Teaching to the Test

In high school, I took seven AP tests. I'm not saying this to brag or even to promote the American system of education. Rather, I think it ruined me.

I spent the better part of my education preparing to take tests. In tenth grade it was European History: copying outlines off the blackboard, highlighting all of the important people and events in the textbook, not taking a moment to discuss, debate, or create. Later it was Calculus and Spanish and Physics. In Physics we hardly did any labs. Instead we took notes and crunched numbers and practiced multiple choice. You get the picture. So when I realized that in my classroom all we were doing was preparing for one test, I felt pretty bad.

We made the final English test on Tuesday morning, and after that point we were able to teach to the test. Class time was devoted to reviewing the vocabulary words appearing on the test that no one could remember (desk seems to be a particularly difficult one), phrases learned the first week and promptly forgotten (I am lost), and the oral questions I am going to ask today in my loud, over-articulated way.

Where's the fun in that? When are these kids ever going to need to say, "I make the chair in the cemetery with the mother?" They're most likely going to use English when they run into a tourist on the street or in the market. And when someone asks, "Where did you make this?" they're not going to respond, "In the cemetery with the mother."

So I let them have a little fun. Towards the end of class, Zoila asks me how to say "feo" in English. I made a deal with her: you tell me who you think is "feo" and I'll tell you how to say it English. She giggle shyly, unwilling to let me into the summer school gossip circle. But it doesn't matter how silent she stays; her over-eager friend answers for her. "Diego!" she shouts, referring to an older boy who came for the first two weeks of class and never returned.

"Ugly," I say. "Feo means ugly." I make her stay in for recess, the cost of curiosity. She translates a variety of sentences featuring the word ugly, starting from the simple "Diego is ugly," to the more complicated and less sensical, "I like to run with ugly dogs."

These sentences didn't discourage her; she asked for more. "How do you say guapo? How do you say bonito?" Her friend leaks the fact that Zoila thinks Nelson is handsome. We go over several sentences, concluding with, "I like handsome boys." I think it's a good example because it demonstrates the way that adjectives are placed before the noun in English, rather than after like in Spanish.

She's furiously scribbling it all down, wanting to remember, not because it's going to be on some test, but because she has a secret she wants to share. I can imagine her out on the rusty blue swings, telling some boy her feelings in another language.