TESTING, ASSESSING AND TEACHING
When reading this chapter there were four questions (which I will discuss here) that came to my mind:
-Do tests always need to be "monsters" to be afraid of?
I can say there is one time in any academic institution when students look like dead-walkers: EXAMS WEEK
For almost everyone, exams represent fear and anxiety. What is funny to me is to remember a couple of expiriences were I was told "X teacher is great, almost no one passes the subject with him/her", or the typical "I suffer in this subject, but for sure I learned a lot". Now, is fear a way of pushing students to take a subject seriously? Or on the other side we are killing creative minds with fear?
I must addmit once I thought I wanted to be a feared teacher, and as I go along my evolution as a future educator I questioned myself, why do we admire and respect what causes fear?
- How little importance we give to positive informal assessment. How much positive informal assessment am I used to recieve and give?
I've been wondering this from a little ago. When I was abroad I had to take care of two little kids (3 and 5 years old) When I had just arrived something very peculiar happened, the mom (who was herself an educator) told me she needed to talk to me. She said " Zulma, I think you're doing a good job with my kids, but there is one thing I would like you to take into account. I would like to hear more motivation from you to them, that they feel you're noticing and giving more importance to the things they do well". That change the things completely for me. I started noticing how little I was used to hear and say "good job" Now, as a teacher I am trying this "new thing" with my students, sometimes it is funny to see their surprise when they hear positive comments and I can see they feel motivated to keep trying. I think sometimes we give little power to this informal way of assessing and we forget how empowering it can be.
- Although we all talk about the different "intelligences", do we really take them into account in our classroom when assessing our students?
When reading the materials for this subject and when being in the class I keep thinking "well, I am not the teacher I want to be yet". I say this, because although I know all the theory, I see I haven't been able of changing radically the way I teach which is the way I was taught. I have been reading about Howard Gardner and his theory of the multiple intelligences since my second year at the university, but still I haven't found a way were I can assess my students taking this into account. When I think why is that, all I can answer myself is: It takes more work. That makes me realize that I need not only to put the motivation to my practice as a teacher, but also the investment of taking the time and the brain to do the job. Now, the question that come to my mind is, how can I make my students and parents understand we are all smart in different ways?
