“Test-driven curriculum dominates instruction and leaves little space for authenticity, creativity, or individuality of teachers and students (120).”
I do not remember a time that I did not learn to the test. Especially in high school, every piece of writing I did, whether it was in English classes or history classes, was all in preparation for the upcoming state test. This was fine for the time because I knew exactly what I had to do in order to do well on the test. I also did learn about structure, grammar, and other technical parts of writing like that. The one thing that I did not learn was how to be creative in my writing. There may have been times when I decided what I got to write about but the structure always had to be to New York standards.
Since I did not learn how to be creative when it came to writing, I still have problems with it now. We talk about writing poems or writing pieces that come from feelings and thoughts. That is difficult for me to do because all of my pieces of writing I had to complete required facts and I could never say “I” in a paper. Also, I did learn to hate writing which means, I have to teach myself that it can be fun so I can model this for my students.
I do recall times in elementary school and middle school where writing was fun. This all came back to writing books. The books in elementary school were mostly based on facts. I wrote one on Egypt, another on polar bears, and finally one on myself. These books were fun though because I got to draw the pictures and decide what went in the book. In middle school, the book I wrote was all up to me. While doing this, I still had to edit and think about the different aspects of grammar but that seemed so insignificant because for once, I got to write about whatever I wanted. Again, in this book, I incorporated pictures as well as a dedication page and an about the author page. Besides those pieces of writing, I do not recall writing unless it was for the test.
I think it is extremely important for students to learn that writing can be fun. As a teacher, I worry how I am going to do this when there are so many pressures from the state and from the school districts. From what I have learned throughout this course, I believe that writing workshops might be the way I do this. I think that writing workshops do incorporate the structure that students need to learn how to take tests but also allow freedom so students can learn to enjoy writing.
Sarah, I read this from your post and completely agree: "I do not remember a time that I did not learn to the test. Especially in high school, every piece of writing I did, whether it was in English classes or history classes, was all in preparation for the upcoming state test."
ReplyDeleteI remember all we did in English and History related to the upcoming tests that we had to prepare for. DBQ's and other special writing activities that prepared us for that year's test. It was so redundant and took the creativeness out of our writing. We couldn't even be creative in English class because were always learning a particular writing that was needed for the year's test as well. I felt as though you always knew what you were doing day to day without any mystery.
I was always a creative and lengthy writer, and never seemed to have a problem writing for the task we had to do, but it was just so boring. I just felt like, "Here we go again, let's see what I have to do and do it (as I rolled my eyes, placed my hand on my cheek, and wrote)." Not very excited about the writing tasks as you were not either.
I understand that we need to prepare our students for these upcoming tests, but too I think that we can't take the fun out of it like you said. We need to teach our students what it means to have fun when we write and at the same time yes, we can use special skills that we will need on the test, but it does not all have to be "EXACTLY" like the test.
Thanks for the great post I agree 100%!