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Lawrence Hall Apr 2018
The Most Common Forms of the Scantron(r)(c)(tm) are the Shakespearean, the Spenserian, and the Petrarchan
No lovesick lad ever poured out his heart
To a Scantron®©™ card and its suave machine
Posed seductively in brushed aluminum
In a smoky corner of the faculty commons

Or with a thundering Number Two scribed
A manifesto that menaced the world
(But bubbled carefully within the squares)
And ground it through a Scantron®©™ 888

For indeed

Moses brought not Scantron®©™ down from Sinai
To teach God’s laws through an electric eye
Continue reading...
Rocky B Lifton Jan 2017
Grab a Scantron Young Man
"Grab a scantron young man"
Take your future in hand
If you can't take the pain then you want make the pay
So take a scantron young man
For the times come at last
Your future has come and gone to pass
Continue reading...
marisa Oct 2014
Education
When you’ve asked yourself, “what the hell am I doing with my life?”
Five times before you’ve even had your morning coffee
Which isn’t enough, so you grab a second coffee
Because you stayed up until sunrise writing a lab report on the psychological effects of coffee
They call that an education.

When you stare at screens and sheets of paper
Until Shakespeare’s sonnets and Sir John A. Macdonald
Are scratched into the blackboard on the inside of your brain
Only to have the slate wiped clean
The second your Scantron card spells “success” in Braille,
They call that an education.

When you’re swimming in, shall we call it, the Academian Sea
And tentacles reach out and start to pull you under one by one
And the lifeguards on the shore simply tell you to swim harder,
They call that an education.

I remember walking onto campus feeling so inspired
Ready to be re-wired
Until they said my arts degree would never get me hired
Now the time keeps passing by and I always feel so tired
And for what reason?
I’ve read countless books on history and Hamlet and how to speak Italian yet it seems as though the most I’ve learned is all the different ways I can doubt myself
I am creative, I am well-read, I am kind, I am caring, but I am a history major
And in a place where 3.0s and 4.0s and future capital value is practically etched into our skin for the world to read like a bad tattoo
Apparently that means I’m not going anywhere.
There are so many days when I want my tattoo removed
So people will stop staring at the decimal points and prerequisites that distract from the rest of me and look me in the eyes for a change and see in my smile that this is who I really am

But instead I’ll probably stay up late again
Learn names and dates again
Forget them after the test again

Because when you stare at that sheet of paper if you’re dedicated (or crazy) enough to make it that far
And you cover up your tattoo with your graduation gown only for them to draw your degree wherever enough skin shows to prove to the world that they’ve churned out another one
They call that an education.
i love learning, but i have a bone to pick with the education system.
#stress #system #school #learning #education
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Andrew Wenson Nov 2012
Found Poem I (Scantron)
Use No. 2 pencil only
Make DARK MARKS
Erase completely to change
Directions

FEED THIS CORPORATION
All rights subject
Customer service last
Continue reading...
bobby burns Dec 2012
your love is like a scantron test
the way my mind
interprets you makes
me want to, just for
the way you tell your
stories, or crack jokes.

you keep creeping into
the synapses firing like
an execution squadron
all around my brain, and
i can't shake these musings.

(a) maybe i want to prove
something to myself,
(if you find out what, let
me know) or (b) myself
to something, or not.

or maybe (c)
i'm just sad and alone,
and maybe i wish you'(d)
read this, and mayb(e) i
know you will.

trick question, option (f),
maybe i just want to know
what it would be like to
wake you from existence
with the slap to the face
or bucket of glacial water
my lips have always
been.
another love poem to another stranger who will again, after reading it, fail to understand its significance.
Continue reading...
Jimmy King Sep 2013
Form 32B
I color in between the lines
A darkened circle on a
Standardized scantron
Like the other numbers in the room
Wasting my life
With every stroke of breaking led

I color in a circle on a scantron
But I'm really coloring in
To America's capitalism
To the capitalism that acts as God-
The “Invisible Hand” made visible
By McDonalds and Burger King;
By my father's law firm
And the rest of the world

In coloring in this little circle
I'm coloring in myself
Marking myself
Right or wrong
Form 32A or Form 32B
98th percentile or 95th

And as I become applicant
Number 8574
I realize
I've become unable
To do anything
For the person
Beyond the number
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Emily Tyler May 2013
SOLs
When we were little
They used to call them
Spotted
Orange
Lizards.

I think they were trying not to scare us with
The words
Standards
Of
Learning.

Standardized testing.

Those things that you need Number Two pencils for.

Those things that they prepare you for
Every year
For months.

Those things that if a cell phone goes off
The entire class comes back
During the summer
And retakes it.

Those things that they give you hours and hours
To take,
Out of our normal schedule,
Even though they only take
Forty-five minutes

Those things that don't even count
Towards our grades
Because
"They're really assessing the teachers--
But it's important to do your best."

SOLs.
Those things that people stress over.

Even though your answers
Are only
Tiny gray dots
On a
Scantron sheet.
#school #test #testing #emilytyler #sol #fcps #standardized
Continue reading...
Kara Rose Trojan Dec 2014
2013 CPS School Closings
Were you alive when the
bricks began to crumble
beneath our hand-held, picket line
across the parking lot in front of some
school that no one bothered to name?

Our exhaustion-mumbled whispers
skipping across lips dropping to the street
that tapered ladders on gargantuan gadflies as the summer heat
etched the tear lines into mud tracks against
our ruddied faces.

Cohorts torn into flip stands
layered toward standing political sores --
tell me how to cross my t’s and fill in scantron circles before
the suits step over brown-bag lunches
to stretch the yawning yellow tape over the students’ lockers.

We were strung up the flag pole, almost posted as decapitated heads for the public.
The political analysts call this “The biggest school closing in decades.”

Under teeming hammer-strikes :
glasses shred to paper-splinters
before a young boy’s diploma
crying white chalk bricks
from university’s doors instead on to
prison yard orange jumpsuits.

Can we call this a school improvement project
or can we call this the Same Salem Witch Hunt
As unwashed teachers and students alike deck the sidewalks like
Either Christmas decorations on Michigan Avenue or
Inmates on the gallows platform

I’m completely unable to read the television marquee that told the neighborhood that City Hall was too stuffed with paperwork to defend the mothers and invisible fathers.

I’m completely unable to write out of respect for these children’s already-carved in stone pathway to the gutter, graveyard, and/or prisons.

In the first wink of dawn
We will all scatter
To our respective positions
Carved out in concrete before the
barricades fall
to flood the street.
#poem #poetry #words #chicago #education #contemporary #schools #wordplay #formatting #womenpoetry
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Aaron Feb 2019
Scantron Recipe
One part: gregarious graphite
Little black circles filled in carefully
like whimsical Will O’ Wisps
guiding the wonder-eyed wanderer,
Too late to see the blue’s turned black
‘Till toxicity taints our thoughts.

One part: creative deconstruction
of characteristically crucial creativity;
High school halls, sanitized and clean
devoid of imperfections we’ve come to fear
but absent also a sense of security, and
Absent also a sense of self.

Classroom currency was curiosity
And once was wonder here; now
Shy silhouettes sit in silent seats
a societal symptom of anorexic anxiety
the toll to thrive under the threat of Damocles:
That fear of failure, of cultural condemnation

Sacrilegious, the shattered system
But built upon a lie
A method meant for the masses
Yet you left us all behind.
#education #slampoem #school
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Gavin Paul Boehm Jul 2013
Bubbled Sheets of Paper
My days are spend with full sails, and a furnace full of fire
Others' desires pale next to mine, I'm like a Viking funeral pyre
Words meant to get you higher, to save dead men from the gallows
Now, shallow words can drown you, so I try to make mine deep
Sleep is not an option while navigating the concoction of tribulations that precede immortality!
This run is not a trial, I will wade through the mire
And I refuse to give an inch of what I've earned
To the lynch mob trying to burn me down
Not a frown will touch my face while a pen touches this hand
I have the power to shake this land, and I will not stand by and wait
While words of hate belittle and berate this great nation of LOVERS
We must rediscover our silver tongues with which we once flung words of hope from
Freedom and unity were shouted with vigilance and certainty
But, what's happened to the urgency in our voices?
All that's left is apathy in our choices
We're glad to be the ship at sea
At the mercy of the currents, tides and waves
Content to drift for days, and months and years
Ignoring the truth when it is spoken.
Are we truly to broken to listen?
Revolution glistens in the homes of parents reading to their children
It's time to get lost in those pages again
Words written with ink and with pen
Can sharpen the tongues, wits and minds of young women and men.
In a time desperate for thinkers and knowledge seekers
We must dig deeper and get these kids eager to be the change that will refuse that meager piece of pie!
They must be ready to cry, ready to fly, ready to DIE for the future they saw painted in the sky
Because the creation of solutions for the destruction of our nations Constitution
Will require those of a certain... constitution
With minds not moldable, but malleable
Able to be constantly changing
With each new thought they're rearranging their perception of the world
Each new direction holds a hidden collection of pearls
In each new book, genius acts of innovation reside just between the lines
Waiting for the right set of eyes to crack the code
But, foreboding trends tend to send children away from the etchings of a pen
Glass screens gloss teens faces as they slowly erase the taste of
Imagination
Ridding this world of its critical thinkers
Damning us to a sea of words with no anchors
Sadly, some will sink.
But those with a nose for poetry and prose will float away on their pregnant thoughts!
And when the time is right
Those whose minds are ripe
Will strike back against those who sell our prodigies to companies
Who keep them on their knees with mediocrity by means of sterilized dreams and marketing schemes
And...! And... we need to steal our dreams BACK!
Because dreaming is for dreamers
And I know that sounds repetitive
But in this crazy competitive world we must stake claim to what is ours!
And once the dreamers can dream again...
Just imagine what they could do once THEY imagine what they can do!
With hopes and dreams in our veins and imagination in our brains
We cannot be contained to mundane existences!
Extraordinary is the only way to live on your story!
These well storied and well versed persons will take their turn at tilting the world's axis
To gain access to the accessories needed
To stage and intervention
To change this distressing misconception that books are a dead means of mental transportation
They can
Teleport us to foreign shores
They can
Show us ways of thinking that we've never thought of before
They could
End these foreign wars
If we would just give them a shot
At stirring the melting ***
Getting this country swimming in the same direction again.

Our children deserve education through critical thought
So their minds will not be bought
Rather they will be sought out
To put and end to this critical thought drought
However, our children are still taught
With No. 2 Pencils
A Scantron
And bubbled sheets of paper.
Continue reading...
Shelley Jul 2014
Desk Photographs
The first was taken before we ever met.
My sister: curled beneath insulated blankets,
a pink bow vaseline-glued to her bald head,
glassy infant eyes turned in the direction
of a picture of me (red striped shirt, my favorite overalls,
velcro shoes). Mom taped it against the outside
of her incubator; so she would know her big brother
even if I wasn’t allowed to visit her yet.

The second shows the two of us at the back door
of our house on Circle ***** Drive. Her palms and nose
pressed firm against the glass as she peers out at Whitney,
the cocker spaniel who became an outside dog
after knocking her over one too many times. My hands are tucked
under her armpits, and I’m using every ounce of my
three-and-a-half-year-old strength to make sure
she don’t teeter back onto her diaper-cushioned ****.

The third, a candid from the family trip to Islamorada.
She and I are walking down the pier, on opposing sides
of Ganga, each holding one of her soft grandma hands.
She was our buffer for those eight days,
and years following the trip. We face the sunrise–
electric pink sky dotted with periwinkle wisps.
Later that day, my sister asked me to come look for seashells
with her; I told her I wished I had a little brother instead.

The final, from my college graduation last May.
My sister and I are laughing in the arboretum.
As excited as I was to never again sit in Hamilton 100
or bubble in a Scantron, I was already missing
eating pho and reading poems, making her matzo ball soup
when her throat hurt, and trekking to the taco truck at 1 am.
Neither of us knew then that I would have this job and this desk
with these four photos, and room for more.
Continue reading...
WJ Thompson May 2017
Finals
I'm underneath an amber twilight
(and tasteful landscaping)
flirting with nostalgic anticipation
in room 1034
yet alone and content
I should photograph my life events
or the morning dew, still wet
with evaporating trepidation
which breaks into a cold sweat
when soothed by the resolution
of the seventh, to the third, to the root of the polyphony, harmonizing to the tune
of a Scantron being scribbled on,
or my choice
to ignore
everyone
(at least until finals are over)
#finals #stress #fear #anxiety #nostalgia #23
Continue reading...
Marquis Green Mar 2016
Future Tense
I am a child, born to heartbreak, love, and war.
Like a parade, I dance with friends, learn karate after school,
And when I grow up, I sit at waterfalls with my other,
Thinking about the trees, animals, insects, logs, the lake, oceans,
And the mountain I climbed to get to where I am today.

I feel like adventure lets me travel from place to place.
I get to become a new person with every new destination.
I now feel like the wind.
I last forever and feel different to everyone.

I used to go to sleep to the sound of rain.
It was the best thing I ever heard.
Every drop felt like it had little bits of my future,
My hopes, my dreams.
I think it’s time to get my head out of the clouds.

Boys annoy me. I get sad thinking about how many people I have to give up in order to know happiness, and it’s strangely ironic.
I’ve got purple glitter in my hair and the music my mom made for me,
Told me I could trust people I considered family.
It’s like the real meaning of poetry,
Illegitimate images to imagine a world no real person could see.
The magic of a life with a girl who is able to sit in her big backyard when the sun goes down,
Thinking she’s had a pretty good day and that image has been burned into my head ever since I saw the end of college’s road and I am not even ready for tomorrow’s 8th grade homework.

When I started to think I could be alone, I ended up writing a small poem each night.
They all started with lines like,
“I miss you.
Come back I’m sorry for what I did.
I will not miss you if you leave.
Because I need you next to me all the time.”

A story of a girl who had diabetes. It all started when she was 3 years old,
and there I go. Making up characters because no one would really want to live this life.
No one would really want to be a living example of me.
But I will not leave that same mark for my legacy.
Dad, I think I want to be a scientist now.
I’ve loved complex equations since I was a kid,
Learning about life is so beautiful and cool and everyone will enjoy you,
And I’ll realize that my failures are not a disappointment to you.
I’ll be able to know how to not be sad anymore.
Because science teaches me everything and more.
I am a child, born to heartbreak, love, and war.


These are the voices of kids who have no idea what comes forward in life but will embrace it. These are the voices of kids who are disadvantaged because some societal system has decided they are nothing more that test grades. Here are the next leaders of our free world that have already been turned into scantron results.

You hear their voices and are impressed, but yet not depressed because as loud as they can be, the real world will steal their voices at the age of 18.
They are the only thing between us and anarchy.
They are the creative minds.
The souls we must nourish.
The skin we must keep pure.
If we are X, then they are Y,
And our direct relationship will always be an equation that must be balanced,
Never just an expression to be left unsolved.
This is a poem I made out of the collective thoughts of my students in my old after school job.
#love #want #wonder #like #bliss #understanding #child #newport
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Kate Livesay Jan 2021
Valued
In today's world, it is quite simple to be caught up in your worth being represented by a numerical value. Let me explain:

I am a nine-digit (quite confidential) numerical value that the government rewarded me with (thank you, Teddy Roosevelt!) from the moment my little feet entered life from my mother’s warm, snuggly inside.
I am a whopping one thousand, two hundred forty as my fingers tear through a solemn envelope sent from the college board, just moments before the envelope and the information enclosed within was shredded in every which direction to approximately one thousand, six hundred pieces.
I am one of two hundred eighty-five people rushing through the ancient, wooden doors at eight fifty-nine on Sunday morning. I am one of two hundred eighty-five people, just another member of the congregation, as I humbly fold my hands together, attempting to wash away all I have done wrong in the past six days.
I am seven as my mother places her comforting hand on my trembling body as she swiftly guides me in the direction of a grim, tense waiting room of a children's neurologist. I am eight as I place my ear up against my blue room, as the thin walls between the rooms try to conceal the hushed voices of my mother and my father discussing medication to treat severe anxiety.
I am a twenty-four as my squeaky sneakers frolic on a slender wooden surface of what we call “home court”. I am an eleven as my coach and I fretfully record my cumulative points during the final moments of the season; his disappointment being reflected by deep breaths every now and then as we are drearily restricted by four grotesque walls that define his productivity.
I am one of ninety-one works of literature that my english teacher manages to read and assign, you guessed it, another value to; the combination of letters and symbols printed on a sheet of paper somehow translates to a number.


I think you get the point. But let me clarify, there’s more to the story:

I am valued for encasing myself in red, white, and blue in early July as the sun begins to hide behind the earth; the chemical reactions of potassium nitrate and sulfur dominate the sky.
I am valued for my worthy efforts put into preparing for a five-hour tedious saturday morning dedicated to staring at a scantron and the backs of people’s heads.
I am valued knowing that I was born to sin (thanks, Adam and Eve), as I was made exceptionally in the image of god.
I am valued for being an anxious person who lovingly worries incessantly about family, friends, the future of females, and my fate.
I am valued as I launch my legs, one in front of the other, down the slick, wooden court to retrieve a lost ball that my teammate didn’t put in effort to catch.
I am valued for my honest, hard-working efforts to produce a conversation on paper between my english teacher and me. Hopefully this does the same.


I am not a value. I am valued.
Continue reading...
Jodie LindaMae Dec 2013
Johnny and the Bubble Sheet
I got judged all this morning
On how well I could fill in bubbles
On a Scantron sheet.
Well,
My friend Johnny
Hasn't got any arms.
How do you suppose
We measure his intelligence
If he cannot fill in the bubbles?
Continue reading...
River Arden Sep 2013
Form #95677
"That's a good place,
Nobody bothers you there!"
Says the middle aged woman passing by as I sit secluded on a bench
Listening to the construction
Studying for a test using flash cards
I found on an online study sharing website
The irony is the kid who created them
Dates a boy I once kissed
The irony is she has bothered me
The irony of life is becoming too much
The irony is this morning as I left my house, I put 75 cents in my pocket
Not knowing why
I asked the man how much each scantron cost
A strange feeling came across me when he replied "21 cents", and I remembered the 3 quarters somewhere in my pocket.
Maybe I do have it all planned out
The ironic part, I wasn't planning this.
Continue reading...
melli7 Sep 2016
Elle sat
Elle sat on a scantron sheet;
She soon logically deduced
That this was not the proper place
To settle her caboose.

So she rose from her seat and,
Removing th'offending page,
Once again Elle sat herself
Inside the testing cage.
#rhyme #limerick #silly #lsat #testtakimg
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Mauri Pollard Apr 2015
Tuesday Nights
I don't know how to start
just like I don't know how I feel.
But that's the paradox of the woman, right?
Will anyone ever understand my brain?
My neurons and brain stem and cerebellum,
left and right brain,
and all the lobes:
frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal.
Will anyone ever make sense of it all?
No.
No.
But you try.
You skirt across my hippocampus.
Try to pitch your tent there.
Try to make a life there.
Try to dig up and excavate the things that will make me yours.
You're coming close.
Because I believe in tests.
Yes I am one of them.
Yes I do it to you.
I thrive on tests.
I pull them out of my ear drums and fingernails
and from in between the splits of my teeth.
I pull out the ACT, the SAT
the LSAT, the MCAT,
the Bacceleureat.
Everything is a test.
Every answer
every question
every "please come get me"
and jack in a Styrofoam cup.
The way you walk the way you look at me when I breath is a plus or a minus or a smudge on a scantron sheet.
Three and a half hours later
you can breathe clean air again
and your mind can clear.
Holy smokes, yes, but there is is nothing holy about it.
We wont go ring shopping
we've already been house hunting
and we all know the only thing you want.
Wide open spaces and a bed in the center
and me.
Isn't that right?
Isn't
that
right?
Continue reading...
youcancallmesierra May 2019
scantron
taking a test
but i'm not aware
i'll do my best

all these choices
is there a wrong answer
i should be avoiding

pick me pick me
incorrect FAIL
i need to study

taking a test
i'm not aware
but i'll make a guess
Continue reading...
Lucas Scott Feb 2020
Real World
4 am
Stumbling through the dark
Wife needs the sleep
Youngest daughter’s crying
A blind diaper change
Warming a bottle and falling on the couch
Now 2-year-old’s crying on my hip
Burp then back to the cradle
Other daughter tucked in
Suit tie briefcase keys
45-minute commute
Bus duty for middle schooler
Fights broken up graffiti foiled
90 students in 6 periods
Grading lecturing consoling mediating
After-school program
Organizing monitoring guiding
Long drive back
Screaming kids tired wife
Laundry dinner dishes
Drive to part-time job
Inventory customers cleaning up-selling
Meeting with manager
Numbers are down you might get fired
Anxious anxious anxious anxious
Clock out drive to class
Parking running looking at watch
5 minutes late
Where were you prof says
The test has already started
Scantron answer sheet
Only a pen in my pocket
Unbelievable he says
With no pencil I have to fail you
Consider this a lesson
You need to grow up
This is the real world
I consider all my poems rough drafts.  This is very experimental for me.  Any constructive feedback would be appreciated :)
#lucas #scott #real #world
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