Establish the Objective

“Student learning objectives” are the specific skills and knowledge a student needs to be able to demonstrate ____.

a.)   proof of understanding, hence the advancement of knowledge;      

b.)   to please her parents’ and teachers’;

c.)   in order to help his state qualify for a bigger piece of the federal funds awarded to K-12 public education system;

d.)   student progress, and the potential efficacy of every teacher and school by our political system;

e.)   all of the above.

Due to the rising emphasis on bureaucratic bench marks and standardized-testing based accountability, teachers are increasingly citing frustrations over having to teach to a test and/or rigid curriculum guidelines.  What many fail to recognize, however, is that the method of instruction and interaction undertaken in the learning process is ultimately up to the assigned teacher. By determining what result you as the teacher are looking for, and deciding on the facts/information required to demonstrate comprehension of the lesson on the part of the student, you can devise the method of achieving the desired results which both satisfies one’s professional conscience and the demands of the test. With the use of limited access to internet sources, the subject matter being discussed can be broadened to include related facts and materials as supplemental information that provides the students with information which will hopefully make the topic not only more interesting but more relatable, and by that connection making it more readily retained.

(Having established this objective, I do want to emphasize the point of limited access as a controlled area of approved source material. The use of such productive controls reduces the seemingly irresistible opportunity for students to use the internet for athletic shoe shopping. And as current standardized tests have yet to utilize an essay aimed at definitively answering the Nike v. Adidas question, it is safe to argue the advisability of its use.)

Furthermore, a greater reliance on such technology would also aid in helping to increase the overall productivity of the class room environment as an unmentioned and very under estimated value of online projects and submittal would be that of limiting the spread of germs and viruses-- hardcopy submissions not protected by a sneeze guard and inherently demand the presence of Typhoid Marys. In addition, the student benefit of then being able to improve one’s work by utilizing the teacher’s suggestions and corrections, so as to develop a stronger piece than that of the original submission, would make it more viable to have such corrections adopted for work included in a student’s portfolio of their academic career. And as the political objective expressed in numerous articles about educational reform is to make high school graduates “ready for college and career”, and though I am at a loss to identify even one career that would require only a high school diploma. Let us more accurately attempt to make high school graduates ready for college and the workplace-- a workplace where pictures of the menu items are not required to be put on the cash registers keys, or where making correct change for a customer is not a daunting challenge, and where the concept of being at work is an extension of expected class room behavior where one focuses on the task at hand with their cell phone off until break time.

 In a political climate which supports the double speak of a new educational renaissance and the virulent demand of “doing more with less,” one is left to wonder if the inmates have taken over the asylum. As politicians focus on national, state and local standards that form the guide lines of academic expectation, teachers are left to structure a curriculum which teaches not only to a test, but to the foundational needs of their students as well. The challenge will be to find and retain those up to the task.