Chets Creek Elementary
February 2005 Book of the Month
Testing Miss Malarkey
By Judy Finchler, Illustrated by Kevin O’Malley
“The synergy of many leads to the Power of One.”
It arrives to Chets Creek Elementary in an armored car, secured in an iron, pad-locked box and given a police escort to Counselor McCall’s office. There, it is then put under lock and key and closely guarded by CIA Agent Karaitis. It is the FCAT and from the moment it shows up, Principal Phillips and everyone else around the school starts to act a little weird (really, it doesn’t even have to show up. Just the mention of it gets most people visibly excited). Although the students are told that “The Test” isn’t that important, it nonetheless seems to have a strange effect on all of the adults:
The entire 4th grade ELA team begins to speak in colorful language, telling anyone who will listen about their favorite people or places to go, or maybe detailing exactly what they might do if one day they walked by Besty’s copy machine and found a sign that read, “Free Copies!” “Wow!” “Hey, if you want to hear a great story, just sit down a while and listen to this because I got a whopper for you!” are just some of the ways that Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Chascin or Mrs. Willy or Mr. Crews may try to engage you.
And the excitement is equally as high with their 3rd and 5th grade counterparts. In fact, so much so that it’s rather difficult to talk with them because every so often in the conversation they interrupt you to have you identify exactly the main idea of the topic currently being discussed or ask you to give a brief summary of the conversation. Why just yesterday, Mrs. Constande was seen pulling Mrs. Shall into her classroom to conference with her about the NCEE Writing Rubric books while Mrs. Howard, Ms. Young and Mrs. Shannon stood by taking notes (Mrs. Lehane was there too, at first, but she kept interrupting with stories about her kids, so was sent off to find Mrs. Rossignol to work on their bulletin board): “Now, who is the main character? What was the plot? What would you infer about the author considering that she writes that most students are not able to achieve a level 5…? How do you know that it takes place in the summer even though that is not explicitly stated…?”
As for the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade math teachers…well, let’s just say that they are right on date and keeping pace with their ELA partners in the excitement department. Just try to have a conversation with any one of them that goes more than two sentences without the words, “number sense” or “clusters” or “decomposing” or “regrouping” coming up! I’m not positive, but I think that they all talk the same, crazy language because they are all apparently peasants from Russia? And when they are not making tally marks to keep up with…well, everything, they are running around the school asking “Big Questions” and “inquiring” about everything under the sun (including the sun!). Not only were Mr. Ruark and Mrs. Phillips observed proposing the question, “What if, instead of walking up the front stairs to class, we ran up the back stairs sideways carrying a student on our back….”, but they communicated it to Mrs. Anderson, Mrs. Sani and Mrs. Driscoll who immediately inferred several possible solutions while Mrs. Douglas, Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Moodispaugh, Ms. Tillis and Ms. Russell were all using varied instruments to test the hypotheses. And, of course, the craziest thing about all that is that science isn’t even really on the test!
That’s the “weird thing” about Chets Creek: unlike most school’s, that tend to go into a complete panic around test time, with teachers biting their nails, everyone changing the way they teach, and the principal totally going bonkers, the adults here just seem to somehow be empowered by The Test (well, maybe the principal does go just a little bit bonkers…). The teachers at CCE recognize that the teaching strategies that they use are the most powerful in the profession and that, armed with the lessons that come from these, their students have no fear during The Test. Therefore, the teachers have no fear.
It is an inspiring thing to watch while every teacher in the school, from Kindergarten on up, embraces the awesome responsibility of teaching our children to answer and ask questions that go far, far beyond The Test and continue to do so until the last school bell of the year rings. This synergy of many turns into what might be called the “Power of One;” not one in the sense of an individual or a single person, but one in the way that a well tuned team works together or a school of fish swim in the same direction. The power comes from the support that we all give to one another during this time of the year and beyond. Not only are we all here for the same purpose, to reach the same end, but it is essential to us that each and every person in our learning community reach this place together. The Test, for us, is merely verification that we are, indeed, on the right path. By the time it arrives in its pad-locked box, Chets Creek teachers have done all that they can possibly do and so truly have no worries. They hold all of the power. In fact, they are normally forging ahead to ensure that, come the end of the year, there truly are no children left behind.
The power of our leaning community is most evident during Test Time. But it is truly present all year long. At any point in the year, colorful language flows from our ELA teachers, conferences and questioning take place on a daily basis, and the math teachers are equally as geeky in August and May as they are in March! There is never a person in the school who is not focused on providing the best all around education possible to each and every one of our children. This is the “Power of One” that defines, nurtures, strengthens and sustains us. This is what continues to carry us forward toward greater and greater heights.