Learn Me Gooder (23 page)

It occurred to me that the kids might not know that a machine would be scoring their tests. A heartless, soulless machine that won’t care if all of the correct steps were followed to find the answer; only that the correct bubble was filled in neatly and completely.

Skynet’s most ruthless creation wasn’t the killer cyborg Terminators. It was the test-grading machines in Austin, Texas.

Before telling them about this, I asked the kids who THEY thought would be grading their tests. This made for a very interesting give-and-take.
Me: “Who do you think is going to grade your TAKS tests?”
Ava: “The teacher?”
Me: “Nope.”
Mickey: “You?”
Me: “Uh, I AM the teacher, so STILL no.”
Big Jack: “Mrs. Bird?”
Me: “Seriously??”
Tyler: “No, she IS the teacher, so still NO!”
Mia: “You a GOOD teacher!”
Me: “OK, thanks, but let’s get this back to the question.”
DaQuayvius: “The principal?”
Me: “No.”
Temperance: “The President?”

None of the kids knew that it wouldn’t be a person grading their tests, and one actually thought President Barrack Obama would be taking time out of his busy schedule to pick up a red pen and score thousands of TAKS! Forget the mess of our economy, never mind the whole international politics scene – give the guy a key to the 3rd grade math test, and put him to work!

The kids were stunned to discover that a machine would be grading their tests. A few equated “machine” to “robot” and asked if it had a name. I told them it was “Grady McSparksalot.” I can only hope that this translates into neater, cleaner bubbling.

After our discussion, we got back into review mode. This whole week is devoted to reviewing everything we’ve covered so far this year. We began this morning with some quick hits on weight and measurement. Weight is such an abstract concept for the kids. They know that anything heavier than a car should be measured in tons and that anything lighter than a loaf of bread should be measured in ounces. But in between those two benchmarks, there is a vast abyss of confusion.

When I told them that I weigh 200 pounds, there was a class-wide reaction that suggested they thought I was heavier than a whale. In an effort to show that heavy does not necessarily mean morbidly obese, I brought up Shaquille O’Neal, who weighs close to 300 pounds.

Lance only heard the first syllable of the name and looked excitedly around the room as he purred, “Oooooh, Shakira! I LIKE Shakira!!”

I like your thinking, kid, but c’mon, let’s try to focus, OK?

Moving on to capacity, when I asked the kids how many quarts were in a gallon, most of them remembered! More than a few even shouted, “May the quarts be with you!”

YES!!

Knowing that one of my mnemonics had worked, I was emboldened to try another. This time, I had one for symmetry (or cemetery, as my kids say).

First I asked who liked the movie Toy Story. Unsurprisingly, everyone raised their hands (including me). Then I double checked to make sure that they knew who Buzz Lightyear was. They did.

Finally I said, “Now remember that part in the movie where he shouts ‘To the SYMMETRY and beyond!’ And then he hits the little red button on his chest, and his wings pop up, exactly the same on both sides, just like he has a line of symmetry!”

Naturally, the kids’ first reaction was to argue with me – “THAT’S not what he says!!!”

Still, they thought it was pretty funny, and I heard several kids repeat it a few times throughout the class period.

During recess, I asked a couple of the kids to show Mrs. Bird our new way of remembering symmetry, and nearly every one of them proudly shouted, “May the fourths be with you!”

Pass the Tylenol.

I guess I can use this in tomorrow’s review of fractions – ½ of our silly memory devices have been retained!
I’ll talk to you later,
Buzz Slightfear

Listen man, “trying too hard” is a pre-requisite for this job. Have I taught you nothing? Funny, those last five words are what I often find myself muttering to the kids as well.

Given the choice of meeting President Obama or Shakira, you know I would make the same choice as you. And she does NOT weigh 300 pounds. Since you’re up in Boston, you probably won’t meet Shakira, but you might run into Shaq. If you do, be sure to greet him with, “May the fourths be with you!”

Mrs. Forest sent out an email today that included “The Starfish Story,” where this couple sees a guy throwing starfish back into the ocean. The beach is littered with starfish, so the couple remark to the guy that he can’t possibly make a difference because there are so many starfish. The guy then looks at the one currently in his hand and says, “I can make a difference to THIS one!” as he throws it back into the ocean.

Mrs. Forest sent this to us hoping to lift our spirits during this stressful time and to let us know that we CAN make a difference. It inspires me with a desire to throw a few of my students into the ocean.

It’s probably a good thing we don’t live anywhere near the water.

My day had an interesting little wrinkle in it, and I hope it’s something that DID make a difference for my kids. At around 10:30, Mr. Redd stuck his head into my room and knocked lightly on the door. When I looked up from what I was doing, he motioned me over and softly said, “I need to tell you something.”

Of course, as soon as Mr. Redd first disturbed the air molecules in the doorway, the kids had totally lost interest in what they were doing and were staring at him. Throughout the year, we have gone over the visitor procedure many, many times. When a visitor walks into the room, the kids are supposed to completely ignore the visitor and continue doing whatever it was they were already doing. Only if that visitor specifically talks to them are they to pay any attention to that person.

In practice, the complete opposite happens. When somebody walks into the room, the kids all swivel around in their chairs and stare the person down. This happens more often per day than you might think. I have a lot of kids coming and going to and from various tutoring groups throughout the day, and when they leave my class or come back into my class, I never have the full attention of my kids. Same goes for when another teacher walks in to talk to me. It is incredibly aggravating.

Anyway, I walked over to the door to conference with Mr. Redd, who looked much more serious than he usually does. He started with, “Don’t tell anybody this. I probably shouldn’t even be saying anything.”

My eyes darted sideways, and I could see that every child in the room was listening with bated breath, waiting to hear the gossip that Mr. Redd shouldn’t be sharing. You could hear a mechanical pencil lead drop.

Mr. Redd went on, “When you see the words ‘How many more’ in a word problem, it means you’re comparing two things and you’re supposed to subtract.”

I stroked my chin thoughtfully as I fake-pondered the importance of his words and as the two of us did our best not to ruin the moment by laughing. We had come up with this plan a few weeks ago while commiserating with each other at happy hour, er, I mean, at book study one evening.

I do my best to impart pearls of wisdom to the kids every day, but too many of them choose not to listen. Yet, like I said before, when the kids SHOULD be ignoring a visitor and focusing on their work, they instead listen raptly to the conversation with the visitor. Maybe gaining the knowledge through eavesdropping on Mr. Redd will last longer. Who knows? I need to return the favor in HIS class, and I’m thinking about whispering, “Did you know that TAKS really stands for ‘Texas Accentuates Kids’ Suffering?’”

There is still the problem of the complete loss of production any time somebody walks into the classroom, though. I am very tempted to start running visitor drills. Grading the kids on their response or lack of response to people entering the room. Why not? It’s not like we don’t do enough drills at this school.

In fact, the powers that be have for some reason decided to cram all of this month’s required drills into this week. We had a fire drill on Monday and a crisis drill yesterday. That’s a bit much. Especially when you add in all the drills I already make the kids do when I get irritated with them.

“All right, that’s the FOURTH time you’ve told me three plus four equals nine! Drop and give me twenty!”

After school yesterday, Miss Palmerstein told me that she had heard from Ms. Zapata that we were due a tornado drill. That’s one we don’t do very often, where we have to take the kids out into the hallway and have them kneel down in front of the wall.

All day long, I was prepped for the tornado drill. So when it finally came at 2:15, I was the first teacher out the door in the 3rd grade hallway. I already had five or six kids ducking and covering when Mrs. Bird’s class started to pour out from across the hallway. Fortunately, only two more kids had assumed the position before Mrs. Bird pointed out that we were having another fire drill, NOT a tornado drill.

Hey, my kids might have burned, but at least they wouldn’t be harmed by falling debris.

Chalk up my mistake to the stress I’m feeling over the TAKS next Tuesday. My left eyeball is twitching more than a frog’s legs under an applied electric current. Eyeballs are pretty much not supposed to do that. But some of my kids still don’t seem anywhere close to ready.

Today in tutoring, I asked Suzie how many minutes were in one hour. She just stared at me with a blank expression. I asked her to turn her attention to the clock hanging on the wall, and to count by fives all the way around the clock. She counted 5, 10, 15... all the way up to 60. Perfect. Then I asked her again how many minutes were in one hour. She thought about it for a few seconds, and then replied, “One?”

Now, not only is my eyeball in danger, but my forehead has a huge red welt from me pounding it against the wall.

At this point, I have to believe that my kids either have the knowledge or they don’t. Cramming is probably not going to make a difference. Maybe it’s time to start chucking starfish.
Later,
Teddy Ornott

I told you that eavesdropping strategy works wonders! I’m glad you and Winter were able to put it to good use to once and for all end Larry’s weekly demand for Arby’s.

I’ve had a super long week, and it’s only Tuesday! These past two days have been the longest of the year. Either I’ve fallen into my own personal version of Groundhog Day, or it’s TAKS week.

Time to see if I’ve made an impact in any of these kids’ brains. Like I mentioned last time, I reached a point late last week where I just had to accept that if they don’t know it by now, they’re not going to know it for the test. As one of my old college professors used to say, “Time for me to let go of your hand and see if you walk out in front of a truck.”

Ironically, that same professor was himself severely injured when a truck fell on top of him during a Force and Load demonstration gone horribly wrong.

Typically, kids do bring their A-game to the table on test day, and quite often, kids who don’t seem to know their head from a hole in the ground will do well. It’s just that I have a sinking suspicion that several kids in my group this year would need to undergo some sort of “Flowers for Algernon” process in order to pull off a miracle like that.

I did all I could do to motivate and bribe. I told the kids that everyone who did their best would get to have a reward pizza and movie party on Friday. I promised extra blue tickets to everyone who spent time checking their work. I told Antonio that I had plenty more coupons for free meals at the Golden Corral if he put his best effort into it. I thoroughly confused several kids by shouting, “I gotta have more cowbell!”

Grudgingly, I had to comply with the state-mandated directive of covering everything in my room. Anything that contains print or numbers must be covered up. Last Friday, I had to spend about an hour stapling butcher paper to my walls to cover up bulletin boards, the word wall, the number line, and just about everything else that was too big or too high to take down. You know, I can understand the need to remove posters, signs, and boards that contain mathematically-related items, but some of this is just downright silly! I have an alphabet strip running the length of the wall above my whiteboard, and I had to cover up the letters! I’m so sure that a student is going to be immersed in the TAKS, look up at those letters, and in a flash of insight, suddenly comprehend the answer to the question he was stuck on for 20 minutes.

“Thank you, Cursive P! You saved my bacon once again!”

Since they don’t let us monitor our own kids anymore – after all, the word “teachers” CAN be rearranged to spell the word “cheaters” – I was up in Mrs. Jones’ 5th grade classroom while she was in mine. This made for two very long days of doing nothing but walking around the room, keeping the kids quiet and focused on their tests. Oh, and replacing broken and dull pencils. Because as soon as one kid asks for a new pencil, twenty others need one too.

During the test, we’re not allowed to say anything to the kids that could be construed as help or hints. We are trained to respond to any requests for help with one universal mantra.
Student: “How do you say this word?”
Teacher: “Just do your best.”
Student: “I don’t understand this question.”
Teacher: “Just do your best.”
Student: “I fell out of my chair and landed on my pencil, and now I’m bleeding profusely from the ear!”
Teacher: “Just do your best.”

It’s pretty easy for the first two hours or so, when the kids are still answering the questions. It’s when they finish the last question that the squirrelly behavior starts to come out.

They all know that they’re supposed to go back and check their work and find mistakes. Most of them have been told that it would not be the best decision to even think about turning their test in before lunch. So as a compromise, most of them will spend hours pretending to check their work. This can be amusing to the observing teacher for a few seconds, but it gets old quickly when the child keeps looking back every few seconds to see if you’re noticing that they are checking.