Teacher in Development

One of my groups just reached an end of unit test. We had it this morning. Actually the test was supposed to happen last Tuesday, but I was sick and had to cancel the class.

Late Monday afternoon I started calling my students to cancel and was very amused by their responses.

"Hi David (name changed to protect the innocent.) this is Aaron." I said, and was overwhealmed by a coughing fit.

"Oh hi Aaron. Are you ok?" 

I take a deep breath and try to control the coughing.

"Well no. I’m quite sick and have to cancel our class tomorrow."

"Oh. I’m sorry to hear that you’re sick…hey wait a minute, that means no test right?"

I have six students. Every single one had a similar response - "Oh I’m sorry - hey that means no test right?"

Every time the word "test" or "exam" comes up in class my students have similar reactions. They start to get worried. They freak out. They panic.

Why do tests inspire such negativity? Why do many students react with worry or even fear?

I think of myself in school and university, and I remember the nervousness and fear that seemed to  seep into my stomach around exam time. I remember what it was like to pour over text books and class notes trying desperatly to stuff data into my brain for the next day. Would I memorize the right stuff? Would I forget it all in a panic inspired brain freeze? Would I fail?

I think those are some of the fear factors of test taking: The fear of failure. The stress of cramming. The ever present possibility of having your brain go blank as soon as the test lands on your desk.

This morning, as I wrote the test questions on the board, I could hear my poor students chattering nervously.

"Oh god, I didn’t study that."

"I got 0 on my last exam, but that was with another teacher."

"Ohhh man…"

So what are tests for? Yesterday I was asking myself and you, my dear readers, about the point of a grade. Well, today I ask: "Why do we give tests?"

Well, let me rephrase that. "How do we give tests?" The "why" is rather obvious: to see if we’re learning what we need to learn. But what about the HOW? Do our testing practices invite students to suck up and then puke out? That, I’m afraid, is how many of my tests have been. Fill in the blanks. Mixing and matching. Definitions.  

"Wwwwhhhhaaaap!"

That was the sound of my healthy head smack. Those kinds of tests, the kind that rewards vomited information, really tell us little of what our students know and understand. The strange thing is that most of the book tests that I’ve been working with are based largely around the idea of "stuff in, dump out."

Alas! I have been guilty of following the book. They’ve been designed to make our teaching job so much easier, and that includes tests. For me that meant I didn’t need to think much at all. I would do what the book said I should do, afterall it was written and designed by experts right? 

The great course book, for a long time, has been almost holy or sacred to me. "Thou shalt not deviate." "Thou shalt do as I say, as I say to do it."  "Thou shalt use my tests."

Then I woke up. I’ve begun to realize how much I’ve depended on course books and their tests to run my classes. While they have their uses, a course book should never replace good thinking. It should supplement it.

This year and last year have been of tossed out course books, and subsequently, tossed out tests. 

Yes, tests still exist in my classrooms, but they are different creatures now. They are open book. They sometimes include collaboration. You can’t cram for them because they show what you understand not what you stuffed in the night before.

I think my job as a teacher is to evangelize understanding of what I teach, and condemn memorization of it. It’s to encourage USEAGE versus STORAGE. What I understand and know how to use, and USE in my daily life, is knowledge I take with me. What I stuff into my brain to spill out on my test tomorrow is what I forget soon after. 

One of the best, but most difficult tests I’ve ever taken was in my university social work class. The test had five questions, was open book, and was take home. This wasn’t a test where I could memorize and then spit out. It was a test to see how well I understood what we’ve been learning about in class, and how well I could apply it. It was a serious thinking exam, not a memory work exam.  

At the end of my student’s exam I asked them what they thought of it. (It was their first one with me.) All of them said they felt like they had done well, but that it had been very hard.

I asked them why.

"Because we had to think about our answers."

Isn’t that so much deeper than just throwing up memorized answers that will be forgotten in a week?