Hello world,
As many of you know I am blogging for my ENG 310 class. As a member of the class I am supposed to pick a specific issued related to teaching writing that matters to me. After much consideration I have decided to write about standardized testing, more specifically it’s affect on teaching writing.
I have chosen this topic because I want to uncover more information on the issue, because it seems to be such a large part of the teaching world. I also was interested in seeing what different educators opinions were on the subject. What have they done to cope with standardized testing, has it been a big hassle or have they not had much trouble with it.
I am also interested in the affects it has on students and how they learn. I assistant coach middle school cross country and I was recently talking with one of my athletes. I was asking her what she was studying in English class and she said all they were doing was getting ready for the meap. I found this to be rather curious since it was only a month into the school year. How is she doing in the class, what is she learning, how much more or less could she learn without the meap preparations?
These are just some of the topics that I hope to discover more information about throughout the course of the semester. I have subscribed to a couple of feeds from google news regarding these topics.
Talk to you soon,
Johnathon
1 response so far ↓
1
Sheryl Smith
// Sep 24, 2007 at 11:21 pm
I feel your pain, Johnathon. It’s really sad that schools are so obligated to do well on the test that they end up teaching only for that specific purpose. I can imagine how “trapped” this might cause an educator to feel. It’s also sad that they’ve started in on it so early in the school year, too. It seems to me that these tests were’nt until closer to Spring when I was in school, but it could be different now.
I think that many teachers might be forced to put any teaching talent they might have on the back burner in order to teach for the tests. I remember my high school English teacher very well, she was one of my favorites (surprise). She taught me how to look at literature through a different lens and (thankfully) she never let me get away with slacking when it came to my writing. I have a lot to thank her for. However, I remember taking two weeks out of our class to go over the process for the standardized tests. She was like a zombie during that period, it was obvious she didn’t care for it too much. She still taught very well and I passed the test just fine, but it was the most boring two weeks ever. I think I would have got alot more out of class if she were allowed to just do her own thing.
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