These Teachers Created A Petition To Stop Testing During COVID
It has over 24,000 signatures.
Whether or not schools should test students at the national and state level shouldn’t even be a question this year, but it is. Testing is a billion-dollar industry , and for testing companies and lobbyists, not testing means losing big money. Guidance from the top has been at a standstill as Betsy Devos has left it up to Congress to decide what happens next. Meanwhile, many states like North Carolina and Texas announced that they plan to test their students, despite increasing COVID cases. Other states are testing but without the threat of sanctions against teachers and schools.
Bonnie Hampton: This might not be called a ‘powerful’ exercise: it is simply a way of playing scales and arpeggios. Attention should be on hands and arms feeling very relaxed, and intonation being clear and true. The weight is in only one finger at a time, with the rest of the hand relaxed. The bow is making good, free contact with the string, producing an open, vibrant tone. Just checking that one is feeling one’s flexibility and hearing the quality of sound brings one’s attention to working ‘with’ the instrument.
Boris Kuschnir: Many students play ricochet by throwing the bow on the string so that they have no control over the sound of every note and can only play a very short ricochet. My advice is to move only the wrist with a very quick kick downwards – not with the fingers, or the elbow. This exercise immediately makes the ricochet longer and improves the quality of each note.