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Test Anxiety
In just over a week, I give my students the End of Instruction (EOI) test for Algebra 1. I prepare them all year for this test. I demand excellence, and I expect them to learn. It is so difficult for me to trust them to do their best. Maybe because their best isn't my best. Even though these tests appear on the students' transcripts, their success (let's be optimistic) is really a reflection on me. Wouldn't you get nervous if someone else was taking your test? It is one thing to prepare yourself for a test, but it is a whole other situation to teach someone so that they can be successful on the test. I'm experiencing so much anxiety about this this year. For several days I haven't been sleeping through the night. I actually wake up worried about teaching certain types of problems: quadratics, geometry type questions, etc. I really have to ask myself why these test scores really matter (besides No Child Left Behind). In even five years, will it really matter how well my students do on this test? Will it matter how well I do on this test?
posted by Becky Davis | 9:25 PM
3 Comments:
Proper perspective is really difficult to have in the midst of your situation. I go through the same thing, except for performances. I wonder if my kids are going to pull it off. I lay awake at night going over all their mistakes. The songs play in my head over and over, and I see myself conducting them. I also wonder if I've forgotten anything; if anything has slipped through the cracks.
For me, the biggest problem (at school and in life) is that I expect others to perform to the same standards that I expect of myself. As teachers, we know that this is unrealistic, but sometimes its hard to get past our own innate sense of what constitutes success. For some kids, just passing is success. Its hard for me to tell a kid they did well unless they get an "A".
While our students' performance is a reflection of us, it is more a reflection of them. Are they hard-working? Did they put in the needed effort? Do they care about their grades? It is not a measure of their worth or ours.
Through a disturbing set of circumstances at school last week, I was reminded that I don't work for the school, the students, or the parents. I work for the Lord. My job is to work as though everything I do is for Him; to please Him and to honor Him. Remembering that really helped me chase away discouragement, worry, and fear.
I agree with Christie. Your worth as a teacher, is not truly measured by what grade your students achieve. I'm sure that it's a rush to have a class get all A's and B's, but when they don't; it's not b/c you are not a good teacher per say. You pour a lot of yourself into these lessons. As long as you do your best, that is what counts.
Would I get nervous if someone else was taking my test? Um, YEAH! I'd freak out. But the thing about the EOI is that while it is a reflection of you, it is also a reflection of what your students are choosing to bring to the table. It's oddly symbiotic in that way.
Because of that, the only thing you can do is keep giving it your best. You've already done everything you could to think outside the box and help them know the material. The rest is up to them.
And no, in five years, it will not matter how they did or how you did. Whatever the turnout, the fate of the universe will be...well, whatever it was going to be before the EOI happened along.
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