Dear School

Dear School-where-I-work,

It’s with regret and sadness that I write you this letter. As an English teacher, my first priority in the classroom is to captivate the students, to get them speaking, and to create an environment that fosters and facilitates learning. Unfortunately, I cannot succeed. The way the current administration has this school set up, guarantees my failure as an educator as well as the failure, or at least lack of improvement of the students. If the students are going to make any progress, some major changes have to happen.

The students need consistency. After the first three weeks of school the freshmen are well aware of my expectations and how they are to behave in the classroom. I also know them, their names, their abilities, and who needs special attention. We are at a defining moment in this semester. The students are ready to actively participate, they do their homework, and they enjoy the speaking exercises in class. Thus, the decision to reassign them to different classes based on an electronic grammar test is in effect, a direct bullet to the head.

Not only does this rearrangement discredit the work the teachers have done in the previous three weeks, it nullifies the students’ progress as well. Students’ homework assignments, grades, and classroom participation are all wiped clean. Mixing the four different classes now makes it impossible to ensure all the students are actually on the same page. By changing their learning environment we have caused more harm than good. The last three weeks must be completely dismissed. We have essentially hit the “reset” button for this term.

While it may seem beneficial to place the students in classes based on ability the test used to determine their level was quite insufficient. Using a forty-question quiz on the computer that asked students to click the right answer in no way shows their ability to speak English. When my superiors and fellow teachers agreed that the test was not adequate, it only added fuel to my fire of confusion and frustration. Apparently, the only people who think this is a good idea aren’t even in the classroom working engaging the students.

It is the teachers who have spent hours preparing activities and lessons that engage the students to get them involved. While others may sit in an office calling the shots, we are the ones spending time after class, eating lunch with our students, and investing personal time for their benefit. When you leave your office to go home at the end of the day you don’t know anything more about the students than you did last week. We know our pupils, we know their dreams for the future and we know what they fear today. That’s the difference between us. The difference isn’t that we teach, the difference is that we care—and so we teach. The senseless structural shifting and text heavy curriculum doesn’t benefit the students so that they learn, but so that they can pass the test to make your school appear prestigious.

If irrelevant testing and subsequent rearrangement of students continues you will raise up this generation impotent and fruitless. Each young person needs consistent opportunities to be in a natural setting where they can speak freely, discuss their ideas and concerns about our world today. This requires allowing them time to acquire new language skills before testing and shuffling them around from class to class. It demands we see the individual before we scrutinize them for minor errors as they seek to improve.