High hopes for ‘my boys’

It’s the first week April when many people begin their gardens in small flats near windows, but my own garden must wait. It’s SBA (Standards Based Assessments) week, when teachers and administrators wait with bated breath to see if the seeds planted in August take root among thousands of young students in grades three through 10.

Every middle school in the district has some form of intervention classes designed with explicit instruction for students with low basic skills. This year, I took on 12 boys during second hour Writing Skills. I specifically requested all boys to see if gender-specific interventions might work better than co-ed interventions. I made sure they all had physical education first hour to match current brain research on the positive effects of exercise and learning. Finally, I knew to bring these boys up to grade level was going to take a lot more than just paper, pencils and fancy lessons, so I brought doughnuts in too — just in case.

In the first place, they didn’t write. During our first quick writes the boys produced on average 45 words in four minutes of writing, and this only after 10 minutes of brainstorming. Their idea of a sentence was using a period. Anywhere. Just some dots here and there would do. And a paragraph? No periods, just lots of words, any words would do, just fill the page. My first week’s lesson plans were recycled by that Tuesday and it was a crash course from then on for both me and “my boys.”

Long story short, this quirky group of a dozen 13-year-old boys agreed to continue in a third quarter Writing Skills with me. They weaseled and cajoled their way into my heart as I watched their skills go from zero to 90 in 17 weeks. By the end of the course, no longer was it enough for them to score proficient on the SBA tests, It became a personal quest that the boys learn enough to never again be in an intervention writing skills class. I owed it to them.

Typically, I don’t stress during the quiet days of SBAs. I maintain if a teacher instructs well, follows the curriculu and pays attention to their tasks, the scores will follow. Typically, that is how I have tried to approach the Big Bad Wolf of testing.

But not this year.

This year I am stressing. This year is about “my boys.”

Their evidence of learning is my profit margin, my bumper crop against all odds.

This year, I am not so proud as not to admit out loud as I approach the first week of April how I hope and pray that I grew my garden well enough for those crazy boys of second hour.

Emily Forstner is a seventh-grade teacher at Wasilla Middle School.