This past spring I did a series about the reality of testing. It's not completely autobiographical, though it is mostly, but everything in it happened at my school during testing at some point recently. And the way Mr. Fitz looks near the end is the way I felt by time I'd finished testing my students.
I think when people who are no longer around schools during testing time think of testing, they remember taking tests when they were youngsters. There were no high-stakes. No pressure. The test came once a year and was gone. You hardly even noticed it. That was before the test became everything. Before computer based testing. Before testing took up weeks of the school year and changed the schedule for days on end, making actual teaching and learning impossible.
In some ways, this series is to educate people like that, who think that's still how testing is, so why are teachers complaining? We aren't just being whiny. It's really this insane. And stressful.
I hadn't posted the whole series yet here on this blog, but when a certain teacher group asked people to post about the theme "I Test Under Duress..." it seemed like the perfect opportunity. So here is the Mr. Fitz "I Test Under Duress" series. It's all based on the reality...
