Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The End is Near

"What are we going to do for the end of the year?" one of my students asked me today. "Can we have a party?"

Maybe it's my personality, but I like the year to end with as little fuss as possible. (For the record I hate any good-byes, especially long ones.) If it were up to me, we would follow our regular schedule until the very last day, and then I could bid each class a warm farewell; perhaps instead of my usual, I had fun today-- thanks for your hard work and enjoy the rest of your day, I could substitute "this year" and "rest of your life" and call it a year.

Somewhere along the line though, the students have gotten the idea that June is a non-working month of celebration. Not only that, but since the advent of extensive standardized testing, they feel like they should be rewarded after each and every test, as well. Some teachers oblige, but I don't share this view. I believe that it's our job to help the kids understand what the tests are: simply a measure of what they know and can do, data that we will very likely use to figure out their placement and instruction. When we explain it that way, there's no reason for students to do anything other than their best, and there's no reason to look at the tests as anything but another day at school.

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