AP Tests Today: Tieche Put Under the Gun to Improve Results - Not Feeling Superbly Optimistic

One of the toughest things about being a teacher is that you simply don't have enough time to spend with every individual student to help them develop academically, socially, emotionally and psychologically. High School's current format and design simply won't allow for it.

Thursday morning, 05-05-05, will have more than just dozens of people putting massive Mexican flags on their cars to celebrate Cinco de Mayo - it will also be the day that 81 of my high school English seniors sit down to take a 3-hour test in English Literature that is so grueling and difficult, passing it is an indication to colleges that the student not only is ready for college English, but might be ready to skip right to their sophomore year.

That's a difficult test.

So is teaching the class, and then waiting until July when the results come back. It's hard as a teacher to see objective black-and-white measures of your students right in front of you. To some extent, I'm judged as an AP teacher by my pass rate (which by the way) is not stellar. Some teachers in some districts have a 90 percent pass rate. I don't. Mine is hovering in the high 30s. I've had 99 kids take the test: 37 have passed. Only 2 have gotten the highest score of "5."

There are teachers in my own district who beat that every year. Some have 90 percent "5" rates.

This year, the department head and some principles have told me that those scores "need to go up." As though I wasn't aware of that. Like I was aiming for a low pass rate.

Of course, a big part of being a teacher is the kind of kids you get. Phil Jackson won 6 championships, but he had Kobe, Jordan, Pippen and Shaq. Put him in Atlanta or Denver in the 1990s, and let's see how he fares.

The AP Lit course supposes a lot of experience and familiarity with complex literature, in addition to a wide schema and mental framework for abstract ideas and analysis. If you have been speaking English for less than 5 years (which this year 19 of my 81 students have) or if you are a second language learner whose native language and the language spoken at home is not primarily English (which 32 of my 81 students are), then the test is pretty darn difficult.

This kind of thing makes me wonder if I'm really that good of a teacher. Pretend that I switch classrooms with those nearly legendary teachers with the 90 percent pass rate. Would my pass rate be as high? I wonder. Would their pass rate in my class be as low? I wonder that, as well.

It's kind of depressing, though.

No doctor - not matter whatever kind of shape his patients come to him in - wants any mortalities. Even if there's not much you could have done, it still feels like a failure.