I was a young teacher in Texas in the early 1990’s when the idea of holding teachers accountable through state testing was in its infancy. I watched as teachers went through seven stages of grief as their world was turned upside-down. The seven stages of grief are not my idea…they are outlined in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ book On Death and Dying, but they can be applied in this case:
1. Shock and Disbelief – “The government is going
to hold us accountable for what we teach, how we teach it, and how many of our
students learn it? No way!”
2. Denial – “There’s no way to keep track
of every student’s scores on multiple tests.
Who thought of this stupid idea? Our
teachers’ union is not going to let it happen…absolutely not!”
3. Anger – “This is ridiculous! My creativity is being stifled! This will lead to the death of teaching as we
know it! Whoever is responsible for this
abomination will pay!”
4. Bargaining – “What about the Spanish
teacher…they don’t even have a test!
What about Special Ed.? So I am
responsible for EVERY kid? No matter
where they came from? I would accept
responsibility for my scores if I could choose who was in my class, or if I
had my own classroom, or if our district had the same amount of money as
District X, or if we didn’t count Special Ed., or if I got some help from the
Art, Choir, P.E., and Band teachers…”
5. Guilt – “Maybe this system is necessary…I
have seen how we pass students to the next grade before they are ready. Maybe we brought this system on ourselves.”
6. Depression – “The weight of expectations
is crushing me…all we are doing is teaching to the test. I don’t have the training and resources
necessary to be successful. If I would
have known about this when I was in the process of choosing my major, I can
assure you I wouldn’t have picked teaching as a career. What do I do now? Does anyone remember the number of that truck
driving school we saw on T.V. last night?”
7. Acceptance & Hope – “Well, I guess
there’s no way to get rid of it, so we might as well do the best we can. At least we scored higher than Hillside
Middle School…what are those teachers doing over there? Ha!
Maybe we should try the strategies I learned about in our workshop and
see if our scores improve…”
When I moved to Missouri in 2002, I saw teachers dealing with the seven stages at my new school as well. At that point I realized that everyone, everywhere was coming to grips with the new reality. I also realized that the process repeated itself every year, when a crop of new teachers entered the teaching profession. These youngsters may have been told about NCLB while in college, but they did not fully grasp the concept that jobs are won and lost based on scores that are released to the public every summer. Some new teachers embraced the concept and were successful, and some could not embrace reality and headed for disaster. I am going to give you strategies to implement in YOUR classroom to stand out from the crowd, and register some high scores so that you are seen as an indispensible part of your staff!
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