Transition

I am sitting in my little studio apartment with its barely there view of the Santa Monica mountains on my cheerful, yellow sofa for one of the last times. In a few days my meager possessions will be in storage and I’ll be renting a guest room from some dear friends in West LA for the summer. I am excited, looking forward to the move, feeling just dandy about not having my own things for a while; the move has been long awaited and is temporary until I sort out my life in L.A. and find a permanent home.  And yet, as I type these words, I trip over the word “permanent.” 

Permanence.  I have been looking for that for a while now. Each move is my “last move,”  I tell myself. “Just once more and then this wanderlust, this wandering eye will be calmed…”

I spent the last two weeks traveling.  I went up the coast of California to wine country, hung out at a Catholic mission in Santa Barbara, and flew to Brooklyn for five glorious, hard walked days.  I’ve been slightly depressed lately: finishing up my PhD coursework and taking my exams has taken its toll on me. Traveling was a welcome release, I lifted the stop valve and all the stress of the preceding months evaporated into the shifting winds of my journeying.  Yet, it was a welcome release in another, less expected way as well. 

Traveling was a release from permanence. These states of being– moving and staying– are like opposing magnetic poles that govern my heart and actions.  As much as I crave sitting still, being quiet, deepening relationships and my knowledge of the place where I am, I simultaneously yearn to be in perpetual motion, discovering the new, and seeking the unknown. 

Why?

Eating a slice of italian sausage pizza purchased at Two Boots in the West Village, I walked down the street pondering this question.  Why couldn’t I just stay put? Or– like my friend Sue– give up the stability and live a life of perpetual travel? Why am I constantly yearning for both, putting my emotions at the mercy of this impossible conundrum? I don’t have the fullest answer for this life question, but in the West Village that day I knew that there was something about that experience that helps certain parts of me unfold in ways that can only happen in that place. 

When I hit the streets of New York I feel alive, emboldened, tough, hot and smart. I love the person I become there.  Yet, in Los Angeles other parts of me emerge.  I become soft and sweet: wide open like the Pacific ocean on a grey morning and sunshiney  like the rose bushes punctuating the alleys of Venice Beach. Neither experience is replicable anywhere else and I need both to survive. On planes I am reflective and prayerful.  In Europe I am savvy. In the Middle East I am shy and wondorous. In India I am adventurous and sheisty.  Every place I go I tap into another layer of my chameleon-like self and I can’t imagine life without the richness, the surprise, the utter fulfillment of that experience.  Travel, then, is about myself. 

But permanence? Permanence is others. Permanence is getting to revel in my mother’s presence, in the mundane ins and outs of her daily routine, the way she lifts her fork to her mouth, the way she sighs at the dogs and laughs at my father.  Permanence is looking at a friend and realizing that she has three small wrinkles at the corner of her right eye that I have never noticed before.  Permanence is loving that point when your best friend is in a terrible mood and you can lie quietly together, without speaking, knowing that you’ll get up in an hour or two and make her a coffee with two sugars and a dash of cream, just the way she likes it. 

How do I give either up? How is it possible to live with out these poles, these tensions, these ways of moving towards myself and then back outwards towards others? 

And so, on this quiet morning of transition: On this morning that I drove my dear friend to the airport for his flight to Paris, unsure of whether I will see him in a year or in five; on this morning after a week in NYC that convinced me I have to leave California and move back to the east coast–but can’t for a least a few more years; on this morning after realizing my mother is in a tough spot and that I should spend as much time with her in North Carolina as possible; on this morning when I pack up my possessions to leave my very first Los Angeles apartment for a brand new life; on this morning….

On this morning, I realize that life is never solved, full of tensions and contradictions, and always, always, in transition.

The new “teacher quality” test

This morning’s LA Times article about Arne Duncan’s (US secretary of education) visit to California was disturbing. For several reasons: the first because Duncan said that California is a disaster (agreed), the second because regardless of his opinion very little will change (voters shot down measures that could have allocated money to schools), and the third for this series of quotes:

Duncan said that although stopping teacher layoffs and reducing class sizes are important, the money must also be used to drive reform, such as using student achievement data to evaluate teacher effectiveness and turning around the most troubled schools.

“Investing in the status quo is not going to move the ball down the field,” Duncan told hundreds of people at a San Francisco School Alliance benefit luncheon.

He also said the state’s reluctance to use student achievement data to evaluate teachers — rewarding the best and getting rid of the worst — was “mind-boggling.”

“The data doesn’t tell the whole truth, but the data doesn’t lie,” he said. “This firewall between students and teachers is bad for children and bad for education.” 

Let me get this as straight as I can: Duncan seems to think that although cutting teacher’s positions (in LAUSD 3,000 teachers have received pink slips alone) is bad…. it is WORSE that we are not using test scores to evaluate teacher performance. 

Crickets chirping…..

In what universe does it make sense that a child could score well on a test if he or she is sitting in a severely overcrowded classroom? I have seen middle school classrooms with 40 students in them… what happens when 3,000 teachers lose their jobs?

Ok, let’s talk achievement scores and teacher quality.  Primarily, this line of reasoning is based on flawed thinking that the tests themselves are adequate assessment of what a child knows.  As educational research and teacher anecdotal evidence consistently demonstrates, these standardized assessments are poorly designed and often test a child’s ability TO TAKE A TEST.  Rarely do they assess the following: intellectual curiosity, the ability to make a logical argument, an ability to explain how you know what you know, the ability to write creatively and use varied vocabulary, artistic and musical talent, bilingualism, physical fitness and health awareness, an understanding of ethics, the interpersonal skills to work effectively in groups or manage people, a deep understanding of histories, cause and effect and multiple perspectives on the same event, or a familiarity with a breadth of world literature, how to conduct a scientific observation and collect useful data, or how to apply mathematical skills to an engineering problem.  

What they DO assess are: ability to effectively eliminate two wrong answers so that you can guess which of the remaining two are the right answer, how to pick out details from a supplied paragraph, and how to sit still for an hour and a half and hold a pencil. 

Ok, perhaps I exaggerate, but as a former teacher, teacher educator, assessment designer, and school testing coordinator, I gotta tell ya…. not much! 

WHY are K-12 standardized tests so poorly designed? Well, money of course.  It is much easier to design an assessment that you can feed through a bubble machine and calculate the percentage of right answers than it is to pay professional educators to read and evaluate essays, watch student presentations, sift through portfolios, or evaluate group dynamics.  We leave that kind of assessment to sophisticated fields like architecture, or business. 

But Christine, you say, if the tests are so lame, why can’t the kids pass them? Because they have taken over education… literally, months of schooling are devoted to drilling and killing multiple choice strategies to students. Because they are boring and killing kids’ brains. Because education has become a watered down version of a factory line up and nobody’s brain grows in that kind of environment.  Because are kids aren’t learning, aren’t developing, aren’t growing and certainly aren’t being prepared to be competitive in the global economy with new, important training in areas like language and group dynamics, but are instead sitting in overcrowded, hectic classrooms with tired teachers who are on the verge of losing their jobs. 

The drop out rate in LAUSD is around the 25% mark.  With a number that high, are we really still thinking that it is the KIDS’ faults that they don’t want to be in school?

Mr. Duncan, please. Do not tie teachers’ “quality” to how well their students score on bad tests.  Don’t patronize us by saying that losing teachers is bad, but scoring poorly on a standardized test is worse. The answer here, folks, isn’t to try to rachet up that factory line up to get kids to pass bad tests… let’s try something else. 

If you want to know how teachers are doing… give them a chance to succeed. Give them 25 kids in a room, all the resources they need, decent and effective professional development, and assessments that truly measure multiple forms of intelligence, global preparedness, and intellectual growth.  Look at schools that are high functioning… look at tony elite east coast prep schools, funky do-it-yourself mountain schools, university lab schools, and progressive urban schools…. check out how they “test” their kids. Glean some ideas.  Then, FUND those ideas and give teachers and students a chance to get excited about learning again.

Reminder!

Friends,

While I have been busy with my writing and exams and haven’t had time to blog lately, I do regularly update the activism page with upcoming announcements and issues of concern– so check frequently!

Besos,

Christine