Last week I started meeting with my students. They started school the week before but I had to test new students and attend a workshop, so Wednesday was our first meeting of the year. I decided to read a couple of books about the national anthem since everyone is now singing it every morning. The first book was by Peter Spier and was an illustration of the words of all four verses of the song. That really interested the boys because of the "bombs bursting in air" parts. It was hard for them to wrap their minds around the idea of no cars, phones, cameras, etc. at the time the song was written. Another picture book told the story of how Francis Scott Key came to write the poem/song. I had forgotten the background and even why we were fighting the British. Again, the kids were interested and now, I hope, more motivated to sing every morning.
Once again, building background is so important for these students. Not only do they not know the national anthem, even though many were born in the US, but most of the adults at school assume that everyone has some familiarity with the song.
This leads me back to my rant about testing. It is so unfair to judge teachers, students, schools, and communities by one test score. There is no way to show what students know by this method. Now the mania is pushing down to kindergarten when the person in charge of instruction wants to know how many sight words a kindergarten student should be able to read by the end of the year. What? How about one-their name. Or a few-like McDonalds, Wendy's, Cheerios, stop.
An idea that some pencil pusher in some office in DC extrapolated from business-not education-has us going in exactly the wrong direction to keep our students learning and motivated to be the type of innovators we have had in this country in the past. Check out Susan Ohanian's website for more about our unfair testing system.
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