Thoughts on "You Can Teach for Meaning"

I found myself agreeing with a lot of what the authors had to say regarding their two misconceptions.

Teach to the Test
I do not believe this, follow this, or do this at. all. at all. My thoughts are that school itself is the test prep. Are you going to class, doing your work, and learning? BOOM. You're prepped. It's MCA season and there are people in my department freaking out over it. Why? How many years have you been doing "test prep." Are our scores going up? No. They're going down, actually, so what good is it doing? Keep doing what you normally do. Trying to cram in 3 weeks worth of multiple choice questions, test taking strategies, and the standards you think might be on the test will not do anything but stress us all out. Instead, take that testing strategy and introduce it in the fall. Then use it, for real. There's your test prep. It reminded me of the looks the LA department gets when our MCA scores are revealed and *surprise* our scores dropped or flat-lined. We get judgmental stares because WE'RE SUPPOSED TO TEACH READING but it's like....wait...what do we do all year...in an LA classroom...maybe we......

.....

.....

...read?

So why are you looking at us? Our content is literally preparing them for the test by EXISTING. Ugh. Maybe we need to look at other factors that influence poor test scores, eh?

Also.

I was just talking to a colleague about how it seems like teaching has turned into all breadth, no depth. For innumerable reasons, teachers have cut cut cut from their curriculum and what we're left with is a surface level education. Do we wonder why students think they can just Google everything? Maybe it's because, for the most part, the work they're given is surface level. This ties in to the second misconception.

Too Much Content to Cover
Again, maybe I'm a weirdo, but I don't feel like this applies to me at all, either. I think I'm fortunate to work in a district, and at a school, that doesn't seem to really care what's covered in my classroom (unless it comes back to make more work for the higher-ups). The only pressure I've felt to "cover more" was from myself back when I was a first year teacher and I realized...oh hey, it's been like 6 months and I feel like my students haven't actually done much. #FirstYearMistakes

I also felt drawn to the scenario described where teachers think they are only supposed to focus on one standard at a time, because I believe that we're never really addressing just one standard. It made me think about how we're supposed to post our standards in our classrooms. In order to post all of the standards we engage students with every minute of every class, I'd need an extra wall in my classroom. Or, better yet, one of those digital billboards that's constantly cycling through all my standards.

Someone hire me for my ideas.