Monday, January 11, 2010

It's Exam Week...

... and I'd rather be teaching.

It is so utterly arbitrary what we decide our kids need to know. And it's just so completely unimaginative how we most commonly decide to assess them.

The idea of spending a week proctoring exams reminds me of these facts like a punch to the face reminds you that you have a nose.

2 comments:

  1. I agree. At first, it seems kind of cool. As the teacher, you get to sit and do other things while they take the exam. Then you realize that it is very boring, even with Twitter and RSS feeds and lesson planning, it gets boring. I want to interact with my students.

    The worst part is that the test are not mine. They are district exams. So I have to make sure that the students are prepped for that exam, even though they may understand the concepts really well.

    I also think it is a tremendous waste of learning time. 5 days of just exams, no learning at all!

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  2. i think exams have some merit..I am just not sure how much. Especially when we consider how much (actually little) time students spend studying for them. We are starting to discuss common assessments and i imagine midterms/finals will be one of those. Not sure how I feel about this yet.

    I have started mixing in a "project" as part of the exam grade. In Physics it is build a contraption (choice of two) like a science fair project to demonstrate understanding. Geometry was publishing examples on a topic we studied on our wiki.
    The lack of studying & prep and care for an exam grade is what really gets me.

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