And one more thing...oh, and one more....

This week I was sent to my "encore" meeting, where I receive "training" about various things. So far, at these meeting they have gone over the various software things that are required for the inordinate amount of testing that must be done for first grade. These tests are intended (I think) to make sure that no teacher can slack off, and all the kids get moved along. They are also, probably unintentionally robbing me of the desire to teach. You see, there are 7 tests, for each of the 22 kids, which are one minute long. In that one minute, the kid demonstrates whether or not s/he is competent at a particular required skill. If during that one minute they are deemed not competent, then they are required to be "Progress Monitored." Which, as best as I can figure out right now, means that they are going to be continually tested to see if they're making progress.

This of course requires intervention, for which time is scheduled each day, where no active teaching goes on, only intervention with those students who need it. The rest of the students are to be doing activities that can be done independently and quietly. Now the intervention, to me, is pretty much what first grade is about. Taking them from where they are, and devising strategies to get them further along the path. I have some ideas about what that looks like, and some intervention strategies that just might work, but I never have time to implement them because there is this computer program that has interventions built in, plus additional interventions to use, so I'm compelled to use that as my intervention, rather than the intervention I would prefer. So, you see, the intervention is intervening on my intervention....Oh, the horror!

And then on Friday, during encore, we were introduced to "one other thing" that we must do, via a "test." and some type of computer generated intervention plan. This would be the "Behavior Module." I'm not sure what this really means, but I think I document behavior, put it in the computer, and the behavior plan is written for me, complete with teacher instructions about how to carry this out. So, you see, all that education that I got, the MS, the additional 30 hours....needless, the computer will tell me how to teach and as long as I follow what it says, don't vary from the 1's and 0's, I'm pretty sure I'll turn out excellent students.

I was told, seriously, "This program sees what is needed and you can print out a worksheet to address that issue, it requires no thought, just click and print." Wow...seriously? That's the kind of education I set out to provide?

As you can guess, I'm philosophically bent out of shape. I don't know how I'll bet bent back into shape, but I did ask for some training on the software, so if I can at least figure out how to use it, I can make an effort to fit it into my style of teaching. I'm not opposed to these kinds of helps, but I am opposed to thinking that there is a prescription that a computer could generate that will solve all of a child's learning and behavior needs. Geez, if it were that easy, we could just turn on the television, set them in front of it and....wait, didn't we already try that?