Yesterday I had the strangely delightful opportunity to proctor a PSAT exam for a single student at a local school. She was accommodated with 50% extended time and reading assistance, which meant that I had five blocks of 38 or 45 minutes during which I might be asked to read a question, passage, or set of directions aloud. Otherwise, I could quietly read and mind the time.
I am so grateful that the book my fingers found in my canvas bag (I'd brought a few) was Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler. It's getting a lot of attention because it's been nominated for the prestigious National Book Award, and I've been toting it around since I bought it at the Dodge Poetry Festival after hearing her read. When I say read, I mean recite. Patricia Smith told her poems to us without the page, seemingly making eye contact with everyone in the tent. The experience of her poetry aloud is transformative. It's no surprise she's also a poetry slam champion.
Blood Dazzler is a collection of poems about Hurricane Katrina. Some of the poems are in Katrina's voice, others in the voices of survivors, pets, rescuers, evacuees, and the deceased.
As the back of her book says, it is "[a] storm's-eye view of the devastation that forever changed New Orleans and America." Smith follows the progression of the storm through newspaper clippings, emails between FEMA officers, imagined inner dialogues, television broadcasts, and more. Although each poem stands alone, the collection is poetry of witness at its best: it tells a story, it brings the reader in, and it shimmers with fine craftmanship. I could not stop reading her aloud to guests last night. I imagine this might be an issue for a while to come. This is a book that needs to be heard, to be read.
Let's say you notice this one the next time you're in the bookstore, and you're not sure whether to take the plunge. Turn to p.25 and read "What to Tweak" or to p.50 to read "34." Or open to any page -- it's that good.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
That's quite interesting. You know, I have always believed that time constraints were the hardest part of the SAT. 50% extra time is quite generous. Do you believe that scoring higher on the SAT but with a note on the student's record that the student has a learning disability or some other ailment....is better than getting a lower score without any aid? Do you believe the SAT, while far from perfect, is still a pretty good way to measure a student's potential...or maybe that it is a pretty good way as long as the student doesn't have a learning disability, in which case the test needs to be modified? Since you are an educator, I'm curious what your opinion is on this point.
Thanks for your comment, Darren. 50% time was an optional extension this student could use; on some sections, she only needed a couple of minutes extra. It was most useful to her when she needed help reading the directions or one of her questions. Although I'm not sure of her diagnosis, my understanding from another teacher at her school is that she has dyslexia. Certain kinds of sentences trip her up and she needs to hear them aloud. Her processing of language is often a bit slower than someone without dyslexia.
In her case, I feel it is only just, only fair, to give the accommodation of extra time and reading assistance. She would have simply been unable to answer whole sections of questions without hearing the directions or sample questions aloud. And even when she didn't need to hear them aloud, she did need extra time to make sense of each question. Having a student like her take the test without the accommodation would have been unfair. She would have been doomed to a low score -- lower than she'd get with the accommodations she needs.
I'm not a fan of standardized tests because they tend to leave out whole areas of intelligence, and they rely too heavily on certain proficiencies. Is the score useful? Sure, to a point. Someone with a very high score clearly is a good test taker and clearly has strong vocabulary, reading, and math proficiency. Everyone knows that this isn't enough to judge person's potential to succeed at college or at life, however, which is why most colleges (including the top ones) consider so much more than the score: extracurricular activities, interview, personal statement, and some schools even ask questions about applicants' favorite books or what their ideal library would look like! These kinds of questions tap a student's creativity and help tell a more complete story about potential.
Post a Comment