Blog #7 - Standards and Curriculm

    For our class Halloween party this year we spent a great deal of time doing science projects.  The students were fascinated.  I can honestly say it was the longest I've seen my class ALL sit in their seats and pay attention since school began.  Today, I was talking to my cooperating teacher about how great it was and asked her why we did not do more science projects since they were so engaged.  Her reply was simple, and sad, "Because they're not tested on it."  I use this story to introduce my introduction to standards and how they are effecting curriculm.  Now, I know that my view on this will be askew because the class I am observing has a 50% special needs presence, so the way we look at standards is different.  I know in my daughter's 2nd grade class they are doing language arts, math, science, social studies, etc etc.  With my class though we emphasize math and language arts.  In fact many days will go by in a row where these are the ONLY two subjects we focus on.  But this is a must for us because when we have very limited attention spans, the teacher has made the chose to focus that attention 100% on what the students will be tested on.  This is not an ideal one for any teacher.  She often mentions that she feels her hands are tied as a teacher, and she can't be as creative as she'd like because she must focus entirely on the standards she has to acheive, but also understands the importance of this at the state level.

    Since I do work at a school I took the opportunity to ask several teachers how they felt about No Child Left Behind.  I must admit, there was A LOT of eyerolling and really big sighs, even a couple laughs before they gave me their answers.  But after asking roughly 10 teachers from different grade levels I feel I have a good summary of their feelings.  For the most part there was not one who felt that No Child Left Behind was a bad law.  Of course they didn't want any students to fall behind and their goals as teachers have always been to keep EVERY child at grade level.  However, as with most good things, once the bureaucrats got a hold of it, it went down hill.  Now instead of being an effective law which could actually help students it has simply turned into one more thing the teachers are expected to do, and be judged on.  Each year they all said, it seems more and more expectations are added to it, and they are struggling to keep up.