End of year testing rolls in like a thick, sludge. Creeping into every crevice. The air becomes stifling, congestive, suppressing. Energy transforms into a calm, hesitant quiet. Locked in place, rows, booklets, #2 pencils. Days become lack-luster and unnerving. Glaze eyed students, with their zombie gait, shuffle to an unknown classroom to regurgitate and bubble in a years worth of information in a few hours. Laborious proof they were present at some point in the school year. The fog is thick in the morning causing restless pupils to feel trapped and disenfranchised. Weary teachers to take pause on their lessons. Rethink their teaching at least for awhile as they pace the room, scanning constantly for any flaw in the system, any wandering eye, and rebel sound. It feels like incarceration and both student and teacher alike, no options or choice, settle in for a vapor filled obligation. Even after the last pencil is down and students are reading, the miasma lingers, almost freezing the masses in place, statuesque and still until a bell of freedom rings and shuffling feet replace the muteness.
A glimpse of sunlight peaks in as voices get louder and faces become more animated. The fog is lifting. Exhausted, teachers often fall back on videos or worksheets to fill the afternoon doldrums. But this brings about a sense of abandonment for students who isolated all morning, now need to feel connected and engaged in something other then a Disney film or cut-n-paste. They need to be mobile, interactive, and yes noisy. It is the noisiness that revitalizes both student and teacher on a uncommunicative day. Standing at the door I smile, greeting them, "Thank you for doing your best today. Lets get outside the box today." They mumble, minds still in the twilight. Not yet able to cut through the fog. Day one of two. They need to be energized and optimistic in order to shake off the shackles of standardized testing. To reintegrate into an atmosphere of community. They need to see that I am present, invested, that this necessary scrutiny of knowledge is worth it. That their learning is more then a booklet of questions.
Students settle in to their chairs, half the class quiet and reflective, the other briskly chatting slowly coming back to full swing. Fog lifting. "Are we watching a movie? Every one else is watching a movie." I smile, pulling out paper clips, bottle caps, binder clips and various accouterments from the makerspace. "We are all pioneers of engineering. We all love the newest trinket- fidget spinners included. Today lets be pioneers and design the next "cool" trend. Can you make your own version of a fidget spinner or something else just as addicting? Use anything you can find and tinker, build, redesign, create, construct something that can help you relax and stay focused through these days of standardized testing." Curious faces transform to intrigued expressions, I can hear the gears begin to turn, ideas coming to fruition. Restless postures become focused. "Let the games begin." Fog lifted. Engagement like low-beams does not get obscured in the haze if we provide the right torch. In a darkened space of mystery and steam, where even our most focused attention leaves us blind in the murk, a single lantern of inspiration, swinging back and forth in the fog is all we need to see through it. To leave it in our wake.
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