Test

Today was my first staff development day as a student teacher. It went something like this:

I woke up at 5:30am to run five miles. This probably has nothing to do with student teaching. I enjoy running, and as the Fall semester starts up, I understand that I will have less and less time for things non-MAC related. I've also been told that there must be certain things that I should refuse to give up, activities or hobbies that I must maintain as a means of preserving my sanity. I'd like to believe running is one of those things. I've also been told to try and be optimistic.

I arrived at Thurston High School on time. I had visited twice in the past to interface with my mentor teacher, so there weren't any problems getting there. I was more or less ushered into the school cafeteria, where much of the day's agenda would be held. School cafeterias carry a large significance for me. They are the school's social proving grounds. Real life experience and "High School Musical" has taught me that population is segregated by lunch table. Popular kids sat at the popular table. Jocks sat with other jocks. Just as we are tracked academically, schools have a peculiar way of sorting us socially as well.

Being a student teacher, I was neither popular nor jock. I found myself latching onto a fellow MACer and meandering over to an empty table, surrounded by veteran teachers and other school officials engaged in their own conversations, sitting at their own tables. I was essentially a freshmen. The superintendent came over to me to introduce himself and welcome me to the district. I asked him if he could smell my fear. He said yes.

After a morning of speeches and an ACT practice test (I got one wrong), we broke off into our departments in order to incorporate more literacy practice into our summative assessments. In plain terms, we took passages out of the textbook and wrote three questions that would require students to practice reading strategies with course relevant content.

I want to relate how extremely difficult it is to write test questions. Before my hands-on experience, I thought that the hardest part about designing questions was applying Bloom's Taxonomy via Anderson and Krathwohl's theoretical framework. I was surprised to realize that requiring students to use higher order thinking when answering questions was not necessarily the most difficult part. That honor belongs to thinking up the answer options for multiple choice questions.

It's like this: ideally, we already know what the students should know, since we designed the curriculum. Sit-down tests are opportunities for students to confirm they know what they should know. Yet, the test questions and answer options must be chosen carefully. If the options make the correct answer too obvious, students are not being effectively tested. If the question and options are hard to understand or misleading, students may still answer incorrectly even if they can recall and transfer the knowledge being tested.

But that brings me to another point. After learning about the inconsistencies of standardized testing, I found it unsettling to learn that teachers are almost obligated to "teach to the test." As I mentioned earlier, I spent the morning writing and rewriting questions that simulated the questions found in the ACT. This Fall and Winter, I will be student teaching for a mentor teacher who teaches advanced placement courses -- courses literally made for the sake of doing well on a standardized test.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I understand that because so many advantages are born out of scoring high on standardized tests, it would undermine student success to NOT teach according to the test. However, as a teacher, how can we be instruments of reform if there is greater incentive for perpetuating inadequate systems of instruction and assessment?

Or maybe, this is as adequate as we can get?

I'll let you know in six months or so.

Hostage By Singularity

It is 2:18am and I'm finally starting this blog post. I swear, procrastination had nothing to do with it. I love blogging. It has been my truest and most trusted friend. When I am sad, frustrated, angry, or worried, I blog. I've learned that sometimes there are problems that you can't necessarily tell people about. Blogging (and journal writing in general), allows you to say exactly what is wrong, and through the process of naming your oppressor, you can gain insight on how to make things better.

Since this is a blog, and the name of this blog is "Record of Praxis" (whatever that means), I will name my oppressor for the sake of consistency:

BLOGGING, YOU ARE MY OPPRESSOR.

Yes, I did just say I love blogging. We are college buddies. We've had some great times together. However, the best part of our relationship is that it is completely natural. Easy, like Sunday morning. When blogging starts making demands, then the joy of it is gone. Obligation is the nemesis of recreation. Ask any game tester if they love their job. By making the maintenance of this blog a graded requirement, I feel like I am hunched over the keyboard with a gun to my head. I am not blogging for fun and therapy anymore; I am blogging for a credential.

But, wait. Suddenly, I am in a garden. It is a warm Spring day. I have long blonde hair and am wearing a frilly blue dress. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch something dash into the bushes to my right. I am young and curious, so I decide to investigate. I crawl headfirst into the rhododendrons and see what looks like a white rabbit, wearing a waistcoat and glancing anxiously at his pocketwatch (because only boy rabbits wear waistcoats, duh). His red eyes grow large as he realizes the time, and darts into a nearby hole in the ground. I approach the hole on my hands and knees, soiling my dress. I want to know where the white rabbit went. I want to see where this hole goes. I jump in:

TECHNOLOGY, YOU ARE MY OPPRESSOR.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines oppression as "a sense of being weighed down in body or mind." Just as I am being oppressed by blogging, I am being oppressed by technology. In class, we talk about what it means to be a 21st Century learner and the necessity of incorporating technology into the classroom. We made Blogger and Twitter accounts. We submit our assignments via CTools. Laptops and video recorders are required for the MAC program. I have to register for classes via Wolverine Access. I fill out my financial aid forms online.

I can see the usefulness of technology in our daily lives. It makes things easier, and gives us ways, as educators, to improve upon our practice. But with so many forms of technology offering a multitude of functions and services, how can we decide which to use? Or do we just take them all?

Enter the singularity. You can clicky-click on the linky-link if you want to read more, but the "technological singularity" is basically the hypothesis that if technology reaches the point where it becomes more intelligent than humans, it will develop faster than human beings can understand. After this point, the future becomes impossible predict, because we cannot comprehend the capabilities of such technology. I used my computer to look up that succinct definition, because I had forgotten. YouTube teaches me how to do the dances for Korean pop songs. The explosion of technology in the past decade or so was unimaginable two decades ago, and we really have no idea what to do with all of it. The singularity is upon us.

This wouldn't be a problem if we practiced a little moderation, but we don't. We feel obligated to consume the latest gadget or widget or whatever they call it nowadays. We have twenty thingamabobs, but we don't care. It's no big deal. We want more. Our justification is that it can "make things easier," or that we are "keeping up with the times." But does maintaining all of those online accounts, worrying about identity theft, and affording all that hardware really make it easier? And if we are trying to keep up with the present, isn't your purchase going to be obsolete in six months anyway?

One of the basic rules of childhood is: "If you make a mess, clean it up." A fine mess I've made here. I argue that we are being oppressed by technology, so unless I want to get grounded, I had better come up with a solution, right?

I think that in order to make sense of the future of technology (and education, while we are at it), we need to look to the past. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire introduces the "banking" model of education: the learner is an empty bank account, and teachers deposit information into them, leading to the perpetuation of oppressive attitudes and practices. Freire rejects this model, which is a metaphor for traditional education, and claims that it results in dehumanization: the elimination of individuality, creativity, and compassion. In regards to technology, this is all true. Technology is willingly deposited into us, and we are getting dehumanized as a result. In order to combat this, we need to be more critical about what we consume, and remain conscious of how it is practical to society.

Education? Being critical of what we consume? Practical to society? Where have I heard those terms before?

With the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently. It is impossible to reach this sort of adjustment save as constant regard is had to the individual's own powers, tastes, and interests - say, that is, as education is continually converted into psychological terms. In sum, I believe that the individual who is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child we are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into the child's capacities, interests, and habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted - we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social equivalents - into terms of what they are capable of in the way of social service.

- John Dewey

I feel better already.