SEKS in the Classroom

It's so important for all of us to get someone to proofread our writing before putting it out there publicly, whether in print or online, and I have several nightmare scenarios to back that up. This is the most recent one.

I've always had an aversion to the infinite redundancy and constraints put on teachers by the education bureaucracies. Like a typical government agency, public education loves never-ending assessments, reports, paperwork, documentation, red tape, protocol, and of course, the overly complicated, educationese-worded  TEKS (pronounced 'teeks'): Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills lists for each grade level in the State of Texas. I'm sure every state has its own version of the TEKS or common core standards.

One day I decided to pare down these lengthy lists to a single page, and came up with sixteen fairly broad essential elements for the secular schools, and twenty-three essential elements for a Christian education. Then I wrestled over what to call this list, and I leaned toward something that would put the responsibility for learning primarily on the student's shoulders. This list could be posted on a classroom wall or in a student's notebook, so I thought the title, YEKS: Your Essential Knowledge & Skills would be good. But the acronym sounded kind of yucky or terrifying when you actually say YEKS.

Grammatically, though, the TEKS acronym is erroneously pronounced 'teeks' when it should actually sound like 'tex,' but I had the 'teeks' enunciation branded into my brain when I finally came up with SEKS: A Student's Essential Knowledge & Skills as the title. I thought SEKS, pronounced 'seeks' made a great analogy of students seeking knowledge.  I added the  new title and  immediately posted it in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store, trying to keep the ego in check since I had single-handedly simplified teaching expectations and curriculum requirements in a single day.

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Fortunately, my daughter came over to the house a couple of hours after that, and I showed her a copy of SEKS: A Student's Essential Knowledge & Skills, and sat up straight, ready for her to pat me on the back. 

Instead, she looked up and smiled at me. I smiled back.

"Are you sure about that title?" she asked.

"Yes, I think SEKS (pronounced 'seeks') is a great acronym for what this list represents," I said proudly. "Students are seeking knowledge."

She grinned even wider. "Don't you think they might pronounce it differently than you do?"

I stared at the title for a while, and when it finally dawned on me what she was referring to, I was horrified. I literally ran across the house to my computer to take it off the Internet store. I had visions of this poster showing up on Jay Leno's Tonight Show's headline segment, but fortunately, no one had found it yet.

We're back to the YEKS title until I come up with something different.