One teacher's look at a review

By Nikki Connery

A dozen men and women file into my room like a colony of ants, invading every nook and cranny of my small, second-grade classroom. Poking into files, looking for evidence to prove that I, the teacher, am the reason my students are not passing MCAS, the Massachusetts state test.

Observers from the Department of Education want to see if I use "best practices" to teach my 7-year-olds "higher-level thinking skills." In this 30-minute period, I must demonstrate that I use probing questions, a technique called "think-pair-share," that I am not the center of attention but a "facilitator," and any and all other current catch phrases. My head is spinning; I cannot concentrate on the little child in front of me.

When my "guests" arrive, my 23 second- and third-graders are working at several centers where they are learning addition and subtraction, seeing numbers in different contexts, and writing descriptive sentences, all with the help of colorful, personalized materials that I have spent a great deal of time making for them.

From my perspective, I see my students working together, engaged, learning. But I am certain that the men and women from the DOE are observing my classroom through a very different lens. They have their own opinion of teachers in "under-performing" city schools. They pay no attention to the lack of staff, of materials, of parental support for students or the neglected physical surroundings.

On our faculty, we all have rodent stories to tell. Once, I was being evaluated by the vice principal and trying to interest my students in a lesson about summarizing the plot of a story, when a particularly inattentive child raised her hand with such gusto I was overjoyed. But when she spoke, it was to point out a little mouse poking his head between my metal racks, somewhere in the midst of the glue cups and scissors. Well, that certainly got the children's attention off the point I was trying to make.

Luckily, our morning visitor didn't drown in the white gooey mess and the assistant principal — always the professional and used to dealing with bizarre situations — said off the cuff, "Well, maybe he wanted to learn, too." Strangely enough, it all fit into the story we were reading, "The Mouse and the Motorcycle."

But the men and women sent by the Department of Education don't pay much attention to these mundane issues. It seems they don't want to acknowledge the issues surrounding the lives of many of our students, the lack of stimulation and learning experiences in their first five years, and for most, little or no English spoken at home. Nearly 90% are poor enough to receive subsidized lunch. Whether their parents are extremely young, uneducated, addicted, unemployed or just have too many children at home, many cannot help their children excel in school. I am always surprised at the number of children who come to kindergarten not able to count to five and not knowing any of their colors.

The reality is, we teachers provide some of these adorable, innocent and some not-so-innocent children with the only structure and security they have in their lives, and a chance to experience another kind of life where caring, kindness, and respect are modeled.

We give the DRA Reading Test, Dibbles fluency tests and the MCAS test in September and October, followed by a week of MEPA testing of the ESL students. In January and May we repeat most of these tests again — almost a quarter of the school year spent testing instead of teaching.

The only thing this amount of testing does is deplete the resources that could be used to lower class size, renovate crumbling buildings and buy basic supplies.

This year I bought 500 pencils, a case of paper, crayons, glue sticks, Scotch tape, masking tape, magnets, Magic Markers, two dozen scissors, games, treasure box items, spray-painted broken down chairs and dozens of colored folders and matching notebooks. Why? Because the schools have no money for such things. Instead they change math and reading programs, which requires buying new books, and do this for a couple years until the next "new" idea comes along that promises to magically fix all of the problems.

When that doesn't work, they figure they have to fix the teachers, so they spend money for more training. We must be the problem in these "underperforming" schools. But what I really would like is to have common planning time with other teachers in my building, because I learn more from sharing ideas with them for a few minutes than in two hours reading new, unrealistic and irrelevant theories.

Last Friday when the DOE people all came into my room, I am certain that they didn't consider the obstacles. They did not know that I have done the best that I can, and have stayed at school until 6 p.m. many nights trying to incorporate what everyone told me to do. I just saw 12 figures in my room with their clipboards and solemn faces watching me and my nervous class.

Well, I am proud of what I have accomplished. I kept my mind focused on my last year's scores, which showed my students made a two-year gain in one year, even though many still didn't pass the MCAS.

Hopefully, I have done some good in my 30 years of teaching. This year, one of my students had a fire in her house. When the alarm went off, she was there with her brother and his friends. She told everyone that "her teacher" — that would be me — told her they should all get out right away if they heard a smoke alarm. It warms my heart to think that what I said to this beautiful little girl just may have saved her life. o

Nikki Connery teaches at the Chandler Magnet School on Chandler Street.