What happens when SBAC starts

Someone thought it was a feasible idea to have three job interviews, SBAC performance task testing, and a grade-level field trip in one week.

My name is Ms. Cash, and I have a scheduling problem.

But you know what? These students. They have jumped into the second-year SBAC pilgrimage with the sobriety of Aeneas founding Rome. We their teachers and administrators have told them again and again that they have an intellectual lineage to forebear for themselves, and they have risen to the task with barely a stopover in the Carthage of testing anxiety and general goofiness.

As I circulated the classroom today during four hours of active test-monitoring and recovered from only half-a-dozen technology-induced heart attacks, I noticed that between hiccup attacks and giggle fits; slouching in seats and wearing sweaters on heads; chewing on plastic baggies for earbuds and (in)advertantly humming to the chagrin of seat-mates; students were deeply engaged by the eighth grade performance task material.

Most of them. Some of them were the kind of engaged you find yourself when tied to an anchor and dropped over the side of a boat.

This test is difficult. I would have sweated a bit if I were given it the freshman year of college. Watching students have to work even to cipher the instructions for the writing tasks makes me wonder: what is it exactly we want students to be able to do? Common Core is a lofty vision, a noble one. But is it realistic? Lesson planning with the standards is a subtle mix of ambiguous, challenging, stretching, and deeply gratifying. But testing with the standards sometimes feels like merely a heroic way to die.

The lower grades have taken six days to finish this first-half of SBAC. I've warned my little Trojans it could take some time to reach our destination. Oh, and bribed them with mints and threatened them with grammar homework.

Only time-- lots of time--will tell whether we all make it to the end with the same courage which we've begun with.