Potluck

My grandma Lou made the very best cheesy potatoes.   They were peppery with mounds of Velveeta, soft on the fork but firm.  Delicious.  They tasted like the last day of May, and although she’s been gone for nearly twenty years now, I have yet to eat cheesy potatoes up to her remarkable standards.

Whenever we had a potluck dinner at church, these were her specialty.   She brought other things, too, but you could usually count on those potatoes at least once or twice a year.   After all, that’s what makes a potluck dinner so good.  Everyone brings their very best to the table.

Speaking of their very best, my sophomores just recently finished up their PARCC testing.  PARCC, as you might imagine, is an acronym that means something.  It is one of many federally mandated exams designed to make us all feel bad about ourselves, particularly in relation to other countries with indoor plumbing.  These sophomores were tested for two to three hours per day for at least three days, while many of them were even tested for six. 

They hated it.

Now, before accidently jeopardizing my very satisfying career, it’s important to remind everyone that these tests are a mandate.  That means a school district basically has to give them or lose much needed funds, and, personally, I think our district handled it all rather well.  I even put up a picture of a rabbit on my Smart board to “lighten the mood,” and get the students eager to participate.  They didn’t seem convinced, but there’s always next year, right?

And that is the sad part, because not only was over a week’s worth of curriculum basically hijacked in order to give these tests, we also lost instructional time actually prepping for them in the first place. However, the real problem is not that the tests take so long to administer, it’s that they cover so very little of what it means to be a student in the first place.

A long time ago, I was a student. I went to teacher’s college and was taught many theories on education.  Some of those theories turned out to be dumb.  One of the most useful theories, however, was developed by a cognitive psychologist from Harvard by the name of Howard Gardner.

            Gardner is most famous for his idea of “multiple intelligences.”  Whereas we often have a tendency to group people into one of three broad categories—book smart, street smart, and not smart—Gardner hypothesized that in reality humans respond to and affect their environment in a variety of ways.  He defined intelligence using many big words, but to paraphrase, I think he basically meant intelligence was simply “using your gifts to make the world a better place.”  This definition, then, necessitated a much broader understanding of the concept itself.

Certainly there was “book smart,” so to speak, on which most standardized tests still focus.  (Gardner actually divided “book smart” into linguistic intelligence, for people who were good with words, and logical-mathematical, for people who were good with numbers.)  He went on to expand the idea and considered five more “intelligences:” bodily-kinesthetic, meaning the ability to coordinate mind and body, like athletes and surgeons;  visual-spatial, meaning the ability to visualize the world in three dimensions, such as a carpenter or an artist; musical-rhythmic, which is kind of self-explanatory; interpersonal, meaning the ability to understand other people, such as a CEO; and intrapersonal, meaning the ability to understand his or herself and write self-absorbed newspaper columns.

            He later even added an eighth intelligence, that of naturalist, for people who seemed to have the innate ability to understand and thrive with nature, such as farmers, biologists, or veterinarians.

            Now, before continuing, it should be noted that Gardner never intended these concepts be used as a way to classify people, particularly young students.  People are not one “intelligence” and none of the others.  The point was to help identify a person’s inherent strengths to also help them achieve their best potential. 

Unfortunately, standardized tests can cripple this process.

            Because we often put so much emphasis on these tests and what they cover, anything not covered—music, art and P.E., not to mention civics, history, and a bunch of other very important disciplines—gets the shaft.  Some might argue that these subjects are not as important as reading, writing and math, and as an English teacher, I suppose I should agree.  However, many of the most well-rounded and productive people I know were not good at any of these subjects in school.  Fortunately, somewhere along the way, they figured out what they were good at and made it work.  Somewhere along the way, they figured out their recipe.

Speaking of recipes, have you ever been to a potluck when all you have is fried chicken and the stuff that goes with it, and not actually homemade fried chicken, but the kind that comes in buckets?  That’s not really a potluck.  That’s just different plates of chicken.  Great potlucks have something for everyone, because everyone is bringing their best to the table.  Due to budget woes, standardized testing, and all the other headaches that come with them, too many of our students never get that chance to bring their best to the table.  They’ve been told, in the coldest, most economical way possible, that “your recipe doesn’t count.  We’re only interested in this and that; we don’t have any room at this table for whatever it is you want to bring.”

            If that’s not a good way to run an after-church social, why have we decided it’s an OK way to treat our kids?  It seems that if we want a potluck worth coming to, don’t you think, at the bare minimum, we could go ahead and set the table?