...to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.: Showcase

At long (long, long, long, long) last, Jill and I wrapped up our duties as Zankel fellows with one last day at the school and then a display at Teachers College's annual outreach showcase. We spent our last day administering reading assessments to students whom we pulled from class one by one. The assessment consists of two parts: a word recognition section called the San Diego Quick Assessment Something Something Something Test, and a passage which students read aloud to demonstrate their fluency. The whole thing takes about four minutes per student. The San Diego Test consists of lists of ten words, one list for each grade level. The student reads each list until they make three errors on one list. If they can't read three words on the 8th grade list correctly, this means they're reading at a 7th grade level. It's a pretty basic test, and both Jill and I were a little dubious about its accuracy. Even if the kid says the sounds right but emphasizes the wrong syllable (they all said a-PAR-ratus instead of apparatus, for example) it counts as an error. Every single kid I tested except one said "sun dry" instead of "sundry," which seemed to me to be a reasonable guess if you've never heard the word before. I'm not sure of the grade level at which the fluency passage was written. We asked each kid to read aloud for one minute, marked the words they didn't say correctly, then calculated the number of words per minute they were able to read successfully. Nearly all of them did better on the passage than the San Diego Test, which makes sense because it's easier to read words in context. Jill and I gave the test at the beginning of the year as well, and most freshmen we tested were reading at about a 5th - 6th grade level. For the most part they read at a 6th - 7th grade level this time around. Progress is always a good thing, but I'd have liked to see more than a year's worth, since they're all enrolled in a specialized reading course. They're supposed to make a year's worth of progress without intervention.

I was given the awesome responsibility of detangling the bunch of ballons (seriously) so that they could be dispersed amongst the display tables. This was my reward for showing up at the appointed time when no one else did.

The showcase was interesting. There was a nice assortment of refreshments, which was perhaps my favorite part. I glanced at the other projects that people had spent the year doing, but for the most part Jill and I stayed near our board, which we had glued together in the library the day before. It's been too long since I got to use construction paper. A fellow TC student, who also spent time at Heritage this year, invited a small group of students to come to the showcase. At the last minute, he wasn't able to come but encouraged the students to show up anyway. They went straight to the refreshments table, piled as much food on their plates as possible, and staggered off to a table in the corner balancing piles of cookies and chips and two sodas each. They did not get up except to replenish their provisions. I'm not sure why they were there, but I can guess it wasn't to gorge on free food and look surly. I knew only one of them.

Jill and I were photographed and interviewed by women hired by the university to report to the Zankel family. The idea was to show them how their family's contribution helps TC students and the community. They asked us if we had any stories to share. Jill and I opted not to tell about the fights, suspensions, drunkenness, gang involvement, sexual misconduct, and general hopelessness we'd witnessed at Heritage. I came up with a sappy story that I'd heard from Mrs. Portnoy secondhand, and the lady seemed happy enough to jot it down and be on her way.