The Never-Ending List

I’ll admit it: I struggle with arrogance. After all, I’m only a perfect nine. I know I have flaws. Yet I make the most of what I have.

When revising my bucket list, I was initially stumped. Consider this: I’ve traveled around the world, driven cross-country, been published, happy, in love, thinner, younger, in good health and as far as rich is concerned, money’s what I make of it and as long as I’m making enough to pursue happiness, I’m rich.

So what drives me to write, paint, read and wake up in the morning with a sense of purpose?  Since I’ve resigned from teaching, my quest is to make all of my social interactions and art teachable moments.

Given the sorry state of the world, I have a myriad of things from which to choose. The aspect I love the most about teaching is research. Whichever objectives I want to know more about, I research and transform that information into an engaging lesson. That elevates the act of teaching to the art of teaching. Unfortunately art was one of the first things sacrificed to the high-stakes testing moneymaking monster.

Yet now I’m free to teach whatever I please. To follow my passions and shed light on the darkness of misinformation and misogyny, so I’ll NEVER run out of material or motivation.  Just watching twenty minutes of the news can send me into an intellectual frenzy.  I do some of my best improvisational spoken word, addressing the latest stupid utterance by a republican politician, or so-called Texan educational reformist, or restrictions to women’s healthcare, or latest mass killings where apparently it was the person doing the killing, not the weapon.

Regardless of the rant, I feel obligated to come across as an educated, empowered voice. Y’know the saying about how we should know history so we won’t be doomed to repeat the past? Well, history pisses me off! History tells me that minority women have been and continue to be beasts of burden, suffering in silence. Whichever misogynistic acts are unleashed against women, at least double it for minority women.

The only way I can think to help balance out the universe is to produce a different narrative, a counter narrative, my own narrative. Through fictional characters in my novels or first person spoken word. The situation’s only going to improve if I help it along.

This isn’t some Miss America beauty pageant contestant’s fondest wish of ending world hunger. Nor is it the airing of a litany of gripes about how someone should do something about my complaints. My irritation is an accurate indicator that I need to do something with integrity about the situation.

When I resigned from teaching on Friday, March 29^th, 2014, I’d already finished teaching the entire Physics curriculum, I’d paid off all debt and I’d saved up some money. The icing on the cake was that I’d resigned on the eve of the administration of the most egregious standardized test to date: a 5-hour combined reading and writing test where students would receive a cold sack lunch delivered to their testing classroom to wolf down for 20 minutes then resume taking the test. No longer would I be obligated to assist the state of Texas in its institutionalized educational version of child abuse.

The following Monday and Tuesday, two different TV reporters interviewed me over my resignation in what they called my protest against standardized testing. I hadn’t thought of it as a protest, but I certainly do not disagree.

I told the reporters how creative teachers like me wanted to do more than use the scripted lessons and limited teaching techniques to educate students. Yet teachers who dare to be innovative get heavily biased negative evaluations, put on growth plans and then threatened to lose their jobs unless they slavishly follow the teaching-to-the test strategies.

Although many people don’t watch the 5 or 6 o’clock news or listen to news radio in the morning, my fellow teachers had heard about my actions. My former colleagues and my friends who taught at different schools all reported about the buzz I’d caused at their school. Many thought perhaps now something would change.

A month later, a third TV reporter contacted me. Again, the request was to interview me about the negative consequences of high-stakes testing. I told her that my resignation was old news. She agreed, but quickly added that I was the only teacher who would go on camera to talk about it. I declined that interview since I had nothing new to add, but I gave her a tip about another education protest scheduled for that day.

I don’t blame any of the inspired teachers who will not come forward. After all, teaching is challenging enough without the added retaliation they’d surely receive from school administrators if they spoke up. At the same time, imagine what would happen if the general public knew teachers’ narratives. Would parents allow their students to participate in those high-stakes tests? How many parents know that those high-stakes tests are NOT part of No Child Left Behind? How many parents know that this is a Texas initiative?

On April 14^th, 2014 I sat in on the Texas senate committee meeting on education. I witnessed our Texas senators grilling the test makers over the length of the infamous 5-hour reading/writing test. One senator pointed out that giving high school students a 5-hour exam was the equivalent of an academic and physical test. Another senator questioned why the test was five hours just to graduate from high school when students who wanted to go to college only took a 3-hour test.

The last expert on this panel was an education professor from Dallas who had monitored three high schools. She testified that the teachers who administered the test witnessed students losing stamina after three hours and bubbling in answers in the fifth hour without reading anything.

The results of this flawed test will reflect on the student, his/her teacher and the school. And for what? The generation of data? To close the poverty gap? To close the minority achievement gap? That data will be used against students, teachers and schools. Any school that has major academic needs will be punished for it. Can you imagine going to a hospital emergency room and not receiving medical help because you’re not already healthy?

So now that I’m no longer in the trenches, no longer financially dependent upon remaining silent out of fear of retaliation, I plan to write a fictionalized account about teaching within the toxic consequences of high-stakes testing or “the machine” as I like to call it.  I’ve already started doing a little research and have conducted some interviews. Yet, I need to finish my current novel before I can give this one the time and energy it deserves.

In the meantime, class is in session. There’s a life-altering lesson waiting to be learned.