade or didn't pass the 8th grade state assessment for math land in this class. It's our job to figure out what they didn't learn in math last year, teach it to them, and make sure they pass Algebra 1.
An aside - before you go all kamikaze on me about social promotion and how it's evil, let me explain. Social promotion is a misnomer. We don't promote kids so that they can be with their same age peers. We promote kids because until they get to high school, each grade is one complete chunk of 4 core classes. In 8th grade, if you flunk math, but pass everything else, if we hold you back, you have to take 6 courses that you already passed, and one you failed. Which means you are bored. And bored kids are bad for the classroom. They get into trouble. So we promote you, and it's up to the next year's teacher to catch them up in whatever subject they failed. Kids have to flunk at least 2 core classes for schools to consider holding them back, and for good reason. How would you like it if you worked hard all year, and were successful 6/7ths of the time, but at the end of the year, you were told that because you were unsuccessful 1/7th of the time, you had to do all 7/7ths of the work over again? Not cool bro.
So that's what academic support is. That being said, we had been riding those kids hard and putting them up wet all week. They had taken a biology benchmark, and English 1 benchmark, and an Algebra 1 benchmark. So we graded one paper, and then we watched
Donald in Mathemagic Land on youtube. They mocked it, sure. But that means they were paying attention. And on Monday, when I pull out a bunch of notes for them to copy on quadratic functions, they'll remember that I was nice to them and let them watch a dumb (math related) cartoon after they took all those annoying benchmarks.
Or else.
7th hour, our last hour, and we're back to sophomores. Geometry. These kids had just sat for their English 1 benchmarks, and weren't about to do anything too brain intensive. Plus, first through fourth hour hadn't even met, and this class was ahead of everyone else. So we did a really cool activity for review. I used the smart board to project a Khan's academy activity involving
measuring angles, and let the kids go up one at a time and manipulate the digital protractor via the touch screen. I know that kids should come to 10th grade knowing how to use a protractor, but you would be shocked at how many of them are missing basic skills. So days like these we use to go back and review. After everyone had had a turn we moved on to
angle pairs, and once we'd done that the day was over and we were all free to go home.
So you may think I didn't do much teaching on this day, because we were testing. But I wouldn't be too sure about that. I taught Adam that there are consequences for not getting enough sleep the night before a test. I taught James that it's ok to use your gadgets in public, but it's not ok to disturb others with them. I also taught him that I'm not going to overreact to a small mistake like accidentally clicking on a video, and I really am on his side. I taught my 6th period class that I do really know that they've been through a lot this week, and also hopefully something about Pythagoras and the golden ratio. I taught my 7th period co-teacher how to use Khan's academy. I taught my 7th period class how to use a protractor. And I even learned something. John and Ashley taught me how to annoy someone silently from across the room.
All in a day's work.