A poll for the teachers on my lj

[shadowkat]

I'm not a teacher. I've known teachers. And I've had some excellent teachers and some horrid ones. At any rate, the poll below is some questions I've spontaneously come up with late tonight, when I should be asleep...

They were in an odd way prompted by an episode of Everybody Hates Chris that brought back some funky memories. I thought a poll might work better here than a meme.


[Poll #980684]

Comments

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I may have liked short answer and multiple choice questions as a student, but in my field, basic Russian, I soon got the feeling that such questions were a waste of time and the students abilities. The students would memorize for the week's test then promptly forget it all studying for the next week's test. So my tests were mostly translations of complete sentences emphasizing the vocabulary of the week and every test I gave was comprehensive as far as the grammar. I did make up short answer questions for the final, but there always was a translation section even then. My advanced students had to write stories or essays at home every couple of weeks as well. I got some complaints about all the work, but I think they learned a lot.

I really didn't understand that I had a disability until I started teaching and had problems writing things on the chalkboard. I really never talked to a teacher long enough to even know there were genuine symptoms of me being different until college. It didn't hold me back much, although I now realize it kept my grades down a little in grade school and high school. I wasn't a Straight-A type student in any case, then so it wasn't a huge penalty.

Regarding the questions on standardized testing, I really despise the current trend toward teaching to pass a specific standardized test. It's restrictive and limits education almost to rote memory. But in the final analysis there should be goals to shoot for, and there are students so bad they need to be weeded out. Our society's fear of failure is ridiculous. Everyone fails at something in their life. Telling kids that failing is the end of everything is cruel and dead wrong. Failing a scholastic test ought to be looked on as an indication that a person's skills need to be developed in other directions, and nothing more