Assessment

Teacher Chides One Direction for Interfering With Test Prep

By Maria Moy — March 26, 2015 1 min read
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It would have been nice if the British boy band One Direction had considered Texas’s standardized-testing schedule before posting the news of band member Zayn Malik’s departure, an anonymous Texas teacher said in an open letter published by KENS 5 Eyewitness News in San Antonio.

Zayn Malik dropped out of the band’s world tour last week, and on Wednesday One Direction announced via Facebook that he was leaving the band altogether.

According to the San Antonio teacher, this announcement “created utter chaos in my writing classes,” in which she was preparing her 7th grade students for next week’s State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness writing test. The teacher claims that her sobbing twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls went to the counselor’s office, unable to complete their classwork.

The letter, which ends with the postscript “Who do think you are —the freaking Beatles?,” would actually have been an excellent response to the 2014 STARR writing prompt: “Does humor make life better?” (At least we’re hoping the teacher was being humorous.)

Image: Zayn Malik of “One Direction” sings during a performance last May in Glasgow, Scotland. —Mark Runnacles/AP-File

A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.