Test anxiety

On March 9,10, and 11, all the juniors in the state of Michigan will take a battery of tests. The first test they take will be the ACT, which is essentially a college entrance exam. The second day's test will be comprised of WorkKeys, which is an employment skills test, and the last day is the Michigan MME. Some secret formula of these three tests will determine if a school achieves something called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). That means a school has met the numerical benchmarks set by the federal law No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Test scores, graduation rates, and test day attendance all determine if a school makes AYP. If a school goes six years without making the numbers, all members of the teaching and administrative staff can be fired and the school can than be turned over to a private (and in Michigan, this means for-profit) management firm to run a charter school. My school is at this stage.

I will fill in the numbers and statistics later in the week, but at this moment, my level of anxiety is through the roof. There has not been a day this week that I have not cried. I can't sleep and if it's not junk food, my appetite has been non existent. I don't know what I would do if I lost my job. To be honest, my district is, from top to bottom, completely dysfunctional. In my 13 years, I have had seven superintendents, four principals, and five assistant principals. I have not been observed since 1999. At this point in my career, I have no clue if I am the least bit competent at my job. My ego says I'm doing a decent job, but my ego is a pathological liar. When I started teaching American Literature 10 years ago, there were no copies of either The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Grapes of Wrath in the school. I don't know what the hell students were reading. I went to every used bookstore in Metro Detroit and bought every copy I could. On one hand, I know that my culturally disparate students have probably benefited from reading those books and having a common American cultural touchstone with other American students, but have I done those works of art justice? I don't know.

We won't know if our school moves from failing to passing until July. Every pressing decision in my life is on hold, causing more anxiety. I try not to discuss it at work because we are all feeling the load on our shoulders. Even the agnostics and atheists (a party of at least one) on staff are probably saying silent prayers. If I don't discuss it at work, I don't discuss it at all. My isolation in a foreign land has become a locked closet. I know this is yet another issue to handle, but at the moment, I can barely handle laundry and dishes on the same day.

The news of the firing of all the teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island has not helped. There is much that we in Hamtramck have in common with Central Falls. High rate of poverty, a large population of non-English speakers, and a transient population are just a few of the issues we share. More on that later this week.

In the meantime, I will spend the weekend reading many wonderful narrative written by the students in AP Literature and Composition. These will lift my spirits, at least until Moday.