My Eleventh Day

April 24th was the last day for most of my mentor classmates, but I wanted to come one more day after this. Since it is nearing the end of the school year, the EOC's are approaching. Ms. Johns wanted to establish what areas of the test each student needed help with. So, they spent the class doing a practice test. During this time, the other mentor and I walked around, making sure there were no phones, but they could listen to music, and seeing if anyone needed help understanding a question. It was pretty uneventful and most students did not need help.

While they took the test, Ms. Johns told us about how the previous school she worked at handled the EOC. Since she was near Atlanta, she said schools took it to the extreme to prevent any cheating. However, what she had to do sounded ridiculous. She could literally only say what the test booklet told her to say. She had to be walking around the entire test time, but could not look at the test. Each teacher had a bucket with the testing materials, and it had to go everywhere with her, even the bathroom. There was a teacher assigned to her hall in case she needed assistance or to go the bathroom, but as soon as the test started, Ms. Johns said they left. Surprisingly, the test is now on computers. And of course, the technology did not work. Ms. Johns had to help students without looking, and without any talking or behavior that could be seen as suspicious. Her stories made me hate standardized tests even more. I really am not looking forward to that. You have to learn how to take the test to do well, not know the material, and the writing format does not resemble the kind of writing students actually do. I'm worried about finding a way to teach material and teaching the test material. Students need to do well on the standardized tests, but they actually need to learn.