When asked "How's it going?" I often find myself responding with "It goes! It's not stopping!" When I reflect on this response and this chapter in the book I am astonished by the amount of survival in my life. I find myself simply holding on for the ride of life. Always assessing where I am in a measurement world. Compared to where I want to be or where I used to be. Sometimes this refection provides great encouragement for what I am capable of doing and what I have accomplished, but really who am I fooling. Life is not meant to be lived by measurement, it is meant to be lived with a focus on what is possible!
As I was reading about how we shouldn't limit our possibilities by trying to reach a target I thought about my photography job last year. As a photographer we were always being told that we needed to do certain poses and make certain sells. I always got so frustrated when my manager would make me focus of the the amount of the sell rather than making sure the customer got exactly what they wanted. Little did they know, but I typically pushed those sells numbers out of my head and did actually focus on what was best for the customer and I typically either reached or exceeded what what expected of me. I let go of the measuring and did what I needed to do.
The same goes for education. Nothing bothers me more than being forced to teach to the test. When emphases is put more on test scores than achievement and learning I feel that education puts limits on what a child is capable of doing, what teachers are capable of teaching. Ensuring that good teachers have the chance to do what they do best without having to focus on making sure that their students achieve a specific score is invaluable.Photo fromhttp://www.youreducationmatters.com/images/taking%20test.jpg
This is what happens when we let non-educators or managers who haven't spent any time in the classroom in the last 10-years dictate what we need to do. When I taught 6th grade in a low performing school I worked with the math teacher and our students and looked for ways to make everything much more exciting (like making PSA commercials for our language arts class) and when our students tested better because they cared, we "got away" with doing less of the required stuff. Nothing succeeds like success. I've always found my best allies to be my students desire to not do what everyone else has to do. They'll work harder if they think they are getting away with something. It's funny how that works.
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