ā...when adults responsible for childrenās well-being tell them they canāt go to the bathroom because the toilet flushing makes too much noise...ā I was a second year teacher working in my first year at a new school when I made a decision that has haunted me ever since. I was serving as a proctor when two-and-a-half hours into an FCAT testing session a girl asked me if she could go to the bathroom. I wanted to say āyesā but I was trying to be a good employee and follow the rules set by administration that nobody was allowed to leave the room for any reason short of nuclear war or natural disaster until the session was done. I told her ānoā. Ten minutes later I noticed her face was bright red and she had teared up a bit. Then I noticed that her uniform skirt was wet and I saw the urine dripping and pooling up on the floor beneath her desk. I knew that being anything less than extreme tactfulness at that point would attract the attention of all the other kids in the room. When I made eye contact with her I could instantly tell that was her biggest fear as well. I made a motion to her to let her know that I understood and to just stay put until I could figure out a distraction. Luckily she was in the back and there were only ten minutes left in the session. As it ended, I was in the front trying my best to keep the attention on me while shuffling everybody else out of the room as quickly as possible. It worked and nobody else caught on to the puddle on the floor that would surely would have made the situation infinitely worse. I robbed somebody of their humanity, dignity, and decency on that day. It remains a low point for me but it also has been a huge catalyst in the development of my own philosophy towards what we do and how we treat our students in schools. Teachers make many decisions that impact others everyday, and since none of us have yet achieved perfection, its stands to reason that not all of those decisions are going to be good ones. When we allow ourselves to be led astray from what is really important though, the chances of making thoughtless decisions increases. As my own son quickly approaches the day when I will send him off to school, I have been agonizing over what to do when it comes time to participate in the standardized testing process. In short, I do not want him to have anything to do with it. This is much easier said than accomplished though when considering motivations and possible consequences of opting out. The main moral dilemma I have revolves around the motivation that I feel to opt out. I do not want it to be a self-serving act that I partake in to further my own ideology at the cost of my son's well being. It is possible that forcing the issue could cause him more duress than him actually taking the tests. However, the flip side of that would be allowing him to participate in a process that substantial evidence shows is fundamentally flawed. From a very human element, test scores hold no benefit to those who take them. The scores are used as a cost effective method for the tracking and placement of individual students but the benefit by and large goes to school districts, state education departments, and politicians. Nothing in the list of benefits includes making students more thoughtful, empathetic, critical, creative, or many of the other traits that I strive to develop in the classroom on a daily basis and would want my son to display. Tests are also increasingly being designed and used to hold teachers accountable. While I have absolutely no issue with holding teachers to an extremely high standard, the link between test scores and meaningful teaching is dubious at best. The consequence of this drive to produce test scores has caused many teachers to focus on how those scores will affect them personally and not on what it means in the classroom. I have sat through plenty of ridiculous faculty meetings in which the topic of discussion was āsterilizingā classrooms so that posters or sounds such as toilets would not distract students. There have been many debates on whether we should Ā allow students to read or if we should just make them sit silently because reading would motivate them to perhaps finish with the knowledge that they could perhaps be entertained by a book if they had free time. I have seen students being piled up with homework requiring them to work through endless test prep workbooks and complete absurd writing prompts. I have seen teachers in tears and worked up into fits of yelling and threatening their students on test days. Perhaps, most disappointing is that many students have been worked up into believing that these scores may actually have a serious impact on their futures. The parents who wrote this letter (http://dianeravitch.net/2012/08/31/texas-parent-says-count-me-out-of-state-testing/) have made a courageous act against the absurdity. I am sure that it was not an easy choice for them and that they too struggled with the moral dilemma of what to do. While my son has not entered school yet, I would like to think that I will have the fortitude to make such a decision myself when the time comes. Ā
