What I (Re-)Learned From My 25th Year of Teaching...

That I Should Have Never Forgotten 

(Part 1)

I am a teacher because I care about kids, not because I care about test scores

It seems like such a “no-brainer” but it is amazing how easy it is for teachers to lose sight of why they started teaching. I would be hard-pressed to find a teacher that began their teaching career because they had an overwhelming desire to increase test scores. Almost any teacher (at least any good teacher) will say they got into teaching because they care about kids and they want to have a positive influence on their lives. But in the world in which we live today, kids often blur into numbers and check marks in data tables. We classify kids by test scores and diagnostic assessments. We accumulate data and put points on graphs and draw lines to determine the group where a student belongs. We determine whether students are above certain lines or below, their percentile rankings and the number of standards they are “proficient in.” We analyze our data and beat ourselves up over the students’ lack of performance and agonize over how to move student A above the next line and how to get student B above any line and how to increase the number of students above a seemingly arbitrary “proficient” line. All the while we lose sight of the fact that student A and student B are real people with real challenges and complications and real needs that extend beyond getting above level three on the state assessment. 

At times, I lost sight of all that this year. I don’t know yet how many of my students will pass the state assessment (the politicians’ ultimate measure of my success), but I know in my heart that I was not as successful as I could have been, and it has nothing to do with test results, assessment scores, grades or points on a scatter plot. I did not build the kind of relationships with my students that I always hope for. I don’t believe I was a failure, but I did not achieve the level of success that I expect from myself and that I first aspired to when I began this career. At times I lost sight of what was most important and I allowed the data points to block the humanity of my students. At times I spent too much time worrying about curriculum and grades and not enough time worrying about lives. Sometimes I saw numbers when I should have seen faces. And sometimes I simply lacked the courage to let the needs of the students trump the less important mandates of the state and my district bosses. I focussed too much on checking off boxes and jumping through hoops that caused tunnel vision to the academic “needs” of the students, instead of meeting the genuine needs of my students to be encouraged, to feel safe, to be respected, to be listened to, to know that there is an adult at school that cares about who they are, not just about their performance.

I pray that year 26 will be better. I pray that God will grant me wisdom and courage to be the person I believe I should be, regardless of the cost to me, and that I will always be intent on doing what is truly best for my students. I pray that my students will leave my class, every day and at the end of the year, knowing, without question, that I care about them and have their best interest at heart, regardless of what any numbers might say. I pray that I will not need to re-learn this lesson from year 25!