Posts Tagged ‘SAT’

Our Circle of Influence

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Signing up for this semester’s grad class, “Teacher Research and Inquiry,” and hoping it isn’t half as dull as it sounds, I realized there were two sections on the same evening taught by different professors.  I sent a brief e-mail to my friends from school, asking for recommendations: “We all know that the teacher can be the difference between a great semester and a miserable one.”

I wondered idly how many of my students would place me in the second category.  In a way, I’m glad I don’t know; in general, the only ones who come back are those appreciate all the work you’ve put in and want to thank you for it.  I read this Times article recently with a lump in my throat, hoping that someday I might be worthy of that kind of devotion (but please, not a Facebook group):

In the weeks before the death last month of Jerry Sheik, a retired band teacher from Intermediate School 70 in Chelsea, his wife, Judith Kalina, said he was overwhelmed by the praise written on a Facebook page created in his honor, “Sheik’s Freaks Reunite: A Celebration for Jerry Sheik.”

The page has 135 members, mostly students from the 1970s who played in the stage band Mr. Sheik conducted. They have posted old band photos and recalled their rendition of “Oye Como Va.”

One former student, Melissa Sgroi, wrote, “There are few people that you look back on in your life and know they left an indelible mark. Thank you Jerry Sheik for being one of those people.”

Another of Mr. Sheik’s students, Ned Otter, said, “Jerry was the first one to put a sax in my hand.” Mr. Otter went on to play saxophone professionally, touring with Dizzy Gillespie. He is one of nine overseers of the Sheik’s Freaks page.

“He played a critical role in my life,” Mr. Otter added.

It’s funny, but although teaching is often referred to as a selfless profession, ultimately, what we’re doing — filling young minds with our thoughts and ideas — is pretty egotistical.  I tell myself that if I can convince just one student per semester of the evils of misused en-dashes, there will be more of me to go around — I can retire someday and not worry about that stuff, since I’ll have an army on the prowl for punctuation errors.  My Journalism students can rattle off several dozen of the public offices, so they know of the significance of Robert Byrd’s passing and John Paul Stevens’ retirement.  And when I’ve studied for the SAT with you, by golly, you know that test backwards and forwards, though you’ve lost respect for it after finding out just how much of it is pure psychology — tricking you into answering with faulty logic.  Ultimately, I can’t tell whether I’m doing this for them or for me.

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You Never Know

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

That’s what it comes down to, in the end.  You do your best, and you think you can visualize what kind of an impact you’re having on your students, but ultimately, you never know.  The students you’d written off as unreachable come back with smiling faces and glowing reports.  In my first year of teaching, I failed a student who consistently didn’t turn in her work and appeared to not care one bit about her grade.  I hated failing her, but it had to be done out of fairness to the other students who had worked hard.  The next year, this girl went out of her way to thank me for teaching her so much valuable information.  I fought the urge to say, “Really?  You learned something?!”

Today as I walked toward the elevator, a girl jumped up from the bench she was sharing with three or four others. She spotted me all the way at the other end of the hall and came running: “Mrs. Lowe! Mrs. Lowe!”

Had she not been calling my name, I wouldn’t have thought for a moment she was talking to me. She did decently in my class last year, but our personalities clashed; she was one of those people who cannot keep silent under any circumstances, who must think out loud in response to any question or even any statement, and — I’ll be honest here — those people drive me nuts in a classroom situation.  It was hard to show her I genuinely liked her while curbing her chattering enough that she didn’t distract the other students.  We parted on not-so-great terms, and this year whenever I passed her she looked away, sometimes even rolling her eyes, and responded to my greetings with flat monosyllables.

But here she came, bounding up eagerly to tell me how well she had done on her college placement exams.  “I don’t even have to take English until the end of sophomore year!  All that SAT stuff just came right back to me.  It really helped.”

I felt awkward, so taken aback I was (for once) at a loss for words.  “I’m glad,” I said finally.  I’m so proud of you.  Thanks for telling me.”

Here was someone who had either ignored me or treated me with contempt for a full year. Now I was her hero.  I know how this works — I’ve repeated it to myself countless times — but it never fails to surprise me: They don’t see us as people. It’s not personal; it just doesn’t register, that teachers have feelings and are trying our best and are hurt, even if we try not to be, when our efforts are discounted.  I was an annoyance, and I became a commodity.  Hence, the radiant smile, the dramatic return of the prodigal who rushed to put a ring on my finger and shoes on my feet.

You never know.  It’s why I hate and love this job.

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The Sneaky Teacher

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Remember when The Sneaky Chef came out last year?  Another similar book came out around the same time, and the two authors took turns sniping at each other in the press, each implying the other had ripped her idea off. (Women!)

In my mailbox at school today was a postcard promoting these vocabulary books.  Excerpt:

Can you resist the allure of Edward’s myriad charms—his ocher eyes and tousled hair, the cadence of his speech, his chiseled alabaster skin, and his gratuitous charm? Will you hunt surreptitiously and tolerate the ceaseless deluge in Forks to evade the sun and uphold the facade? Join Edward and Bella as you learn more than 600 vocabulary words to improve your score on the *SAT, ACT®, GED®, and SSAT® exams!

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, so I followed the advice I give to my own students and made a pros and cons list:

Laugh:

  • Seriously?  Combining studying with pleasure reading?  We might as well try to slip butternut squash puree into their macaroni and cheese.
  • I’ve read all four books, and I don’t remember once running into a word I didn’t know.  If someone needs a vocabulary primer to help them understand Meyer’s language, I shudder to think of what they’d do with Fitzgerald or Whitman.
  • What makes charm gratuitous?  I think it’s more gratuitous to specify surreptitious hunting.  What would non-surreptitious hunting look like?  A trip to the grocery store?

Cry:

  • How are any of those words considered vocabulary for high-school juniors?
  • Most of my high school juniors probably couldn’t define those words without the accompanying crutch sentences.
  • Will we ever expect students to read challenging works on their own, picking up vocabulary naturally along the way?

The jury’s still out, but I’m taking votes.  I’m eminently practical, so who knows — maybe it will work, and if so, kudos to the author for capitalizing on the latest pop-lit franchise.  But I’m also kind of a snob, and . . . Twilight?  In the classroom?!  The thought makes me shift uncomfortably in my chair.

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The Cheapening of College

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

In case you don’t know the story, or you weren’t listening the first time, I think the SAT is a bit of a scam.  It’s a very good predictor of success on future standardized tests.  It’s not good at measuring creativity, discipline or intellectual curiosity — three things that are, or should be, necessary for a college education.

Unhappily, we have set our standards too low.  The high school where I teach boasts that 100% of its students are accepted to college.  As much as I love my school and the students who attend there, there are quite a few who should never go to college, either because of low scholarly aptitude or because they just aren’t cut out for academia.  (Sometimes these students are actually too smart for college, at least for the “college” they have their hearts set on.)  But they are told they have to attend college to be successful, so they do.  Then they drift off to careers in service industries or retail (both of which are trades that would be far better learned through an apprenticeship program) or get married and raise families and never look back.*

Grad school, I thought, would consist of a thinned crowd — people who really do love to learn and think.  I’ve been monumentally disappointed.  Many of the students are fresh out of their undergrad programs without a day of teaching under their belts; they treat it like, well, school, instead of a community of learners.  In my first undergraduate experience, at Cooper Union’s School of Architecture, we spent nights in angry debate about the principles of parti and racial violence.  Not because it was assigned, but because we were passionate about it, even at the expense of sleep and partying and sometimes our graded assignments.  After this experience, many people told me it “sounded like grad school,” so I assumed it would be similar, but my classmates seem to treat school as more of a business transaction (tuition now for higher pay later) than an opportunity for intellectual enrichment.

And now we’ve stooped to a new depth of consumerism: pre-approved “fast track” applications that require, in some cases, only a signature — no essay, no visit.  Sometimes, no joke, the university will throw in a free baseball cap.  All of this is guaranteed to boost the number of applicants, which helps the college look good (they’re selective; they don’t just admit anyone!) while hurting the students (those who really might want to attend have less of a chance, while those who are shoe-ins and never even intended to apply gum up the works.)

Bad.  On so many levels.  There are fewer and fewer who want to learn.

*I’m not trying to insult parents here . . . just saying that there are people who want to attend college and raise families, and people who want to raise families but attend college because they feel like they’re supposed to.  Society would be better served if those in the latter group simply focused on their main goals.

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Posted in Current Events, Media, School policies, Vices | 2 Comments »

Standardized Tests: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Friday, August 21st, 2009

As someone who makes money preparing others for standardized tests, I can say that I think they generally fulfill their purpose.  I do think that in recent years, far more attention has been given to them than they deserve, however.  In particular, the SAT hype is out of control.

The Stanford Achievement Test was originally developed by the state of California as a way to mass-screen all of the candidates for its university system.  Following World War II, there were an unprecedented number of applicants, because of the GI Bill, and the colleges needed a way to filter out the most successful ones quickly. Because the SAT primarily measures one’s ability to take standardized tests, it’s actually a pretty good indicator of how a student will do in college.  But if you’re applying to a school like, say, St. John’s College, where your grades depend on your ability to write and perform on oral exams, a high SAT score doesn’t say much of anything.  Bottom line: it certainly doesn’t measure intelligence.  Not even close.

The ACT, despite what you may have heard, is not much different from the SAT at all.  There is a Science section, but it mostly involves data analysis and logic – the same things the SAT tests for in its Math sections.  Oh, and there are four possible responses to each question instead of five.  But if I had a dollar for every time someone told me they’d heard the ACT was easier than the SAT, I would be the world’s richest teacher.  As it is, I’m just very frustrated.  Honestly, I want to say, do you think there’s some kind of trick here?  If the ACT was easier, why would anyone even take the SAT, when most colleges accept either?

The really unfortunate part of this whole business is that, regardless of your test preference, you really can’t take the test without preparing.  If you do, you’ll be at a disadvantage, because this time, everyone else really is doing it.  You can check a prep book out of the library and learn most of what a tutor like me would tell you, if you’re smart and a quick learner.  Or you can pay someone to explain it to you and drill you on the concepts.  Either way, though, you cannot possibly get your highest score by taking the test cold.  There’s just too much psychology involved now; the test writers have to keep upping the ante as tutors uncover more of their secrets, and now the experience has so much cross and double-cross that it feels like a spy novel.

More reviews below . . .

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