Anna Jacopetti recently retired after a career in education of 50 years. She taught every grade from 1-14, she was an administrator, and she taught teachers. In this article, she shows the contrast between today’s emphasis on high-stakes testing and deep learning.
She reflects on a different approach to education, one that is definitely discouraged now by federal policy. What is in favor now is data-driven decision-making, scripted lessons, and Common Core-aligned readings.
She writes:
I found a job teaching reading in a school that still encouraged teacher initiative. I chose to use the Junior Great Books, a series that employs rich and varied language to tell age appropriate stories. Second Grade children are word sponges, full of curiosity and pleasure as they gain understanding of the world around them through expanding vocabularies This is not a rote learning process. These children enjoyed the fairy tales and legends that they could vividly imagine through the rich language, but they were most excited about learning new words that they could use in their own stories and in their conversations. We wrote their favorite new words on the board . Soon the children were bringing in other words that they had heard (but not understood) from their reading or from conversations overheard at home. We added these to our Words of Power and the list grew, with words like soporific, synchronicity, catastrophe, and surreptitious to remember only a few. The whole class was now engaged and there were no discipline problems. Reading fluency improved by leaps and bounds.
After Easter break, we had exhausted our Jr. Great Books and I turned to an Open Court textbook series that the school had purchased. I was pleased that it presented classic stories and myths, but after a few days the children balked. They told me that they didn’t like the new book. When I asked them why, they quickly consensed that all the Words of Power had been taken out of the stories. Open Court had carefully limited the language to words that were prescribed for Second Graders and these words were declared “boring” by the class. So I asked them to tell me what made a word “powerful” and they were quiet for a few minutes. Then Esme raised her hand and said ,“When you look up a word of power in the dictionary and you read all the definitions, you still don’t know everything it means.” I have never forgotten this moment. Moments such as these kept me going through decades of teaching. In such moments learning is palpable and children’s eyes light up with understanding and pride. These moments can’t be scripted or measured, but they are exemplary of an emergent, radiant process of learning that education should nurture, respect and protect at all costs.
I am highlighting here what it means to nurture capacities rather than “teach to standards”. Had I introduced vocabulary lists, assigned all the children to look up words in the dictionary as homework and then tested them to see if they had “learned” the words, I would have had a very different result. Children have a capacity for language acquisition in early childhood that is quite remarkable. They master complex syntax and the basic grammatical constructions of English before they go to school. They have learned subject verb agreement, verb tenses and proper use of adjectives and adverbs by kindergarten. They learn through conversation and by listening. The richer and more omnipresent language is in their surroundings, the more stories they hear, the stronger their language skills and their imaginative faculties become. Many first and second graders will know the lines to a play or a story “by heart” after hearing them only a few times – faster than older children and much faster than adults. Nurturing and building on this innate capacity is a key for language instruction in the early grades. Reciting and retelling come before writing. Dictating and then finally writing their own stories is a very engaging and empowering process for children that ideally precedes reading.
As we move deeper into the era of test-based accountability, teachers like Ms. Jacopetti will retire, and what she knows will disappear. Will teachers still know how to think for themselves? Will it be permitted by the state or the federal government? Will they still exercise their judgment? Or will they act as robots, programmed for compliance?
“When you look up a word of power in the dictionary and you read all the definitions, you still don’t know everything it means.” Goose bumps…
“Second Grade children are word sponges, full of curiosity and pleasure as they gain understanding of the world around them through expanding vocabularies.”
This is one of the great delights of teaching in the early grades. It is also true that children who do not have home environments where adults converse with children take longer to appreciate the astonishing possibilities they have for grasping big words. For my generation, the grade 3 showstopper was “antidisestablishmentarianism.”
All of you, who read and comment regularly on Diane’s site, impress me so much. Teachers’ stories of small epiphanies in the classroom brighten a dark day.
If we allow the takeover of our profession to continue, teachers will not know they can think for themselves as they will have been taught with the same mindless drivel. They will learn in the classroom over time when the light goes on in those unscripted moments no amount of planning can control. No matter how much some might wish it to be, children do not come scripted. In those moments of wonder at the curiosity and spontaneity of childhood, how can those teachers not wonder if there is a better way?
Unfortunately, I am seeing this already with new teacher colleagues. I had the audacity (foolishness?) to question the point of a district-mandated “data collection” assessment for my 1st graders.
My comments were along the lines of “The only purpose for this assessment is to collect data to bash us over the head with. It is developmentally inappropriate, ignores the needs of ELL and ESE students, and asks the majority of students to do something they cannot yet do: read the 2 complex, above grade-level texts (one “literature” and one “informative”) on the test independently, read the tricky questions and multiple choice answers accompanied by trick answers that are designed to fool the 6/7-year old students and interpret them independently, and then write 2 CCSS-type “response” with “text evidence” after just 6 months in first grade starting with no background in Kindergarten, phonemic awareness, phonics, writing, or reading. It is educational malpractice and abusive. Why would I torment my students with such a task?”
Younger colleagues were aghast and visibly frightened. They were puzzled by my analysis and kept repeating “But the district says we must give the test! The data is what drives our instruction!” When I pointed out that there would be no “data” or, at least, no reliable data, because the students were unable to complete the task, they did not understand. Data is ALREADY their god and it is the basis of all their understanding of teaching and learning, sad to say.
The reading coach ended up testing my students while I was out sick against my wishes. Exactly as I predicted, most of my ELL and ESE-mainstreamed students just marked random answers and left the “constructed written responses” blank. I received the “data” that said my students were behind most other 1st graders and in danger of not meeting required standards. Really? You think?
So where is that all-important data that is supposed to drive my instruction? I already knew that these children weren’t readers yet — they didn’t even know the alphabet, couldn’t count to 10, and only a few knew how to write their names when I got them in late August. This district mandated monstrosity of a “data-gathering assessment” was given just 6 months later. I’m a good teacher, or so I’ve been told repeatedly, but I’m no miracle worker or magician.
This is what makes me sick and sad and frustrated more than anything: the fact that my professional expertise, my professional judgement, and my professional knowledge of my students and their needs mean nothing now.
Chris- I am with you. I never met a standardized test that told me something I didn’t already know. The tests based on the CCSS are even worse. They are often developmentally inappropriate, misleading, written above grade level and designed to fail 2/3 of the students in order to fuel the argument to destroy public education.
Tell the young teachers that data should “inform” not “drive” instruction. The the information from the CCSS tests is useless so lets stop wasting time and money on them. I have found formative tests, observing students working, even playing a game based on content more useful than any standardized test.
I hope your protest causes just one of those teachers to wonder if you are on to something.
Where I teach, we are dismissed as being out-dated or labeled as “negative”, which is what my principal called me during a goals meeting when I pointed out the insanity of judging my students’ progress based on standardized test scores.
Sorry- let’s
Thanks you guys! I value your experience and support above anything I see in the school system today. Our district “curriculum specialist” (who has less than half the number of years of teaching experience that I do and NONE in primary grades) came to “interpret” that monstrosity of an assessment for us.
When she stated that our students showed a lack of ability in determining main idea and supporting details, based solely upon a graph of the assessment scores, I pointed out that it did nothing of the kind because the kids weren’t able to read the assessment therefore there is no way to determine if they understand main idea and supporting details from their answers.
She did not respond but I know another black ball has been placed in my district cup, LOL. I couldn’t care less. I have one year left and I am going out swinging and supporting my kids.
Keep sticking it to ’em, Chris. 🙂
They are like Stanley Milgram’s subjects :”The experiment requires that you continue.” Unlike Milgram’s studies where no one was actually being hurt, our students are being hurt, Like you, my time left is short, I am loud and obnoxious at meetings, and I have refused to give the tests. I cheered the computer crash of the SBAC tests and celebrated with my students.
I loved it when a student tested “proficient” on the math assessment in fifth and I found he could not even add in sixth. Great information! I should have called a Hollywood studio to get him on one of those psychic shows.
Every year our school of mostly second language students from first generation families came up short on knowing multiple meanings of words. Duh? One year we added a magnet that attracted mainly native English speakers. The school was rewarded for bringing up our scores. I made 2500 dollars in a bonus that year for doing absolutely nothing different.
Then there was the year the school won an award for saving energy.
The furnace had been out for two years and we had all worn our coats all day to keep warm.
There is no accountability for stupidity among those who are not actually in a classroom.
Wonderful post! Inspiring and dramatically more constructive than other posts/comments I’ve seen in my short experience here. Thank you Diane, really!
Backhanded comments are just as sharp as the regular old slaps to the face. They both leave your hands red after it is all over. Reconsider your strategy if you truly want to thank someone without being rude while doing it.
Morrigan, I’m hoping a straightforward comment from a ‘newbie’ to the blog might encourage Diane to steer it away from unproductive complainers to construcive contributors like Anna Jacopettii.
If by your ‘backhanded’ suggestion above you’re encouraging me to make a statement Daine might consider unreasonably demeaning I’ll accommodate you!
Without a doubt, you’re one of the least ‘constructive’ contributors on her blog. You consistently antagonistic method of dealing with perceived adversaries serves only as a deterrent to gaining a better understanding of what’s needed to make our education system the best in the world, again!
LOL that Diane needs to “be encouraged by a newbie” to do anything. I’ve seen a lot of arrogant buffoons come and go here since the beginning but they still make me laugh. Coming in here and mansplaining what this blog “should” do and what it “needs” and giving unasked for and uneeded advice and judgements about those less enlightened lower classes that are longtime commenters. Hilarious! And WAY overdone. Dude, start your own blog and share your great wisdom that way. Please.
Just say you like the post, Kent. No need to add the tasteless spice of rudeness: “dramatically more constructive than other posts/comments I’ve seen in my short experience.”
We all have our strategies, Kent. If my strategy truly deters someone who I think is a charlatan from deceiving people into what he thinks is “a better understanding of what’s needed to make our education system the best in the world,” then I have certainly succeeded here. Thanks for the compliment.
It’s clear the patients like have control of the asylum……sadder yet that Ms. Ravitch is apparently content using her bully pulpit to inflame emotions rather than foster understanding.
TM….Please stay far away from schools, children and teachers, especially mine
Also sad is that you are not aware that you are the one injecting emotional steroids yourself in a pulpit set for you. Well done, KH.
What a terrific reminder to teachers of what reading and language can, and should, be for students. I loved using Great Books and saw even the most struggling reader get caught up in a classic folk tale or modern story. There was a richness about the literature that sparked their own imaginations.
Now I am seeing a different response to Great Books. Many children seem to be anxious for the “finish line”. During the socratic seminar, kids are focused on giving “correct” answers, as opposed to discussing their thoughts and feelings about the story. I believe this is due to three things. 1.Emphasis on speed tests, such as Dibels. 2. The prevalence of fast-paced, but shallow story lines in video games. 3. A school system that focuses on end results instead of process; product instead of experience.
Reformers want to turn schools into factories. It is what they understand. It is up to true educators to stop that and make sure our children are not reduced to data drones for the sake of charter school profits.
Younger teachers only know the education system as it is today, as they grew up with data-driven instruction. Many of the younger teachers I know seem to be all about the data and do not understand that there is more to engaging students than graphing their test scores. I always felt that the main purpose of education, particulary in the elementary grades, was to ignite a passion for learning. Too many kids today seem to dislike school and I can’t say that I blame them.
I was lucky enough to have my children experience Junior Great Books. They loved reading them and the rich activities that the teacher built around them. In the same school, there was also an emphasis on memorizing sight words and math facts. The school struck a great balance. We need to get away from the extremes of its one way or the other. Teaching and learning is way too complicated to pretend that we know enough to say without a doubt any method is THE way. And of course, there are all the different reasons for schools that require different approaches.
Much Love to all of you I am an Art Teacher. We make mistakes and break the rules for our shared learning experience. For Science we fix solve explore and make stuff, real objects. I’m w all of you w Jersey Love
Much Love to all of you I am an Art Teacher. We make mistakes and break the rules for our shared learning experience. For Science we fix solve explore and make stuff, real objects. I’m w all of you w Jersey Love
The very last sentence of your blog post is ALREADY he norm. A non tenured teacher (although tenure hardly matters with such low legal standards for dismissal) already tows the line and delivers scripted programs with “fidelity” and “on pace”. What a sad, sad school life when natural interests and gifts of teachers and students cannot be developed or explored in a classroom community because of a script.