Nakkula 4 & 5

After reading chapters 4&5 in Nakkula, I really took a lot of time to reflect on myself as a teacher and mentor for my students.  In the readings, what really stuck out to me was in chapter 4 on page 74 talking about the developmental assets framework.  More specifically, the external assets of "Support, Empowerment, Boundaries and Expectations, and Constructive Use of Time," (74). Reading through each of these clusters that are essential to nurturing healthy youth development, I thought about how I relay these assets(if at all) within the classroom with my students.  Continuing through the reading, I feel like while there is a lot of different theories, concepts and ideas they all come back to the same general idea of getting to know your students and creating relationships with them.  For example, the situation with Lorena and Steve, Mr. Harrison had a positive relationship with his students and knew what these students were capable of so the situation was able to be resolved. If he didn't know his students and the students didn't trust him, things could've turned out much differently. 
Image result for high stakes testing comic
Being that my 8th graders are completing their PSAT's tomorrow, which will take up 3 hours of their school day, I really agree with Nakkula says about standardized testing. We put so much time making students think that they need to know everything on the test and we become "hunting for mistakes rather than scanning for success, and giving tests can too easily devolve into exposing ignorance rather than displaying knowledge," (67).  As a country, we are instilling that these tests are the end all be all and taking time out of classroom instruction to make students answer questions for hours.  And after they finish their testing tomorrow, what academic work will actually get done for the rest of the day? Not much, and I can't say I blame the students for not wanting to work after it either. We need to stop pegging students against some standard of measure that does not take into account their home lives, backgrounds, and in some cases lack of privilege.

Comments

  1. Jackie Perry SED 562October 10, 2018 at 6:17 AM

    Hi Bianca-

    The quote about testing on page 67 was something that stood out to me as well. As teachers, how to we help encourage our students to scan for success instead of always pointing out the mistakes. These tests don't always highlight ALL students and their success. I agree with you that "these tests are the end all be all and taking time out of classroom instruction to make students answer questions for hours". This takes away from students being able to form their identity and focus on finding their passions and interests and using those within the classroom.

    Great post! I really enjoyed reading it.

    ReplyDelete

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