This Is A Test

 Here we go.

The big turn we take each year into the End of the Year: Spring Break.

When we come back in a week, we'll start all the motions that send a message to the staff and students that we are preparing to close up shop. This is nowhere more apparent than the preparations we make for our mandated state testing. 

Over the years I have become less agitated by the specifics of high stakes testing and more philosophical about the way we turn children into points of data after a year of treating them as individual intertwined successes and challenges, each one capable of so much in so many different ways, but lacking in others. But, sure as the days are getting longer and the pollen count goes up, we're going to toss them all into the centrifuge and see what the computer spits out. 

As the computer teacher I do my best to prepare our seemingly unsuspecting young victims for the onslaught that awaits them. We look at practice tests and take them for a spin in the simulations. We let them know that no matter how much we try to get them ready that week of sitting in front of a screen will most certainly have an impact on them. 

I'm not talking about "your permanent record here." I stopped believing in that a long time ago. Instead I try and prepare them for a reality in which the effort they put in will be expected and the impression that they care is what we are really looking at. It's those who idly click on random answers and finish in record time that upsets the whole apple cart. 

These are children, after all. They are part of the mass that looks up after writing a sentence and asks, "Is this enough?" They would like to believe that there is a bell somewhere that will ring, signaling time is up and they can move on to the next ridiculous task put in front of them by grownups. Or maybe recess?

But here we are all complicit. We know that the true measure of each student will not be found in those hours spent testing. It will come as a composite of all the hours spent in classrooms and on the playground and in the hallways and the cafeteria. 

But we still hope they do really well.