Twenty-two hours and fifteen minutes later …
“We survived the first week!” Mr. Acevedo said, raising both arms. “Yeah, it was only a four-day week, but we made it. Next week we’re here Monday to Friday. That’s our first real test.” He gasped. “Test? Test!”
Suddenly, he clutched his chest and stumbled forward like a person pretending to have a heart attack on an old television show. He staggered across the carpet, fell onto a beanbag, and rolled next to the bathtub.
Then he bounced to his feet.
“That Oscar-worthy performance was brought to you by the T-word.” He formed the letter T with his hands. “Test is the T-word. Just like we’re not permitted to use the H-word at RJE, we’re not permitted to use the T-word in Room 208.” He spun to Attie, whose hand was up.
“But we have to take—”
“Don’t say it!” He cut her off. “Don’t say the T-word. Now I’m about to use it because I want to explain myself, but once I do, we’re not wasting our time discussing tests and testing in Room 208.”
He walked past our table to the front closet.
“You see these?” He opened the door. The closet was filled with test prep booklets. Like the ones from last year. And the year before. “These will not be seeing the light of day in here.” He shut the door. “I’m not about tests and test scores.” He motioned to Attie, whose hand was back up.
“But we still have to take … assessments.”
“We do.”
“Then how will we—”
“You’ll do fantastic. Everyone will.”
“But what if we don’t?” Attie said.
I was thinking the same things. How could we not do test prep? We had even more tests this year than in third and fourth grade. Some counted for middle-school placement. We needed to do test prep.
“Attie, if you don’t do well,” Mr. Acevedo said, “I’m one and done. They give me the boot at the end of the year.” He wagged his finger. “But that’s not going to happen. You will learn in here. Everyone will learn in here. I guarantee it.” He pointed to Diego’s raised hand.
“Are you giving us T-words?”
“Good question, Diego.” Mr. Acevedo leaned against his desk. “For the most part, no. I’ll be assessing you in other ways. I’m about real assessment that’s useful. I’ll be giving you feedback, so we understand purpose, because that’s how we learn to think.” He adjusted a hoop in the top of his ear. “You’ve only known me three days, but I think you can see I tend to do things a little differently.” He bongo-drummed the side of his desk. “Now let’s talk about your homework assignment for the weekend.”
“I thought you said you don’t believe in homework,” Jordan said.
“That’s not what I said, Jordan. I said I’m not a big fan of homework. And this homework assignment—the purpose of it—is to get everyone thinking about our class project.”
“What class project?” several kids asked at once.
“Another good question,” Mr. Acevedo said. “The answer to it will be posted on our class webpage this evening.” He jumped and smacked the URL written on the blue sentence strip above the board. “It’s your responsibility to check this. You’re in fifth grade now. I’m not holding your hands.”
My forehead fell to the table. Sometimes Mr. Acevedo sounded a little too much like my mom.