My husband, who is NOT personally overwhelmed by the complex formula that will be used to evaluate teachers this year, does realize that "testing anxiety is a real, tangible factor in the lives of teachers and students today. After all, he lives with me and KNOWS that on the days of the tests in April, I will be stressed. He also knows that I await the release of those scores in August with baited breath! So, as he read an article in last week's Time magazine on a snowy winter morning, he passed the journal over to me and said, "Your school psychologist should do a workshop on this!"
In my state, like in most others, teachers will be "evaluated" based on several factors including HOW their students perform on standardized tests given by the state. It's scary and unfamiliar territory for most of us and the anxiety in most teachers is palpable! It is also true, that no matter HOW much we TRY to KEEP all this stress from passing to the children, some of it DOES make its way down to even our littlest students!
It's try that KIDS really are evaluated based on HOW they do on that test too! Sometimes, as they take that first big test in third grade, affectionately known in NYS as the ELA, they get a little anxious or a little over confident or even a little scared. It's so big and official and the adults around them put so much emphasis on "the test" that everyone knows it is important.
So, while we cannot make testing go away, reducing stress around testing is something we can focus on doing. One of the suggestions in the Times article is a form of relaxation breathing that even little kids could learn to do in our classroom as a means of managing stress that is presented in the Journal of School Counseling (2010).
Yes, Ray, I will talk to my school psychologist about this!
Read more about this here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2135124,00.html#ixzz2KKCtYlrxhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2135124,00.html
No comments:
Post a Comment