The Monster in the Room

I wasn't tired when I drove home from work today. I wasn't exhausted, my feet didn't ache, my back didn't hurt, my voice wasn't hoarse. For the first time ever, I wasn't tired after work today and it was the worst I've felt all year.

On all those evenings in the past that I drove home angry, sad, frustrated, or just beat, I felt something else, too. Accomplishment. Meaning. Purpose. Even in the moments that I felt the weakest during the rough fall months and on the days where I felt that I was trying to do the impossible, I drew strength from the knowledge that somehow despite all the obstacles I was doing what I came here to do. I was teaching and making a difference, however small it might be. Yes, the victories were small at first, and usually very far between, but they were victories nonetheless and my students were learning.

Today was different, though. Today I did not teach. Today my students did not learn. Today my students took a test, a test I did not want to give, a test they did not want to take. Tomorrow they will take a test again. My school, like many others, is stuck in the midst of a cycle of testing, being pulled into the sticky web by higher-ups at the district who are in turn being pulled by the magnetic force of state-imposed accountability measures, all a side effect of a culture nationwide that emphasizes testing over teaching. It's a culture that is eating away at students and teachers alike, that tells us that "success" is standardized for students, for schools, for states.

Though our intentions may have been to leave no child behind during this race to the top, the train seems to have hopped the tracks. We have somehow confused learning with education. My students tell me that they come to school to get an education so they can get a diploma and go to college to get a job to be "successful." I want to ask them when they stopped coming to school to learn and discover and grow. Was it second grade? Seventh grade? Tenth grade? I wonder when school started feeling less like an adventure to them and more like a series of arbitrary hoops (read: tests) to jump through on the way to a shiny piece of paper. I wonder when it started feeling that way for me. Who exactly did I let convince me that the measure of my intelligence, of my value, was the number at the top of OGT, SAT, ACT, [insert acronym here] score report? Am I becoming that person to my students?

When I have nothing to do but walk up and down the rows of desks and look at their tired faces as they struggle through the fourth two-hour district test in a day, it's hard not to think about this bigger picture, about the state of education learning not just in my classroom, but in the country at large. While day to day I my mind may be occupied with the minutiae of sharpening pencils and grading exit tickets and calling parents, on days like today the big picture crystallizes a little bit and a harsh truth comes into focus. As I fuss at students about not talking during the test, about putting in their best effort, even about always guessing C when they don't know the answer, I am forced to confront a frightening reality and ask myself a hard question: In my fight to create a more equitable system for my students, have I somehow become just another cog within the very machine I sought to destroy?