Been a Long Time... From the Mouths of 4th Graders

     It has been a long time since I have written in this blog, but a friend and colleague persuaded me to tell this tale. I'm not looking for answers, but they are of course welcome.

     As I embark on another school year, I can’t help but be a bit nostalgic for the days gone by. I’m by no means a newbie to teaching, but I’m not a seasoned veteran either. My career only knows the NYS tests in some form or another. I can’t think back to a time when teachers really drove curriculum and catered student instruction to student needs, but I can think back to more freedom and project-based learning to really extend concepts beyond the classroom. I am now my sixth year of blogging with my fourth graders, and this is one of the few learning tools that I simply will not give up without a fight. To teach them how to use the Internet in a good, responsible way and to teach them to actually use technology really makes me feel good. Nobody is born into this world tech-savvy despite when people tell me that kids are ‘naturally good with it.” That simply is not the truth. We must show them the way through cyber-morality lessons within their digital citizenship. But I digress.

     A lot of what we do in fourth grade centers around vocabulary. We teach vocabulary. We teach how to figure out vocabulary whether through context clues, or a dictionary; both online and print. In every year since I have started it, I have assigned a blog assignment that asks students to use one word to describe fourth grade so far this year, and I typically assign it in the second or third month of school. I like to see their impressions and to see which students challenge themselves with more sophisticated vocabulary. In the past 5 years I have gotten words like “exciting”, “rollercoaster“, “great“, “adventurous“, and “unnpredictible. “ It has been called “amazing“, “fun“, and “brilliant.“ On several occasions it has been referred to as “awesome”, and “super.”

     My class this year, while still using words like “awesome” and “fun”, has used additional different words to describe their fourth grade experiences. Words like “busy”. “time consuming”, “constantly working”, and “challenging” are now in student blog articles. Those are enough to concern any educator, but the two that seem to raise flags more than any of the others are “overwhelming” and “intense”. They mention how there is little time to transition from one activity to another. They feel the pressure constraints that we as educators are feeling, and to be honest I feel terrible about it. I have always tried my best to shield my students from the pressures of the state tests while getting them ready, but with the onslaught of Common Core and cut scores that put many students in failing grade categories there is more pressure than ever. One of my students is writing a realistic fiction story about a boy that is worried about failing the state math test? What are we doing?

      I’m glad that parents are questioning the new curriculum and assessments, and they should. Their children, our children are our most precious, prized things in all of the world. We must question what is happening to them. I don’t want my students, or my own children, to look back at their elementary school years and recall the intense overwhelming time that they had. I want them to remember the awesome, fun times. I want learning to be meaningful and challenging instead of being “time consuming” and “constantly busy.” I just want to teach.