Shutterstock/Reddit
Tests are important to gauge what children are learning in school, but not everything you know can be measured by a test.
In today’s story, one teacher likes to elaborate and truly help children understand as opposed to just teaching the facts that will be on the test.
The school admin isn’t okay with this style of teaching, and it ends up being a showdown when the admin challenges the teacher to teach what’s on the test and nothing else.
Let’s see what happens.
About two months ago I worked for an absolute tyrant of an administrator.
Dude was terrible.
(Terrible enough to warrant me writing in the apparent point of view of a 48-year-old teacher wishing he was sigma).
But I digress.
Before working for this school I was teaching 8th grade math, 4th grade math, or being an academic coach for the previous 18 or so years.
I switched school primarily due to location.
I found a school on the other side of the mountain I stare at nightly and figured it was a good match.
It wasn’t a good match.
Nope.
This admin, we’ll call him Pop n Fresh, shut me down every step of the way.
I entered the school middle of the school year, with very rough kids, and my first day training the Academic Coach for the school (and district) trained us up on this Math/ELA/Anything you want gaming program called Gimkit.
I understand that Gimkit isn’t education in and of itself.
It’s simply a five-minute tool to find out of kids know the content, and it engages the kids greatly.
He knew he had to get the kids’ attention.
My first day with students I saw their terrible behaviors (they ran two other teachers out of there, evidently), so I decided it was going to take a little bit of grace to get them to listen to me.
I showed them Gimkit.
They had popped open their chromebooks for no more than thirty seconds when TA (terrible Admin/PopnFresh) came in and shut it down instantly.
He never assesses the situation.
He just sees kids on hokey-looking activities as he literally pops in the classroom, bouncing around like he’s on something.
This guy interrupted his class all the time.
Anyway, this happened all the time.
I would instruct for no more than eight minutes tops, and walk around and help them with concepts the best I could.
I would be walking around, he would pop in and tell me to change something.
Like clockwork.
He strictly limited what this teacher could teach.
Every program or strategy or center-based activity I try to use to get the 7th graders motivated gets shut down instantly, and he finally says out loud “Teach Only what’s on the Tests! Nothing more!!”.
Bet.
I took this as an opportunity to enter some MC with a side of “I can’t believe I’m here”.
I start going by the book 100%.
Here are examples of how this teacher employed the malicious compliance.
Any time a student asks “Why do we do it like this?” when we are working on surface area and volume, I only say “That’s not on the test”.
Any time I, naturally, find an urge to find a connection to other standards, I stop myself.
It’s not on the test.
Over a short amount of time, students are frustrated and sitting there yawning.
He couldn’t handle teaching this way all the time.
It pains me greatly, so I decide to only apply my MC when good ‘ol Pop n Fresh pops his way back into my classroom.
He finally pops in with his boss, his boss’ boss, and a couple of people I’ve never seen before.
I instantly switch from my “going deeper, thinking outside the box, activity-based learning” to exactly what he wants: Teaching only what’s on the test.
Now for a great movie reference…
I instantly turn into Ben Stein from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and the kids instantly groan, saying “Mr. OP I hate when you teach us like this!!”
Comments from the students fly about the room “this is the worst part of my day”, “I hate Math now thanks,” and many much more colorful, expletive-laden commentary.
Frank Caliendo even popped in for a spell “Now here’s a guy who doesn’t know how to motivate students. Boom!”
Pop n Fresh even doubled down on his usual banter, putting on a show for his crew of bosses “These kids seem highly UNmotivated OP, we need to meet about this if you can’t get them engaged…”
He used the admin’s words against him.
I interjected “You said to only teach what’s on the Test, so that’s what I’m doing. ONLY what’s on the Test, right? Like if they wanted to know why this happens or that happens, or how to solve this a different way, that’s not on the test, right? You told me just to “Be up and Be teaching and never have them on their chromebooks”, right?”
I said this to him, in definite earshot of his accompanying party, mainly because I had a feeling these were the head honchos.
The ones who signed off on spending all that money to make our school a true One-to-One school.
A school where every student has a chromebook.
He knew the district would want the kids using the chromebooks.
Not utilizing the chromebooks is something I knew that was something Pop n Fresh believed in, but I had a feeling that the district would want the kids properly utilizing them.
He answered back to me “I only stopped you from using the chromebooks because the kids were all just playing games”
The students interject then “It’s a Math game!”.
The Head Honcho moved to Interjection City “well let’s see what this Math Game” is all about.
The kids were excited!
I had the kids get their chromebooks.
They all excitedly logged on.
I pulled up a Surface Area and Volume Gimkit, and the kids were feverishly playing the game, using pencils and notebooks to solve the problems needed to be answered to gain “ammunition” in their game.
The teacher thought it was a great educational experience for the kids.
It was active.
It was fun for all.
I paused the game when needed to show different ways to isolate the variable when solving surface area problems (especially of spheres and cones, etc.).
It was what education was supposed to be.
Now the Head Honcho is asking about Pop n Fresh.
Pop n Fresh ran out of pop, and by the end of the day I received an email from the Head Honcho himself asking me about him, and how things were going.
I was honest with him.
I told him about his assaults, threats of assaults, and hiding assaults.
All things that I’m sure would be an interesting part of this tale, but they aren’t related to the MC inherent here.
He is now at a different school.
It’s also an ongoing investigation, even two months later as I’m teaching at a new school on the other side of the proverbial mountain.
Pop n Fresh is under investigation for what’s he’s been doing to me and other new teachers (to the school), and it’s crawling all the way up the chain.
I don’t think that admin is going to be there much longer.
It sounds like he doesn’t actually care about the kids or their education.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
Yes, the kids weren’t the problem.
This person knows there’s another story here.
This teacher knows about gimkit.
How dare children enjoy learning!
He really does sound like a great teacher.
This is a teacher who knows how to make learning fun!
We always need more of those.
If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.