Real magic watching kids learn

At the end of Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” Edgar utters these lines: “The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

I ought to say that I believe in life-long learning. I believe that as a society we use high testing scores to qualify and quantify far too often, and the value of a number on a paper has become far more important than creativity and excited thinking. I believe that if we don’t pay attention we will miss our chance at building innovative learners and instead build a generation of multiple-choice thinkers who are unable to think outside the circle they fill in. In the midst of high-stakes testing that is mandated, multiple, repetitive and exhausting, students and teachers are being drained of their love of learning. Learning is being interrupted and our school system is virtually ensuring mediocrity. It’s time we thought about what we really want for our future and what we really want for our kids. It’s time we thought about growing learners instead of multiple-choice thinkers.

School systems and teachers across the state of Alaska know that results of high-stakes testing determine funding, factor into evaluations and are often used as a tool to determine the effectiveness of individual teachers. What harm comes from this? District officials, administrators and teachers should be held accountable for their students’ learning, for their growth and, along with parents, for their academic success. The harm comes from the advancement and value of a learning environment that promotes multiple-choice thinking and continually interrupts authentic and deep learning experiences with more and more testing.

Of course, testing has its place in our education system. As teachers, we want to know if we are doing our jobs. We want to know our weaknesses and our strengths. We want to see our students succeed and know they are learning what they need to learn. Parents and students want to know they are able to perform with their peers, and districts need some way of quantifying results for their populations. But I want to know more than that. I want to know my students question the world around them, and I want to believe they wonder and that they marvel outside of my classroom. I want to know they ask questions have very little to do with which is the “most correct” answer, but have everything to do with actually living the answer.

Recently, I found myself sitting next to a stranger in a local business waiting room. We struck up a conversation, and during that conversation he told me about his job, working in the field for an oil company, and I shared that I am a classroom teacher. He told me he was always happy to meet teachers because he could reinforce his belief that kids need to be deep, creative thinkers. He told me that companies are no longer looking for workers who have loads of letters behind their names touting their credentials; instead, they are looking for people who can think outside the box and come up with innovations, ideas and solutions. I talked with him a little longer and when we parted ways my wheels started turning. Are we, as a society, a district, a school, nurturing innovators? Or are we encouraging multiple-choice thinkers?

I am a teacher. I am a lifelong learner. I love the questions. I love the mistakes, the learning, the wonder and the fear that is conquered every time I try something new, and even when I fail. If I could step off my soapbox for a few minutes and sit down to coffee with you, I would tell you about my worry over a false pursuit, and an idea of success that is as shallow as filling in a bubble. I would tell you we need to design tests that truly value writing and critical thinking and that those tests need to aim for creating big thinkers, not small thinkers. I would tell you that wondering, questioning and the building of lifelong learning in many of our classrooms will not happen until state, local and school assessments demand, encourage and believe this kind of teaching and learning is crucial. And I would tell you that our teachers must be allowed the time it takes to teach.

I know so many excellent teachers. I know they follow their curriculum guides and attend meetings, seminars and classes. I know that like me, their highest priority is to design lessons that enable their students to think and to give them the skills they need to live productive lives. I know most of them feel the same way I do. I also know that some of us are scared to death at the thought of losing the child who wonders; the one who brings in birds’ nests or the one who stops reading to ask the meanings of words; even the one who stares out the window and tells you the trees sway to a rhythm.

Some of us, this teacher included, are afraid of losing the wonder and power of watching a lifelong learner grow right in front of our eyes because right now we have to line up and go take another test or set a timer and read as quickly as we can for one minute. Some of us just miss the time to teach.

Vanessa Powell is a National Board-certified fifth-grade teacher at Snowshoe Elementary School. Her Chalk Talk column appears every five weeks.