I sat

I'll keep writing about Intenstitute until the cows come home, I don't care. It's been over for a while, thankfully, but I still feel like, to really share my experience to a non-TFA, to really get to the meat and potatoes of what it is I do as a Corps Member and what I will do in the classroom, I need to go back to the roots of my experience - Intenstitute.

One of TFA's innumerable acronyms is ISAT - Institute Student Achievement Toolkit (which isn't quite as good as BARB - the Big Ass Red Book). The ISAT was our curriculum for the four weeks of Institute - it included our standards, objectives, calendar, curriculum scope and sequence, and pre- and post-assessment.

It was awful. First off, how am I supposed to be expected to teach prewriting strategies IN ONE DAY?? I don't think it's fair to the kids, or me, to expect that.

The objectives were way too broad; the curriculum far too expansive to cover in four weeks.

That was bad - but the worst, the WORST thing I hated about the ISAT was its assessment tool. Paragraphs were missing from long passages; typos were strewn throughout; hell, of 20 questions on the damn thing, I even missed a few, not because I cannot master Arizona's 8th grade reading and writing standards (or let's hope not), but because of the ways in which the questions were worded. If three of the multiple choice answers are ALL equally correct, which one were students supposed to pick?

I own my successes and missteps in Institute, and I know this. I am not making excuses. But when you, and your students, are measured by such a shitty standard, how can I perform?

Case in point: characterization. On this objective in the ISAT pre-test, 47% of students mastered it. On the midterm, 82% did. Wonderful, real success. However, on the ISAT final, after touching on characterization twice more and in review, only 73% mastered the objective. Umm...that's not accurately reflecting student, or by extension, my progress.

Parts of plot: 27% on the pre-test, 93% (!) on the midterm, 45% on the post-test.

Maybe I am making excuses; after all, I will have to deal with standardized tests that are out of my control as long as I am an educator.

Or maybe, as everyone at Agua Fria complained about it, the document was flawed. Just sayin'.

I hated the damn typo-infested thing, poorly written objectives and questions and all.

I don't miss being held to that flawed standard.

peace and love from the grand canyon state,

pb