I walk down the hall with a large stack of test booklets and mentally rehearse the rules.  I am an alter boy - a mere pawn who, if all goes well, can fly under the radar. Here in Arizona, AIMS testing is the Holy Week of Arizona’s education, where students spend a total of eight hours taking a grueling standardized test. ...

I recieved an e-mail this morning telling me that I need to send a list of ''bubble kids.'' (not in the John Travolta, Boy in the Bubble way, but rather the ones who are close to reaching a higher level on the standardized tests.) I don't mind offering tutoring.  Our team regularly gives up our prep period three days a week to tutor students ...

My students are designing their own Civil Rights / Human Rights museum and memorial. For those who do not draw well, I offered the opportunity to create a collage instead. There is a writing component, a poster board and a website that they design. Before we begin, I feel that I have a sense of what work students will produce. Yesterday, a girl ...

Our school is like a prison.  From the uniforms to the bland walls to the security cameras and the cafeteria food.  The average student is told what to do at all times - when to eat, when to pee, when to play (but not too rough), what to say, when to speak, when to write, what to copy down from the board.  In a littany of commands ...

Solitude is missing from current educational system.  Students, while they are at school, must plough through book work, handouts and lectures in a ridiculous pace.  Everything is disjointed and disconnected, often taught in subjects that are irrelevant to their lives.  Last year, after weeks of drought, it finally rained - and not ...

I sit in the library at 7:30.  School does not start for another hour, but those in ''leadership'' must attend this biweekly meeting.  I use quotation marks because, if you could see me right now, I actually stopped talking for a moment to use the hand signal for quotation marks.  See, I am not really a leader.  I facilitate a ...

Twenty students claim their favorite seats within minutes of the lunch bell ringing.  The skeptic in me initially assumes that it is a first week rush, a desire to get out of the one-hundred and ten degree heat. The students will find out that our Student Leadership Meeting is actually pretty difficult and the numbers will diminish.  I ...

Sitting in a staff meeting, I pull out the agenda and begin drawing cartoons.  Instead of reading PowerPoint presentations, we work collaboratively (read ''group think'') on a school wide mission statement.  ''Make sure it is attainable, measurable and . . .'' I am jarred by the word ''measurable'' as the speakers words trail off in the ...

I ride past a freshly plowed empty field and see a large corrugated fence that advertises the latest neophyte tagging crew in sloppy, choppy letters. I don’t know what is the worst of these aesthetic crimes – the graffiti on the walls or the fact that it is so cheaply done, with such dull black letters that they blend in with the ...

On the first day of school, students completed a metaphor of school.  School is a _______ and I am a _________.  Many students chose prison, because, like prison, the school tells them what to wear, when to speak, when to pee, what to eat, what to study and (a few of them argued) what to believe.  It was interesting what others ...