Testing doesn’t measure how much heart a student has

SUE CLARK

An administrator drops by your office and says, “Those journals you

do with the kids? You have to align them with state standards.”

“Why?” you ask, knowing the answer.

“Everything we do has to be aligned,” he says. “The kids must

prepare for the CAHSEE and the STAR testing.”

Briefly you consider dropping the journal writing. It’s something

you do on your own time anyway. You hate standards and testing. You

wonder how all this hoopla got entwined with letting you work with

kids.

The journaling is interactive; you read everything the kids write

and answer back. You don’t correct spelling or grammar. You read

their hearts, not their comma splices. You give them the respect of

responding to their written thoughts. You give them back something

they first had in primary school, but lost along the way: the power

of the pen. So you continue journaling. It’s a way to reach one more

teenager, and throw out one more written lifeline.

You refuse to align it with state standards, though. You tell the

kids they can’t get an English credit for the journals anymore. It

can only be for an elective.

They remain undaunted and continue writing the journals. After

years of bad grades and unhappy faces and 66% marks, they are getting

back the gift of your ear when they write.

You run out of the journals you’ve given out, and a friend of a

journal scribe comes and asks if he can write too. So you order more

journals, and the kids just keep coming.

Former gang bangers, recovering addicts, preppy kids who don’t

want to be here, goths, punks. They all write to you.

You’re their cheerleader, their gadfly, their devil’s advocate.

You take pen in hand, and in your own handwriting (shaky from disuse)

you converse. You encourage on bad days and chide when you disagree.

You honor their poems and respect young love. You monitor their

depression and tell them to keep coming in to see you. Too bad it’s

not “aligned,” though.

How does one measure interactive journaling on a state test? How

do you give a number to an increase in confidence? How will the state

judge a school like ours, which has atrocious test scores? There

isn’t going to be any fame or money thrown our way, that’s for sure.

Today we had a new-student orientation. The tradition is that

current students in our after school leadership class speak to the

new kids and their families.

One boy goes first and says, “I stopped going to school because I

felt lost in the crowd over at the comprehensive high school. I

suffer from anxiety, and I find this school a safe place to be.”

A girl tells the new families, “I have a serious chronic disease,

and I was out of school so much last year. My grades and credits

dropped. Here I’m catching up, and when I’m in the hospital, I can

easily get work and catch up.”

Can we get some extra funding for those remarks? No, we can’t

match them to a standard. Testing time for our school is cause for

more than tears. It takes up several days, and it is frustrating and

confusing.

You try to encourage the students, but they have all been sent

from other schools, many of them out of the district or state.

Some do OK with the English but haven’t had enough math. Some

can’t write very well and do poorly on the essay section. The bulk of

both the state standardized testing and exit exams is reading

passages and answering questions.

Now, put a group of kids who have not been doing well at the

comprehensive high schools in a room, and give them the most

incredibly boring, noncontroversial reading material they have ever

seen. Ignore the fact that many of them have learning problems or are

just mastering English as a second language. Tell them their

graduation and futures depend on these tests and then watch them

start crying, put their heads down or get mad. Don’t help them with

any answers; stand there shuffling papers. Put your arm around them

if they melt down.

Sit helplessly and watch them lose any confidence they were

starting to build.

Watch a young rebel who hasn’t given up on himself yet bubble in

“teach, don’t test.”

Then go home and grab a journal. It’s never boring.

And sympathize with a teacher friend at 24 Hour Fitness who tells

you he refuses to test his elementary school class this year. He

would rather teach than test.

* SUE CLARK is a Costa Mesa resident and a high school guidance

counselor at Creekside High School in Irvine. She can be reached at

tallteacher@comcast.net.