Intense Pressure

As a new school year peeks around my weekend corner, I feel pressure to create a smooth start to the new year for my fresh, new students.  From minute one, I want my students to feel community, excitement to have landed in my room, and an urgency for their own education.  That's pressure, right?

How's this for pressure:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/philadelphia-english-teacher-explains-why-she-helped-students-160244016.html

I appreciate this English teacher's blog primarily because of Arne Duncan's generalized stance presented at the end of the article.  As an intelligent, educated man, he cannot be so naive as to assume that the consequences of standardized testing pressure on teachers creates better (much less adequate) teaching.  Therefore, I must conclude that he is boldly turning a blind eye publicly.  In a previous teaching assignment, I received bonus money if my students performed well on standardized tests.  For some teachers, that enticing lure would be enough to cheat as well.  In the same assignment, it was equally as possible that I could lose my job if my students didn't perform well on standardized tests.  Fortunately for me, that possibility was a couple of years in the making; however, that school had been "fresh started" by the state.  So, just the year before an entire teaching staff lost their jobs based on their students' test scores.

Many people, myself included, default to the high road when it comes to test integrity, professional ethics, and abhorrance to cheating.  But, the truth is I left that high pressure teaching assignment before I truly had to walk in those high-stakes shoes. 

Let us not delude ourselves.  The real losers here are the students and the future opportunities they cannot possibly have.  The real loser is our own future stability and prosperity as a nation.  Do my students feel the same pressure I do?  I hope they feel more - but for the right reasons.  As I begin a new school year, I hope my students feel pressure to authentically belong to our community.  I hope the pressure of their excitement causes action and research.  I hope they become true participants in their own learning.  At least that's what I'll work on habitualizing for them in the next 193 days.

Maybe I'll have my students write letters to Arne Duncan explaining what adequate means.