Automatrons

I’m a pretty independant person, I don’t like asking for help very often – but I am also quite capable. As a teacher, I have had to design my whole curriculm from scratch here – and it’s worked. When parents I have never met are thanking me for what I have done for their son/duaghter, when kids are going up on their own to tell my administrators that they are succedding this year because of my help and my teaching style – i think I am entiteld to be proud of the job I am doing.

PROBLEM: My school bought into something called America’s Choice.

Americas Choice School Design is striving to help all students reach the CIM goal by building new standards and assessments; altering learning environments; linking schools with community support and services; involving the public; and restructuring the management of schools. Work of the Project is divided into five tasks that must be integrated and worked on concurrently to achieve success. The tasks are: (1) standards and assessments; (2) learning environments; (3) community and service supports; (4) public engagement; and (5) high performance management. Americas Choice schools must accept the idea of the CIM and that it is internationally benchmarked for high school students in mathematics, English, science and applied learning (modern workplace skills). Standard driven schools utilize redesigned curriculum and instruction to help students acquire high content knowledge and the ability to apply their knowledge and skills to real-world problems.

Teachers are assisted to construct units of study that are based on the high standards and that integrate state and district requirements, successful instructional practices, technology and applied-learning principles. Learning is expected to take place outside of the classroom in settings that require the students to use their knowledge and skills from the classroom to solve complex problems.

This is all based upon NCLB – No Child Left Behind. . . . No Child Left Behind is a fucking croc – all it allows is each child the equal opportunity to fail. According to the legislation, my student who is reading at a 3rd grade level, who has the meantl capacity of a 10 year old MUST test at the same level and recieve the SAME SCORES as my 15 year old student who reads at and above a college level. How is that right or fair? And what is the test covering – 10th grade reading material presnted at a 12th grade level. Hell, I can’t even past the damn state testing for 10th graders; BUT for the college Parzis exams, I got the highest score out of anyone who took it that year at my univeristy, and when I went into my teaching program, I had the highest score out of everyone in the English sections . . . . So what is wrong where I can pass the COLLEGE exams, but I can’t or barely pass a 10th grade reading test????

What I was just told today in a phone interview; they will be giving us our lesson plans and teaching us how to impament them, and when the students are assessed using THEIR standardized tests, we are the send the tests to a group of people who score them, so they can send them back and tell us what our student’s strengths and wekanesses are. I just sat in my principles office and had a god-damn phone conferance with these people and who told all of us this is how it works. I have to give up this weekend and the mext to go to a dman traning NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT so I can learn how to teach this . . .

Fuck that. These total strangers who have never met my kids are going to tell me about their strngth’s and weaknesses???? They are GIVING me my lessons plans and TEACHING me how to teach? Excuse the hell out of me, what did I go to college for? What did I give up sleep, helath, my family and friends for for a year to get not only my Oregon Teaching License, but a MASTERS degree in Teaching????

I may not know everything, hell I know I don’t know everything – but I think I know my kids; I have made that my main prupose here, to know them know their strengths and WHAT THEY NEED HELP ON (never say WEAKNESS to me in regards to a kid, EVER) and I know how to teach for individuals. I can alter things to meet the needs of the real people sitting in-front of me. I will not teach as if every child is a “computerized standard automatron” sitting there. They are indivuals, they have different strengths and needs . . .

AND if they think I am going to be some damned automatron – FUCK THAT!

I have read Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, and Faenihiet 451. I am not going to live in that sort of wolrd, and I’ll be Damned if I allow this to happen in my classroom, if I become a TOOL to force this upon my kids.

If you can’t tell I am fucking livid to say the least.

And this is Hell, and in this smother
All are damnable and damned.
Each one damning, damns the other –
They are damned by one another –
By none other are they damned

Percy B. Shelly
~From Peter bell the Third~