High-stakes testing has become one of the most overwhelming and daunting issues in the world of education today. In many cases, test days become sick days for students who cannot bear the thought of facing another day of wasted learning time filling out bubbles or tapping on keyboards.
For Chelmsford High School Hall of Famers Peter and Paul Reynolds (see September, 2013 issue), co-founders of the Reynolds Center for Teaching, Learning, and Creativity (www.reynoldstlc.org), testing has not been just a cause célèbre for their innovative, pro-learning, not-for-profit organization but an opportunity to get creative and use humor to deal with this heated issue.
The result is a new cartoon called “The Testing Camera” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PABNMIG5VJc) in which testing is likened to taking a snapshot of each student. While the “flash” may leave each student dazed, the real lesson to be learned is that no one photo is the complete image of the person of whom it was taken and that there is far more to any individual than can possibly be determined by a single test.
“This film has been brewing for a long time,” explains co-creator Peter Reynolds, recalling the “trigger” moment in high school when he had to go in on a Saturday in order to take a pair of 90-minute “bubble tests.”
“It occurred to me that these SAT scores would be the sum total of my twelve years of school,” he explains, recalling in detail the very room in which the “snapshot” of him and his hapless classmates was taken.
Reynolds also recalls the traditional chant of those who are subjected to these subjective standards.
“I remember kids running up to each other asking the question, ‘So- What’dya get?’”
Even at 16, Reynolds recalls thinking the whole process was “ludicrous” but not having the words (or the clout) to express his feelings.
“My gut was telling me something was weirdly off about a system that reduced the dozen years of learning, after school clubs, field trips, hobbies, books read for fun in the library, family trips and experiences, and other projects in and out of school to two scores,” he says, recalling the lack of focus on the many subjects and topics he enjoyed exploring just as much as language and math.
As an internationally-known, award-winning author who, along with his brother and a caring and creative team, has been able to support educators through technology and other tools, Reynolds hopes to reach more people and have a greater impact in the process. This film is a means to that end.
At many of his public appearances, Reynolds asks his audience to show their “great license photos.” The response, he says, is usually uncomfortable laughter.
“Those photos are like high-stakes test score results,” he suggests. “They are indeed you, but only a millisecond snapshot of who you are with a particularly unforgiving lens.”
What makes the “testing camera” worse is the fact that these hyper-focused tests are usually given just when students are discovering their passions…
“They are sticky labels that take years, sometimes decades to peel off,” Reynolds suggests, “just when students should be feeling the opposite- that anything is possible. That given hard work, focus, creative thinking, mentors, and a dash of luck, you will be heading on a most wonderful journey to discover the best version of you.”
With the new five-minute video, Reynolds hopes that new conversations can be started about testing and about creativity.
“Short stories…are incredibly efficient ways of making the mission transportable,” Reynolds suggests, noting how animated images especially can make ideas ”stickier” and how they can “spark some new thinking about an old paradigm: testing kids at every turn being the answer to improving education.”
Though he may not be behind high-stakes, anxiety-provoking testing, Reynolds is a fan of assessment.
“We should be able to stop along the way and [ask], ‘Is any of this interesting to you?’” he suggests. “Answers to that question are pretty good data!”
After all, he suggests, if the topics and materials being offered are not considered interesting by those to whom they are offered, the answer may be restructuring the curriculum or the teaching modalities.
“Perhaps there is a different way to teach it,” he observes, “or a different door in for that learner. Maybe there will be another point in time that this will be relevant or interesting. [But] until then let’s move on and find out what is interesting to you.”
And while he admits that such “generous” student-centered teaching and learning is not easy, Reynolds observes that it is all the less so in what he sees as “rigid, test-driven environments where it is easy to forget the main goal of helping every learner navigate their true potential.”
Fortunately, Reynolds not only sees change coming, but accelerating. From personalized learning to new STEM and STEAM initiatives (i.e., those related to science, technology, engineering, art, and math), to what he observes as “a general acceptance that creativity is one of the four cornerstones of a 21st century learner” (the other three “C’s” being communication, collaboration, and critical thinking), Reynolds is encouraged that the test camera may soon be as much a thing of the past as Kodachrome.
“I hope my film inspires that,” he says.