{"id":19130,"date":"2013-06-18T11:30:21","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T15:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=19130"},"modified":"2013-07-30T11:29:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T15:29:07","slug":"classroom-contemplations-the-most-important-day-of-the-school-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/06\/18\/classroom-contemplations-the-most-important-day-of-the-school-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Classroom Contemplations: The Most Important Day Of The School Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Miami-Dade<\/a>

Valerie Everett \/ Flickr<\/p>

Miami-Dade teacher Jeremy Glazer says all signs indicate a day without students is the most important day of the school year.<\/p><\/div>\n

Editor’s note: Names of teachers and students have been changed.<\/em><\/p>\n

A week ago Thursday — the end of the year for students — brought with it the usual catharsis of the last day.<\/p>\n

There were hugs and tears as well as exchanges of notes and cards, gifts and promises, and words of wisdom and encouragement. \u00a0I shared summer reading recommendations with students who reciprocated with book, movie, and music suggestions for me. \u00a0That final day was a culmination of the relationships we’ve built and the work we’ve been doing together all year.<\/p>\n

The next day, Friday, was the last day for teachers. \u00a0It\u2019s always the day when schools seem most empty. \u00a0They feel like a hive once the bees have gone, a useless shell. \u00a0Friday is the day we finish grading, clean out our classrooms, and take care of all the administrative trivia (book inventories, etc.) that keep schools going but aren\u2019t the meat of what we do.<\/p>\n

Thursday is the kind of day that makes me feel most like a teacher, and Friday the kind of day that makes me feel least like one.<\/p>\n

But the State of Florida says I have it backwards. \u00a0Friday, the day without children, was actually the most important day in the final judgment of how I and every other public school teacher in Florida, performed this year.<\/p>\n

You see, that’s the day the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores came out.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This year, the biggest single factor in our teacher evaluations is based on student test scores. Those other parts of the job the first 179 days — lesson plans, engaging pedagogy, classroom management, parent contact\u2014are small pieces, but test scores make up fully half of our evaluation.<\/p>\n

Florida is not alone.<\/p>\n

Teacher evaluations throughout the country are becoming more \u201cdata driven\u201d in very destructive ways. \u00a0We are so entranced with the idea that we can measure every little effect teachers have on students through standardized test scores, that we\u2019ve decided to privilege these \u00a0over everything else. \u00a0We\u2019ve chosen to ignore the things we know matter.<\/p>\n

Think back to the teacher you remember the most. \u00a0Do you remember your standardized test scores that year? \u00a0I doubt it. \u00a0Yet now we pretend that we cannot know the good teachers until we see the scores of their students.<\/p>\n

We are missing what\u2019s most important about teaching when the day FCAT scores are released is the most important of the year. We are missing the human connections that make students into better readers and writers and, more importantly, better people.<\/p>\n

They also keep teachers in the profession.<\/p>\n

There are many other ways to know who the good teachers are.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a simple one: \u00a0Pay attention on Thursday, not Friday. \u00a0Go to our schools on the last day and see the teachers who are standing in the midst of all the children, given last pats on the back and encouragement, giving and getting hugs, smiles, and tears.<\/p>\n

Those are the good ones.<\/p>\n

But, unfortunately, we\u2019re paying attention to the wrong day.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Glazer is a Miami-Dade teacher writing about classroom issues for StateImpact Florida. Want to sound off on something Glazer has written? Want to suggest a topic for him? Send us an email at Florida@stateimpact.org and put \u201cClassroom Contemplations\u201d in the subject line.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: Names of teachers and students have been changed. A week ago Thursday — the end of the year for students — brought with it the usual catharsis of the last day. There were hugs and tears as well as exchanges of notes and cards, gifts and promises, and words of wisdom and encouragement. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":19131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[841,1019,1006],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19130"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19133,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19130\/revisions\/19133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}