Returning Sanity to the Classroom : Eliminating the Testing Mania

For nearly fifteen years students and teachers have suffocated under the oppressive regime of high-stakes testing spawned by the No Child Left Behind Act. Returning Sanity to the Classroom: Eliminating the Testing Mania uses the engaging pedagogy of ‘Forgiving Learning’ to give new life and hope to the education landscape. Over the millennia humans have employed a natural method of ‘learning from their mistakes’ to achieve success. They address these faulted situations repeatedly, making appropriate changes along the way. This practice is the heart and soul of our creativity and inventiveness. Returning Sanity to the Classroom presents a classroom method of codifying this natural process of student learning centered on their freedom to readdress academic mistakes without penalty. It includes techniques in developing a relational classroom complete with the intensive use of oral and written language as well as academic coaching. Returning Sanity to the Classroom employs brain compatible strategies advanced by Leslie Hart, Paul Maclean, Karl Jung, Katherine Briggs, Isabel Myers, and Abraham Maslow. It is an answer to the question of how to appropriately stimulate and evaluate student learning.