Good perspective of the challenges of motivating students to take tests seriously.
The Poor Man's Mimosa
Did you know that orange juice and beer when served together are actually a cocktail beverage called the Poor Man's Mimosa? Well it is, damnit.
Today, I rather excitedly went out to lunch and then to a principals' meeting with my bud, Mindy. We are about worn slick with test preparation, test taking, and anything else associated with that four letter word.
In case you didn't know, in Oklahoma (and everywhere else in these United States thanks to NCLB) elementary and secondary schools have pretty much been reduced to test taking factories. We test the kids when they start the year off, along the way, in the middle, in April for STATE TESTS (notice emphasis for importance), and then we throw in a little English Language Learner tests and anything else we haven't thought of yet. I would be willing to bet that all these tests taken together must compose at least 25% of our curriculum. We are all worn slick with it and becoming quite grumpy about the loss of instructional time. But this is all another story except for how it relates to what all this testing did to my students.
So, this week we are taking benchmark tests which are the tests the school district administers three times a year to a) find out if the kids are making adequate progress towards the curriculum that the STATE tests in April and b) to give everyone lots and lots of practice in how these tests are taken.
Kids hate these tests. Every time we sharpen up our number two pencils and brightly hand them a quarter inch thick pile of papers to read and answer questions on, they get kinda surly. They don't like all this.
We try to make life better for them by telling them how good they'll feel when they finish the tests. It's kind of like how good it feels when you are quit hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.
We try to reason with them about how this is important, kind of like the doctor taking their temperature to find out how well or sick they are. They don't care. They are tired of it and begin making pretty designs out of the bubbles on their test taking sheets.
We try to threaten them by telling them if they don't do well that dire things can happen... like retention or having to stay on the same lesson until they learn it or infinity... whichever comes first.
We try to get their parents involved by showing them how the kids are doing and subliminally sending messages about getting their kids to give their best efforts.
We try just about everything we can think of. And, finally, we sink to the lowest common denominator; and we do what all good adults do when they have reached their final nerve and MUST get the kids to comply. We bribe them.
So, for this week's testing, we decided to give the kids snacks (which being a healthy school, we do NOT do usually) and extra playground time for the last 25 minutes of school. When I announced over the intercom we were going to do this, the children raised their voices in a chorus of cheers.
But, the atmosphere at school is just not healthy. The kids know we are bribing them, and just like your own kids when you have bribed them, the situation got dirty.
One class of fourth grade students talked one of their classmates into bringing a bottle of his dad's beer to school. The children mixed the beer with their test taking healthy orange juice and proceeded to have what is known as a Poor Man's Mimosa.
I got the news of the event while I was at the principals' meeting. I was really irked. Fourth graders, for heaven's sake. I told my secretary to call ALL TEN of the miscreant cretin ne'er do wells' parents and have them in my office at 8:00 tomorrow. I am sure these are going to make hilarious stories when these kids are 30... but today they are just 10; and the stories are not hilarious. I am going to suspend them for 5 days and give them so much homework to do that they will think that the Poor Man's Mimosa was the worst afternoon cocktail they ever came up with... and come to think of it... ewwwwwwww.
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