I will compose my essay Beautiful Mind style across the edges
of a double helix spiraling into a black hole

I am writing the biography of my grandmother, the woman of no
schooling, the gardener of no pesticides, the curandera of no antibiotic

Check me as I copy Cube and Dre’s ‘Today was a Good Day’
How many pages of my fantasy novel do you think they’d understand
I’m fixin on a pie chart to chart π

I wonder how hard it’d be using pointillism to express
a response of the proctor’s resemblance with Barack

Surely, Ms. Dickinson would appreciate a modern take on the airiness,
the levity concerning this context of ‘There’s a Certain Slant of Light’

Me I’m gonna decoupage the school in test booklets
I will redraft the Treaty of Bosque Redondo and sign my name X
Can’t stop me from punching braille when they feed us blind lines

Use the following definitions to inform your answers for the questions below

test ¹    |test|   noun

1. a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, esp. before it is taken into widespread use
2. a short written or spoken examination of a person’s proficiency or knowledge
3. an event or situation that reveals the strength or quality of someone or something by putting them under strain

Match the number of each definition to the correct reason for the proliferation of testing in American schools:

______ grit is classroom/boardroom buzzword du jour

______ the schoolcorporation politic holds education over the coals until all is rectified

______ oral exams are so 20^th century

True or False:

______ In readying these tests for their day in the fluorescent sun, your teacher, and principal, and school district, and state…participated in a clear procedure intended to establish the quality or reliability of this experience before it was taken into widespread use for Short Cycle Assessments, Standards Based Assessments, End of Course Exams, Student Graduation Requirements, Teacher Evaluation, Curriculum Design, etc.

Inference:

Today is a demonstration of:

1. who holds the championship belt for daydreamers
2. the efficacy of our genetic, racial, cultural, socioeconomic heritage
3. how much our nothingness controls our everythingness
4. the heartbreaking fallacies of Dr. Seuss’ Oh the Places You’ll Go

Last year I wrote a handful of poems inspired by Standardized Testing content, environment, philosophy, politics, reality, competition, consequence, bias, flaws, opportunity. These poems were posted onto this blog on March 19, 2013. On the following morning, I was instructed to remove these poems from the blog or face consequences with my teaching license. I promised to repost their content the following month once testing was over, but thought better of it. I was contacted by the Santa Fe Reporter to discuss the censorship and breach of test security. I thought better of that as well.

But this year I will be writing a poem a day this March to voice concerns, foster dialogue and relate what is happening in public education. Today’s poem is inspired by the legal documents I received in light of last year’s poetry. Pictured below, I was required to read my responsibilities regarding STATEWIDE STANDARDIZED TESTING SECURITY ISSUES AND REGULARITIES (6.10.7.11) and CODE OF ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE EDUCATION PROFESSION, STANDARDS OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT (6.60.9.8/9).

Owning up to my missteps, I was in breach of 6.10.7.11 Provision C for Staff Responsibility reading: It shall be a prohibitive practice for anyone to: 1. photocopy or reproduce in any other fashion including paraphrasing, any portion of a standardized test including a student’s answer; 2. Teach from, possess or in any way disseminate a photocopy or other reproduced or paraphrased standardized test or portion of a standardized test.

As well, I also compromised my duties as a teacher in New Mexico concerning 6.60.9.9 Provision C (19) reading: the educator shall not engage in any conduct or make any statement (a) that would breach the security of any standardized or non-standardized tests; (c) that would give students an unfair advantage in taking a standardized test; (d) that would give a particular school or a particular classroom an unfair advantage in taking a standardized or non-standardized test.

At the time of penning the censored poems, I had never read these provisions for the responsibilities of carrying my license or continuing to teach students in New Mexico. My intention was not to offer students a leg up on their peers. I did not strive to compromise the test security. I intended to process my day the best way I know how. To filter my experiences, frustrations and joys through poetry. In this case that was a dangerous deed.

Now that I know, I will not gain creative inspiration directly from testing content. Though, from my vantage point, the tests remain deeply inspiring while completely devoid of creativity.

But I will be writing everyday. Not of the test, but of the testing. Not of the score, but of the student.

(italicized parts lifted from existing legislative wording and structure)

I, Public Educator

Title Now: Primary and Secondary Education
Chapter Immediately: The Person, the Student, The Human in Public Education
Part Existential: How to Exist in Education
Issuing Agent: A Teacher of Security Breaches, A Teacher of Voice

Scope: For all those who pay taxes, who appreciate learning and citizenship; by this meaning non-litterers, voters, parents, employers, public officials, welfare recipients, landowners, bigots, lobbyists, holographs

Statutory Authority: The Law of Sight, Breath and Beating Heart
Duration: The length of employment of the poet
Effective date: August 2008 upon employment or March 2013 upon censorship

Objective: To attract like hearted individuals to the greatest profession man has yet created. The poet wishes to inspire man and woman, boy and girl, to learn, feel and give, for collaboration is a dying (or never birthed) ideal of education. The poet wishes for others to rise, resist, remake, inhabit, refute, satirize these words and hollow out the hollowness of the profession to finally make full the educator, the lobby, the great hall, the calling.

Definitions: “Education” means struggling against struggle, against injustice, against closemindedness, against economics-based metrics of progress. “Ethical Misconduct” refers to apathy, complacency, short-sightedness while engendering citizenship and the morality of youth. “Grounds for Termination” relates to willful or unconscious reinforcement of the institutional limitations on students of rural, urban, disadvantaged, impoverished, differently colored, independently spiritual backgrounds.

Code of Ethics: I, a professional educator of New Mexico, affirm my belief in the worth and dignity of humanity, the supreme importance of the pursuit of truth, scholarship and citizenship.

Standards of Professional Conduct:
1. Never accept district-, state-, or federal mandated curricula without sound reflection, critical discourse or self-expression within or without of the classroom. Maintain integrity when dissenting by basing our public criticism of education on valid assumptions as established by careful evaluations of facts.
2. Promote community involvement through cross cultural and intergenerational experiences. Instruct with the health, wellbeing and sustainability of community in mind.
3. Expose students to the gift of inquiry engendering self-exploration and alleging truth above personal safety.
4. Deny lazy consumption of American consumer culture through social justice pedagogies for economics, geology, land, identity, politics, language, art and genetics.
5. Forego the use of History textbooks which fail to make reference to the following individuals: Daniel Berrigan, Russell Means, Cesar Chavez, Geronimo, Wangari Maathi, Frederick Douglass, Kevin Powers, Tim DeChristopher, Woody Guthrie, Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, Liu Xiaobo, His Holiness the Dali Lama, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Malala Yousafzai.
6. Prepare students for mastery of standardized tests while fostering dialogue concerning test biases; lack of research-based reasoning for its proliferation; the uneven playing field established, strengthened and perpetuated by tying its purpose to federal monies and to evaluations of self, demographic, school, teacher.
7. Recognize the opportunity of all students’ life paths, lifestyle choices, and alternative realities by acknowledging their point of view and validating their voice.
8. Motivate students to expect kairotic moments in their lives, ensuring a person’s existence is not beholden to stereotype, family name, addiction history, bank account, automobiles, disabilities, street gangs, IQ, individualized education plans.
9. Show up every day despite the legislation, the politics, the morass, the profound impossibilities. Arrive sincere and leave carved open. Bare the soul to students so they may learn of being human.

Here is a primer for the month to come, my poem a day dedication to standardized testing. This was written last September. For the less discerning eye, each stanza is a haiku. For the more discerning eye, I know haiku is no longer haiku if they are related as stanzas.

In Response to Data

s p e l l
i n g t e s t
t o d a y

step into a room
full of dejected faces
improvise or sink

he chews erasers
swallowing the soft pink flecks
invisible guts

for chocolate milk
they may as well give children
needles and IVs

“don’t prefixes change
fronts of words like suffixes
hit them up in back?”

so I cannot read,
what makes you think I cannot
take care of myself?

pregnant, someone’s dear
child with a child, frail flower
blossom blossoming

autumn rain out there
can you feel our minutes wane
the sun sleeping in?

there is no spinning
like our broken record, no
waves of ocean calm