Christy’s Blog Page

This chapter reminded me of my passion for teaching and learning.  It’s very rare that you find one who can honestly say that they LOVE their job…but I do!  I am very lucky to have been prepared to teach by (in my opinion) one of the finer institutions in the state of Georgia…Georgia State University.  Teacher education programs serve teachers well in preparing them for the teaching career.  I attended Georgia State for my undergraduate, masters, and now specialist degree.  As hard as it was at times, it paid off in the end because I was ready for the students I received my very first day of teaching.  Some people don’t have that kind of preparedness their first year of teaching.  That is why it is so important that they are supported by fellow teachers, mentors and administrators.  These novice teachers need mentors who want to assist them and help them improve in the teaching skills.  They should be trained in a training support program such as the TSS program to be able to assist novice teachers better.  This kind of support could have many positive impacts on the rate of teacher retention in our schools. 

In order to see change happen, one must make change happen.  I find that I can do this better when taking on a leadership role within my school.  I currently serve as grade chair over 16 kindergarten classrooms and have been a mentor in previous years.  I find that these roles allow me to have a voice within my school.  This is how I hope to make change happen.  I read on p.502, “Hope sustains the actions, and people must act or the the hope turns against them-empty.”  This is an issue that Paulo Freire talked about…I find this to be true.  One who just hopes for change will never see it…you have to be activist for change in order to see it…otherwise there is nothing but hopelessness.

I have learned through this program that I must be one who stands up for social justice and change in order to be counted as an activist.  I must sit back and watch others…I must be one of the ones who leads the path for change within our schools.

Assessment has been an issue that I have struggled more with personally, rather than professionally.  As I was reading this chapter, I began to think about some of the standardized tests that I was administered as a young child in elementary school.  The only ones that I could remember was the IOWA and the ITBS.  I remember taking these tests having no idea and frankly, not even caring about, why I was being given these exams.  In my mind, they measured nothing about who I was as a learner or said anything about me as a student.  How could a test tell someone about me?  I remember getting the results back and seeing the dots telling me where my score fell and in which category they fell in…whether it was “below average, average, or above average.”  My score never fell in the above average section very often and I didn’t really see anything wrong with that.  As an elementary school aged child, school was something that I HAD to do.  It was my job and at that point I cared more about playing than about making good grades.  Nobody told me what those tests measured and I was not pressured by the tests.  I found them boring, but an excuse to get some extra recess time.  So, as you can probably tell, I was not so much the studious child that I actually turned out to be as an adult.  As I write about my experience as a young child being administered these tests, I write about my innocence as a young test taker being foolish to think that a test could not possibly tell my teachers who I was as a student or a learner.  Granted, I didn’t do that well in elementary school…I mean, I didn’t do bad, I just didn’t really care all that much.  As an adult looking back, I now can see that those tests really did have an impact on me as a student and the educational path that was assigned to me by my teachers based on those tests that I was given.  

Standardized testing can have such an impact on children and the path in which they are lead down by educators.  Those tests label students and create misconceptions within students that are hard to overcome as young children.  I have literally seen the stress that standardized testing puts on young elementary aged students, as well as teachers.  I recently heard that in some states, teachers were actually going to get paid more if their students performed better than other teachers within their school, district, whatever.  What kind of message are we sending young children when their level of performance is going to be measured by a test, rather than the teachers who actually know the students?

I’m going to be very honest and say that I didn’t get accepted into many colleges because of my SAT scores, however I graduated from a private college preparatory school with a GPA of 3.8…yet, because of my ”lower than average” SAT scores had to feel as though I was not good enough to be enrolled in some school’s institution for higher learning.  I was being judged not by who I was as an actual learner and student, but how well I performed on a test that I was given on a Saturday morning for 4 hours!  I read on p.224 that the SAT’s goal is to predict how a student is likely to perform in the future and that the test is used to predict the grades that high school students will earn when they get into college.  I am a walking testimony that those tests do nothing to predict ones future success or how well one will perform in the future.  I went to college on the Hope Scholarship and maintained it throughout my entire undergrad career as a college student.  I graduated with honors and maintained a 3.7 overall GPA and a GPA of 4.0 within my major classes the last 2 years in undergrad.  I say all of this to make the point that…there is no test that one can be given to predict, tell, define WHO someone is a learner, student, or person.  Should we do away with these exams?  I don’t think doing away with them is the answer, but it should NEVER be the only measure one looks at to determine the success of an individual.