In my own time

My husband says I have to blog before I do any school work because I have not done so.  Here goes.

Yesterday, I  was browsing through my Twitter feeds and there was a post "Retweet if you think the Browns will beat the Ravens and be  2-1."  I retweeted.  Twenty minutes later, my husband, while browsing at his Twitter feeds questioned, "So,  you think the Browns will win?" (yeah! he follows me!)  I responded "Yes" and after some thought,  I stated, "I always believe they will win!"  In fact, as a Cleveland fan, I also always believe the Indians will win.  And if I were a basketball fan, I would believe the Cavs would win. ("King" or no king).  In the big picture, in their own time, they all will win.

The test of winning, is  practice and going the distance. Stretching your  skills and talents to their maximum.  When you are passionate about something, this all comes together and you conquer whatever it is that  you desire to do.  It may not be pretty but it can get better once you are there.  But it has to be something that you really want.

This week I had this talk with one of the Algebra classes I  co-teach.  I think the hardest thing about teaching is to get the students engaged in things that seem irrelevant.  We were talking about homework, which is practice of a skill.  I spoke to the class about Malcolm Gladwell's 10,0000 hours of practice. (Outliers) The idea that anyone who is good at something did not get that way without practice.  They may have had a  penchant for that thing but they put their all in all into it.   The other part of the practice is having someone there to  see it, analyze it, and  help you improve it.  That is the job of a teacher.  The part in the middle, is the part that, in my opinion, the critics of education fail to see.  Our school culture has become so focused on the "test".  Did students pass the test?

I work with a population of students who struggle to pass the test.  They have a disability that impairs their ability to  learn  in the same way that their peers do.  I take pride in the fact that most of these students pass the tests by the time they graduate but it is  "in their own time".  The frenzy of increased testing  that will be starting this year, and the increased graduation requirements take away that "in my own time" for students who struggle.  Does everyone have to be master of everything?

This "master of everything" also  takes away passion.  If there is somehting that I am passionate about that is outside of the  testing world, I probably lose out on that passion in order to be remediated to pass the test. How devalued I would feel.

I know the Indians and Browns will win, in their time.  I know my students will master skills, in their time. Our testing frenzy becomes a devaluing of the human spirit.