Blog One- Getting them to Write

Finally! Three years at college with education classes spewing the good graces of NCLB and at last I find a published someone in the education field who does not see the value in punishing schools that are struggling. Having to read through text books devoted to promoting the statutes of NCLB and speaking with various high school teachers about their experience with having to meet adequate yearly progress, I’m finally desensitized to the idea that standardization is a good thing.

What I’ve noticed that Beers alluded to in her first chapter is that when students do not find relevance in the curriculum, they separate themselves into an “underground” realm that places value on their interests. School loses its legitimacy when the students are not given the primary focus and becomes based on a series of standards that no one can pinpoint to benefiting the student’s future.

While complying with NCLB does promise some good benefits, such as holding every student to the same standard with necessary concessions made to students with disabilities, the ideology behind meeting “adequate yearly progress” does not coincide with a practical use of school materials. What does “adequate yearly progress” do for employers seeking an innovative worker? Students, contrary to what some may believe, are not mindless drones. They see when they are being fed irrelevant information, and react with rebellion (or for those who fear losing their teacher’s pet status like I was, do nothing but accept the mediocre garbage that teachers gave in order to justify taking practice standard exams). In my high school, my class far surpassed the Illinois standards for the ACT, PSAT and the AP tests and we were given a pizza party. While food does draw crowds, we all knew that this was provided for us only because we made the school look good. This is not to diminish the teachers who brought about the school’s success. In fact, our teachers offered more opportunities to be expressive in addition to learning the NCLB curriculum. While I only speak from experience with our school’s English and History departments—I avoided math and science like the plague due to my inadequacy in calculating the amount of moles in a chemical equation…not even sure if that’s scientifically correct—each department was highly praised by parents and, yes, even students.

The principal is an enthusiastic educator and now works with the school system ten miles from my hometown that are failing miserably by incorporating more AP classes into the curriculum. I am hesitant to support his method because the risk that students who are forced into these classes by demanding colleges and parents and even peer pressure. This issue is not just about achieving adequate yearly progress with standardized testing; the gap established between remedial and AP classes creates a  potential sense of inadequacy into the student mindset. The fear of being thought of as dumb is just as bad as the fear of not being popular, or even well liked. Many students in my school were forced by their parents to take these classes in order to earn college credit without regard for whether or not they were actually ready for such an advanced curriculum. The ever famous Admiral Ackbar quote “It’s a trap” comes to mind as students are being enrolled in classes beyond their current skill level or students who are ready for such a higher skill level are held back because they do not have the same advantages of the other students. High school is supposed to prepare students for both adulthood and college, but instead, the curriculum is creating cookie cutter, take the test and never remember it afterwards, lacking innovative adults who have not been given a chance to learn for themselves. With the amount of opportunity students are given in this age of technological explosion, it is depressing to know that the only opportunity they have to express themselves comes from outside the curriculum.

Blogging, while it does have the potential to be an online diary, could potentially be the best instructional tool an English teacher assigns their class. Allowing the students to choose their point of interest to write about weekly, whether it be the environment, an issue being addressed in Congress or a response to a piece of literature, helps the students’ interests are being acknowledged. Who knows? They might even learn something about writing and finding credible information to respond to in addition to writing about what interests them. If this were done on a secure blogging network that connects nationwide classrooms, the students could learn about critiquing work. It is the fate of every internet writer to bash something with a keyboard-shaped club. Take that brutish tendency and transform it into something constructive!