{"id":115991,"date":"2014-12-09T18:48:13","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T01:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-students-take-message-to-colorado-springs\/"},"modified":"2014-12-09T18:48:13","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T01:48:13","slug":"mancos-students-take-message-to-colorado-springs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-students-take-message-to-colorado-springs\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos students take message to Colorado Springs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Annalisa
Annalisa Mykytiuk, Anna Cox, Jessica Gutierrez and Hannah Skinner break No. 2 pencils Monday in their social media class at Mancos High School. The four students were part of a group of six that gave a presentation at the Colorado Association of School Boards Friday in Colorado Springs at the Boardmoor Hotel. At the end of their seven-minute speech, they got a standing ovation, and those in attendance broke their pencils.<\/span>Shannon Livick\/Mancos Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Six students from Mancos High School traveled to Colorado Springs over the weekend to speak at the Colorado Association of School Boards Convention.<\/p>\n

When the students were done with their seven-minute speech in front of 200 members of the Rural Alliance, they got a standing ovation.<\/p>\n

And even better, nearly everyone in the room broke a pencil.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really surprised and excited at how many people supported our campaign and how many people stood up and broke their pencils at the end,\u201d said Taryn Gordanier.<\/p>\n

The students who presented are part of a social media class. They were told to research an issue at the beginning of the year, and they chose testing. After researching the issue, the students decided that they spend way too much time taking tests, time they could spend learning.<\/p>\n

Which is why they are breaking No. 2 pencils. A slogan on the students\u2019 social media page \u201cTerminate Trivial Testing\u201d has the headline \u201cI\u2019m Not No. 2.\u201d<\/p>\n

People were impressed with the Mancos students\u2019 campaign, and some people asked if they would speak again. One lawmaker even indicated that he\u2019d like them to speak when the state senate is back in session.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really exciting to get our point across,\u201d Gordanier said.<\/p>\n

The students have launched a campaign that includes numerous social media sites, T-shirts and media kits, which include No. 2 pencils for the breaking.<\/p>\n

Adam Priestley, Mancos secondary school principal, is hoping the students\u2019 message will spread.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are hoping school administrators will take this back to their schools and start the march against trivial testing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Priestley said the added pressure of computer-only testing this year is going to be hard on Mancos.<\/p>\n

Third-graders, for example, will test for 12 days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is huge,\u201d Priestley said.<\/p>\n

In addition, the four computer labs across the school district will be booked for testing from March 9 to May 22. Which means those labs won\u2019t be accessible for the last three months of school to any student not testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of schools are in the same boat as us,\u201d Priestley said.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the students in the social media class were still reeling from the presentation they gave to the group of schools in the Rural Alliance. They held up a jar of pencils that people broke at the event. The jar was overflowing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were so nervous standing in front of all those people,\u201d said Anna Cox, 16.<\/p>\n

In the student-created packet of information, a letter states: \u201cA students\u2019 success should not be measured by a test score. It should bear more weight on a student as a whole, containing: leadership skills, work ethic, communication skills, and service to community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students said they believe the tests have the unintended consequence of teaching to the test.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerminate Trivial Testing is not about one school district in Colorado. It\u2019s about students who are tired of taking trivial tests and losing valuable instruction time,\u201d the students wrote.<\/p>\n

\n

On the Web<\/h4>\n

To watch a video of the student\u2019s speech, go to:
\n www.facebook.com\/TerminateTrivialTesting<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students are hoping to ‘Terminate Trivial Testing’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6371],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-115991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mt-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115991"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=115991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}