The Joyless Pursuit of Excellence

Last Friday as I watched one of my favorite weekly shows (Greater Boston's Beat the Press segment), I heard panelist Margery Eagan describe the atmosphere at the Boston Globe as the "joyless pursuit of excellence". In our local newspaper world, there is no doubt that the Globe is a superb paper and even when I don't agree with their editorial positions, the articles are well-written and in-depth.What I didn't know until Eagan's comment, was this phrase is commonly associated as the motto of (former) editor Marty Baron.The more I considered this phrase, the more powerfully I was struck by its connection to the educational environment today. So often educators - and administrators - talk about the stress of preparing students for assessments, or adhering to standards of achievement. I  don't know anyone really who isn't committed to their students and to helping those children learn, yet we are all always feeling as if what we do does not measure up.Even the joy of seeing a student who is (finally) "getting it" becomes overshadowed by the fear that it wasn't on the time schedule thought up by some faceless bureaucrat in a faraway place well-insulated from actual children.Certainly we all want to be excellent educators, and more to the point, we want our students to be excellent too. But as to joy? Those moments seem elusive.I don't have a solution except to become more cognizant that, along with the stress, we all need a lot more joy. I need to make my journey a more joy-filled pursuit of excellence.

Madness of Another Kind....

There are no brackets. There are only anxious and tense teachers and students. Stressed to the maximum. And the cracks are starting to show.We are in the middle of our test marathons. Last week it was MEPA - Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessent, given to 15 out of my 22 children to assess their growth in English. This week - today actually - we start the Reading MCAS. Fifteen out of my 22 students will have endured two high-stakes and grueling tests within the space of 2 weeks.Walls are covered or stripped of anything that could remotely be thought of as a study aide. Last year I had to rip desk tags from tops of desks because the tags had the audacity to show the cursive alphabet. I've covered birthday charts, removed math words, and even turned the labeled genre baskets in our classroom library around. No cheating.This year we have a new feature to testing that will not prove anything except that 9 year olds are not adept at checking their test booklets. We teachers have always been sworn to not look at the questions/test materials on the MCAS - please explain how I proctor students to ensure they do not go on to another section of the test that is off-limits when I can't look at the test <sigh>.Students - those very same 9 year olds - must check their own test booklets to ensure they haven't forgotten to fill in a bubble answer. This is new and worrisome. If you've ever met a 9 year old, you know they are not usually meticulous about details. If they turn 2 pages of a test booklet at a time and skip 6 answers, for them, that is an "oops" moment. And it is frequent. It is making me very tense because my students need every answer they can muster and to punish them for normal kid-stuff seems mean. And maybe meant to up the ante in proving teachers don't know what they are doing.I feel like there is so much more my kids could know of third grade curriculum before being tested. And there is, of course. It is mid-March; school does not end for 90 days - one-quarter of a school year later. What could possibly be the motive for testing children on end-of-year skills 3/4 of the way through their learning cycle? Seriously?The cracks are showing. Kids are acting out. Teachers are not smiling. No one is happy.Welcome to March Madness - public school style.