Teaching goals
Kids should be tested on what teachers teach and they should choose how to teach it. No one should tell a trained professional exactly what to teach, how to teach, how to test it and then determine the teacher’s value based on the results of an unvalidated test. Academic freedom was always what made teaching work best.
When I taught (22 years), if I wanted to get the information across by spinning on the floor like a dervish and my kids learned, that was what was important to me. That “teaching is not testing” could even be better expressed as “learning is not always measurable.”
I taught high school, mostly ninth grade. Their whole lives were all about fitting in someplace. I saw them grow throughout high school and on into adulthood with children of their own. Just like watching my own child, I saw them evolve at different paces and different times.
Fits and spurts is what moves growth, not over-preparation for some stupid test.
Artie Leichner, Redland
This story was originally published December 20, 2015 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Teaching goals."