After going to Firestone High School and completing both my field experience and my tutoring experience I have gained new insights into the structure of American schools and the emphasis on test preparation and I have to say, what I observed opened my eyes to some very serious issues. I believe schools have placed too much weight on test preparation which has stifled critical thinking and I think this is a big concern for the public school system.
Standardized testing was created in order to create accountability for schools but I feel that all it has done is hurt students’ learning. Teachers have been forced to constantly drill students with test-taking skills rather than provide them with meaningful educational experiences. However, I’m not blaming the schools or the administrators for this. They are simply responding to a flawed educational system nationwide that places too much weight on standardized tests. Throughout my time at Firestone, I observed countless numbers of frustrated teachers and students who were obviously sick of OGT prep, yet were forced to prepare for these ever important tests.
Another problem I have with standardized testing is that the questions are designed to trick students. As I worked with my student, there were several questions in the OGT practice packets that confused me. They were worded in such a way as to confused the students about what the question was asking when they could have been worded much differently. I myself, struggled with a few of these questions. I also consider myself a strong reader and a highly literate adult. How will students be able to focus on figuring out the answer to questions if they don’t even know what they’re asking? This is a question that has baffled me throughout my time at Firestone.
However, despite the problems with the system of standardized testing, I learned a lot through tutoring my student. Overall, I was very impressed with all the students in the tutoring program. I’m sure by the time we got there they were all sick of OGT prep, yet they all showed up to every session and gave 100% effort. I was particularly impressed with my student. I was placed with a different student than the one I was with last semester because she was no longer in the program. While I didn’t know this student very well, I believe we got a lot of important work done. We mostly focused on practice reading tests where I worked with my student on test-taking strategies and the ways to approach a question that seems difficult. I was very impressed with my student because despite the fact that he struggled with reading, he was able to articulate which areas he had the most trouble with which helped me know how to help him improve. Although we were only there for four sessions, I was able to see a noticeable improvement in his reading skills.
This tutoring experience also taught me a lot about teaching in general. I tried some reading activities with my student that seemed to work very well and others that didn’t. This experience helped me to become aware of my own strengths and weaknesses and the ways in which I could use them to help my student.
I also liked the fact that we were given the opportunity to work one-on-one with a student focusing on literacy skills. I think this allowed me to see the struggles of an individual student which will be able to help me when I have my own classroom. My student struggled with areas that I simply assumed he would know. This opened my eyes to the issues that high school students struggle with and will help me be a better teacher in the future.
Another issue I have with test preparation concerns the broadening definition of literacy in our society. Literacy is no longer just canonical texts but includes a wide variety of different mediums including graphic novels, newspaper articles, magazine articles, film, television, and music to name a few. Why is it that we test our students on mundane, traditional articles when we could be using a wide variety of mediums to assess their understanding of literacy? The tests are not designed to test the knowledge of students in today’s modern world.
One way to combat this discrepancy may be to infuse multi-modality with test preparation. It seems like an unlikely combination, but I believe there are several ways to combine the two. One idea is to have students watch a film or read a graphic novel. Students can discuss the elements of film or the elements of a graphic novel along with critical thinking questions. However, the teacher can also assign students questions on these texts similar to the questions assigned on standardized tests. In this way, students can maintain their critical thinking skills while also preparing for the tests. Teachers can also do the reverse of this activity. Students can watch a film or read a graphic novel, then create their own OGT test questions based on these texts. This allow students to think about the important themes presented in the texts and the way in which OGT prep questions are usually designed.
However, while I believe these alternate activities can help to break up the monotony of traditional test preparation I also believe it’s unfortunately necessary that students need to complete traditional OGT review packets. While I disagree with the idea of standardized tests, I understand that students need to pass these tests in order to graduate so it is my job as a teacher to prepare them. There are several useful websites that could be used to aid students in test preparation (another use of multi-modality) such as study island and ogtprep.com. Teachers can have students explore these websites in order to gain the necessary test taking skills they need in order to pass the state tests.
My experience at Firestone has taught me that with the right teachers, students will work hard and become more educated. I believe it is my job as a teacher to prepare students for the test while also helping students to learn critical thinking skills. During the rest of my time at Kent State, I will work hard while trying to figure out how to address both of these issues.
I too agree with the fact that schools depend on standardized testing in order to see how much out students have learned.If the government would really like to see how our education system works, talk to college professors who teach freshmen. Many would say students lack writing and critical thinking skills. Well, put add them up and we'll figure out that teachers make writing formulaic for our students to remember to ensure the maximum amount of points for the students in the writing sections. We, as teachers, are fully at the wall when it comes to creative teaching. To prove we are good teachers we much teach towards a test. Brillant....
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