Through the endless hours and lack of sleep that graduate school provided me with, I was thankful to look forward to the time when I would only work 40 hours a week and receive a few Benjamin Franklins for my intrinsically rewarding position. Now that I am working full time, I am thankful for my job and for the income it provides, however it is not all lollipops and sugar drops as I once envisioned.
When your job requires you to interact with others in a somewhat civilized manner, certain stessors arise. I have come to observe that although humans try to be civilized, we are far from it (However, I suppose that depends on your definition of civilized). After arguing your beliefs, desires, and dreams for students in the special education program, many times you are turned down and defeated with no regard for your passion or willingness to help students succeed. Not to mention all of the valued time you wasted with your nose in a book allegedly learning how to deal with these types of situations during your "schooling". Your education in this specialized area, while sometimes useful, no where near prepares you for the three ring circus of the school system and special education. With all of the absurd laws, never ending deadlines, and personnel you have to go through, just to attempt to complete a half-assed assessment because there is no way in hell you have time to devote your full potential to every student, are we really helping students to the best of our ability?
Not only do we attempt to complete these "assessments" that will determine if this child will receive services, but then we create cookie-cutter accommodations, modifications, and behavior intervention plans that fit nicely into what is already being implemented in the classroom, regardless of the student's actual needs. The reason being, these overworked and under payed teachers have an already overwhelming amount of students in their classroom then we come along and pile on a diagnosis of ADHD or Autism to half of her class. How is she supposed to deal with an Individualized Education Plan for each of these students while attempting to teach the remainder of her underprivileged classroom?
As several deadlines approach in the midst of Thanksgiving and Winter Break, I walked into a school building and ask if I can "test" a student. After being shuffled into an unused classroom, I found the students were completing state assessment benchmarks. What this exactly means I am not quite sure, other than the fact that I was unable to "test" said student on this day and time. So I gathered my hoard of books and assessment materials and piled back into my car to return to my cubical to sulk.
Following this incident, I was informed that students in this area do standardized testing 45 days out of the 180 day school year. That is 25% of the time they are in school! How are they learning anything when they are shoved in a room full of students, required to be perfectly still and completely quiet in order to complete a state assessment that is not even a good predictor of what they are capable of doing? Not to mention the less than par curriculum in many areas and massive differences between districts. When a student moves to a new district, many times they are required to play "catch-up" to get back on track, when they were never off track in the first place. This is especially difficult for children with disabilities.
I am not much for politics but these recent events have open my eyes into some education issues. Standardized testing is stupid. It is not helping students learn, allowing teachers to teach, and is not an accurate representation of their true abilities. All students are expected to pass these standardized tests, however it is proven that everyone will fall somewhere on the normal distribution. In my opinion we should have federal standardized curriculum for all states and school districts. Then we can do away with monopolized and inaccurate standardized testing and look at what students are really learning. I'm just sayin'.
(This is against the education system as a whole and not against the district that I work for, which I believe does an excellent job of overcoming these hurdles and helping students succeed.)
Hahhaha i love the last part. Beautifully written, my dear. I have 3 tough cases right now, two of which are potential court cases. All we're trying to do is provide kids with what we see as an appropriate education. The rest is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo... I'm just sayin'.
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