I’ve thought a lot about what Rhina said on Thursday…what if an outside observer, new to our educational settings observed my classroom.  What would they think was happening and what are my students actually learning?  How do I help my students construct meaning from specialized lesson plans in various content areas?  This year as I began teaching second grade and familiarizing myself with all the standards, I became somewhat overwhelmed with all there was to teach and master.  An administrator’s blanket response was to “integrate” the curriculum.  Sounds good in theory except when you get to the point in the year when you are being asked to teach about the Solar System and Native Americans at the same time!  There were some loose connections to be made in terms of constellations and the Native Americans use of the sun and moon but to most second graders (and outside observers) the two subjects did not integrate well. 

If I look at my basic values and belief that it is my responsibility to prepare my students to be successful, productive members of society, then my students’ knowledge of basic skills and the ability to read and write fluently should be priorities in my curriculum.  That is a truth in second grade.  Everything that I do revolves around those requisite skills.  Along the way, I am also teaching my students to be problem solvers, to ask critical questions, and to analyze information.  Hopefully they are also learning about kindness, respect, and friendship…qualities that will not help them achieve a perfect score on the CRCT, or earn me the status of Master Teacher, but will better enable them to be successful, contributing, HAPPY, members of society! 

“Good teachers will always find ways of using their professional knowledge on behalf of their pupils.”  Great in theory, but not enough these days if you want to be a teacher.  Schools are driven by data and test scores.  Everyone needs to be accountable.  There is a lot of truth and merit to that idea, but at what cost.  I spent most of last week in a panic because I was scheduled to attend an SST meeting for one of my students.  Given all the new information and guidelines that we received about RTI, I was deathly afraid that my possible lack of documentation would result in my student not receiving the extra help that he needs!  I’ve been teaching for almost 15 years and yet I felt completely inadequate and down-right nervous about attending that meeting!  Imagine a new teacher, still trying to figure out the system or teachers, like those on my team who refuse to do all of the paperwork and will just pass along a struggling student and let next year’s teacher “deal with it”.  What happened to respecting my professional opinion, experiences, and work samples to show that this student needs more help?  The response:  use a direct instruction reading program that is currently being utilized in the resource room with identified special needs students.  I need to document more data for the next six weeks.  If it works, doesn’t this justify the need for additional services?  Yet, the answer will be that he has responded to “intervention” and keep up the good work! 

I will continue to do what is necessary to ensure that all students in my room succeed.  My professional knowledge and experiences are my guiding forces, not the results of a one minute DIBELS reading test or a week-long, completely developmentally inappropriate CRCT test.  I am all for accountability, but at what cost?