A teacher writes:
“I went to the Thinking in the Deep End blog, as you suggested, and returned to your site resisting the urge to cry. As a recent arrival to the teaching field — as a creative writer/poet and journalist who did so at the ripe age of 48, that is — I am utterly distressed at the test-centric atmosphere of the urban high school where I teach Language Arts. The again, I feel like a giddy young rebel, as I recently decided to guide my students on a creative writing assignment with fewer parameters (read: no detailed rubric abiding strictly by the common core standards) than any of them are used to. It was initially confusing for some — as they are so used to being told which hoops to jump through and when — but ultimately liberating, for student and teacher alike.
“I’ll take the damn disciplinary letter in my file if it need be. I suddenly feel teary eyed once again, thinking of one particular student (a high-functioning student who nonetheless has an IEP) who thanked me for setting his creativity free for the first time, he said, in his schooling. He is a senior in high school, by the way. Though I don’t deserve his praise, he now walks around telling people that I am the best teacher he has ever had. I don’t know if he will become a poet or the next Einstein, but I hope I ripped opened a door to that possibility.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Congraulations to the author, and to you, Diane, for passing this along.
The only way to overcome this oppressive regime is to resist it in whatever way possible.
Bullies and shysters crumble before principled resistance. Fear is contagious, but so is courage.
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Great post. Teachers all over this country are doing the right things for their students despite the oppressive and harmful “reforms”.
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I thought that several years ago the NCTE had come out with a position or paper arguing that rubrics were not appropriate for several reasons. I tried rubrics for several years and found them to be limiting and the products that I received in Social Studies, English and Humanities courses to be less than what I knew the kids could do. It’s a natural human thing to want to please and then focus on doing what is defined in front of you ala a rubric and stop. “Little Boxes” rings in my ears.
I adopted Leonardo DaVinci 7 Principles as a guide and was especially attracted to Sfumato usually translated as “Up in Smoke” meaning to embrace ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty. Great things are produced and discovered when you open the door to possibilities and leave some things undefined. When I did that, there was difficulty adjusting as kids had been trained to give the right answers. My response was there may be none and that I was more interested in originality, creativity and being able to explain and defend one’s thinking. En Garde!
However, once kids realized that they were full partners in their learning and that most anything was possible, they brought me to tears with their work. I have been lucky to work with teams of colleagues that shared this philosophy in public and private settings here in Houston and around the world. We shared a belief also that rich, engaging teaching and learning was the best way to inspire kids and the test scores took care of themselves. All test prep and no play makes Johnnies and Janes dull kids.
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An extraordinarily moving statement from a real teacher. How sad, how appalling it is that one has to risk one’s job in order to do real teaching these days.
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Cicero’s SIx Steps of Effective Argumentation work well in any essay situation.
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