It is teacher appreciation week. I know these things get dizzying after awhile. We have to keep these things straight and many times we don’t know we are celebrating a profession until the calendar on the wall tells us we are. We have secretary’s day, librarian day, counselor’s week, and custodian’s day. That’s just in the education field. All we have to do is multiply that by all of the professions and we soon realize that every day on the calendar celebrates something.

Of course, the ultimate irony is that we are administering the STAAR test during our appreciation week. Thanks Texas. A number of people ask what we would want for our week. As a high school teacher, I am accustomed to getting nothing from our students. I see them only 45 minutes a day, so a large part of that is understandable. Still, Starbucks cards go to my wife because I don’t drink coffee. Nick nacks are nice as well, but I really don’t need anything along those lines.

A lot of people talk about teacher pay and that is a big deal in some areas of the state. For me, it’s not that big of a deal. I earn a comfortable living and I don’t really want for anything. The biggest two issues are related. I want to be treated like a professional adult and I want state testing to go away. I’ve mentioned my wife before. When she needs to go to the doctor she goes to the doctor. When she needs to take time off for other things she takes time off. She doesn’t get read the riot act or made to jump through hoops to get that done. I once had to bring in a doctor’s note for missing a summer professional development workshop that occurred outside of our contracted days. My word wasn’t good enough.

All that being said, there can be no greater irony than giving out the state tests during our week of appreciation. It is a not so subtle nod from the state telling us that they don’t trust us collectively. Yes, it is important that we figure out what kids have learned so that we can work on helping those that haven’t mastered those skills. We don’t need to base accountability on it and we don’t need to pay faceless corporations more than a billion dollars to write those tests. We have smart people that can write those tests on their own.

When you take the pandemic into account, we have missed upwards of five weeks of instruction by administering the five high school STAAR tests, the SAT and PSAT, TSIA exam, and AP exams,. Any time you take those tests you also have to take benchmark tests, mock tests, and take a week or so out of regular instruction to do specially designed test preparation. We have three weeks of school after this week in most districts. So, you are asking teachers to teach 36 weeks worth of information and skills into 28 weeks. For the English exams it is 24 weeks.

Meanwhile, the general direction of education is to provide students with an authentic experience so they can connect their learning to real world experiences. It’s hard to get more unauthentic than a state test. This would be the greatest gift the state could give to teachers. It would greatly reduce our stress and maybe keep more of us in the profession for longer. Maybe it doesn’t compete with e jeans day pass or breakfast burrito in our mail box, but what could possibly compete with those things?