AUSSIE

Blog entry posted February 1st, 2010 by Dale Worsley

Two blog posts ago I laid out a short-term plan. I said I would contend with the dragon of standardized testing, brandishing a story and three items of research in my attack. I lied. I am going to wield three items of research and two stories, one just off the press.

First, the third item of research. (See the first two in previous blogs.) Don’t yawn. It’s research I’ve used to take down the monster dozens of times. The beast often comes in the form of an argument used by teachers, and always runs along these lines: “Well I can’t really teach creatively because of that gosh-durned standardized test the Darth Vaders of the system have saddled me with.” While I have little truck with the logic, I sympathize with the teachers who use it. So much rests on those tests: careers, the survival of schools, real estate values, votes. It’s only natural. The flaw in the argument is that students actually score higher when you teach creatively, as long as you embed the knowledge and skills tested. If you’re a sixties survivor like me, you might say, “…as long as you ‘co-opt’ the test.” (How long has it been since you’ve heard that word?)

The research was conducted by Judith Langer and her colleagues back in the day (2000) at the National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement.  (The project report can be found at http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/langer/langerbeating12014.pdf.) In trying to ferret out how some schools and/or classrooms beat the socio-economic odds, often with dramatic numbers, they came up with six factors:

1. Students learn skills and knowledge in multiple lesson types;
2. Teachers integrate test preparation into instruction;
3. Teachers make connections across instruction, curriculum and life;
4. Students learn strategies for ways to do the work;
5. Students are expected to be creative thinkers; and
6. Classrooms foster cognitive collaboration.

I’ve seen worse definitions of creative teaching.

Let’s back up to number two and break it down. Just what does it mean to integrate test preparation into instruction? Well, it means “analyzing the demands of the test, identifying connections to the standards and goals, designing and aligning curriculum to meet the demands of the test…” I’m falling asleep here. Please visit the report for the rest. What it doesn’t mean is “short term test preparation, test preparation that focuses on how to take the test, and separate rather than integrated test preparation experiences.”

I didn’t say it. Judith Langer did.

Not that kids can’t be made “test sophisticated” so they know the temperature of the dragon’s breath when they hook up their fire hoses. Or that you can’t study the test as a cultural form, or genre. I’ve seen seventh grade classes spring to life when students tried to trick each other with multiple choice questions that they created on the content. Devilish little sons of guns.

And (this is the promised story) if you’d walked into Despina Koumis’ class last week at the High School for Arts & Business, in Queens, New York, you might have been surprised that the five groups working so hard to write collaborative paragraphs and link them to the other paragraphs, puzzling out the structure of their sentences, playfully juggling their vocabulary, trotting out their understanding of literary elements, etc., were working on a (gasp) “critical lens essay” to get ready for the English Regents. They were having a good time!

Yes, I know they were sidling dangerously close to oppressive colonialist literacies and schematic designs, but it felt like they were gaining, not losing, power, to me. Just a gut feeling. Moving on to the classroom of another teacher, I modeled how to emulate Samuel Beckett’s dialogue and the kids had a blast in there, too. I might get smacked for this by intelligent people, but I couldn’t see the difference, though the difference was vast between either of these classes and the kill-and-drill test prep I’ve seen suffocate students in other situations.

It’s taken me days of sweat, but I finally figured out what put a Nobel Prize winning, paradigm changing, colossus of literature on the same plane with the authors of the dull demands of a statewide test. It wasn’t the quality of the texts. Both were equally strange to these kids. It was the students’ response. Given the opportunity and the structure, they got their creative neurons dancing to the music of each other’s voices.

The “critical lens” (I can hear Estragon lancing Vladimir with his accusation: “Crritic!”) in Despina’s room ran along the lines of, “You have to deal with what life throws at you.” It was a quote from The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I don’t remember the quote exactly, because I couldn’t find a working machine to copy my notes, and I left my originals with the teacher. Besides the need to have working copiers in all schools worldwide, my take-away is this: If life, as a dragon who has swapped its scales for a baseball costume, throws you a standardized test, take a swing. If it throws you some lines by Beckett, take another swing. See if you can connect. Learning is all about connections, isn’t it?

BTW, I’m still hung up on the Zeigarnik effect and am wanting to demonstrate its truth as illustrated by Sancho Panza trying to memorize a love letter by Don Quixote of La Mancha to Dulcinea of Toboso. Maybe next blog post. And remind me to pass along what Leonardo DaVinci has to say about connections in his “Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind.” I also have a book recommendation. (Don’t worry, Gina, I’m winding it up….)

Meanwhile, pick up the bat. As long as you’re on the field, you might as well hit the ball back, bean a few dragons and enjoy the game.