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Andy Meyers
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Joined: 05 August 2014
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Posted: 02 September 2014 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | 1  

I'm not sure if students are getting more anxious because of the high-stakes testing or we are just identifying it more now. I can tell you, as a teacher, there will be many more young people who be anxious and nervous at school in the future. That is a real shame because it is hard enough for them to navigate through the relationships with their peers.
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Conrad Teves
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Joined: 28 January 2014
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Posted: 02 September 2014 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | 2  

JB>>But TESTING is just a way of making nervous wrecks and/or failures out of people like me. <<

My best friend informs me that back in the 70's when they were trying to convert the US to the Metric system, that he walked to school in a cold sweat on test day.
When you make such a Big Event out of the measurement phase of education, inevitable drama will ensue, and there are people who handle that better than others. It's a pity the educational system has no analog to the Software Industry's Continuous Deployment concept to reduce the level of risk in testing.

Stephen>>It gets worse as you get older. High School and College were all about grades. <<

I had a College Calc Prof who told the class (only half jokingly) that "You are not here to learn, you are here to get good grades."
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Gustavo C Cruz
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Posted: 03 September 2014 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | 3  

One of my teachers at college told us something akin..."Everything you learn in college is useful for college, what you need to learn for the job you will learn it in the job". Wish someone had told me earlier, wish I had believed him at the time
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Conner Dinkins
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Joined: 01 March 2010
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Posted: 07 September 2014 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | 4  

I read this joke today.
What do you say when you're comforting a Grammar Nazi?
There, Their, They're...
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Ronald Joseph
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Joined: 18 April 2011
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Posted: 08 September 2014 at 8:37am | IP Logged | 5  

My personal favorite (and it shows up often in comic book/movie/TV discussions):

Someone using cannon when they mean canon.

Saw that one elsewhere on the JBF mere minutes ago!
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Stephen Robinson
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Posted: 08 September 2014 at 9:06am | IP Logged | 6  

JB: I agree that LEARNING is an import part of developing
our brain skills. But TESTING is just a way of making
nervous wrecks and/or failures out of people like me. I
"don't test well," a phrase that has come into common
parlance, but did not exist in all the years I was in
school. It occurred to almost no one that someone like
me, who did poorly on tests, might just have a problem
with the pressures of the testing system. (I have trouble
to this day filling out forms. Put a blank form in front
of me, and I will forget my own name.)

SER: I have tested well enough over the years to be
placed in "gifted" or "honors" classes but I've always
performed better when in a position of "doing." It's also
a lot more "work" for me to stay focused when I was in a
huge lecture class where I was required to recall and
regurgitate information. It bored me silly and "studying"
was basically just pushing through my boredom.

I noticed over time that smaller classes with non-
multiple choice tests and essays always engaged me more.
It was just easier for me. A big example: By the time I
graduated high school, I thought I hated history. It was
everything I hated: recalling and reciting dates and
numbers, facts and figures. It wasn't until I took a
history course (again with a small class size) that I
realized I *loved* history. Why wouldn't I? It was
basically stories and a narrative, and all I needed was a
professor who understood that.

And strangely enough, as much as I hated classes that
were all about memorization, I actually have a pretty
good memory for dates and numbers. (A lot of comic book
fans like myself do, after all). But make that the focus
of the class and boredom erects blocks.

The Catch 22 is that a lot of kids who do well in
"advanced" classes wouldn't do well in the "test-focused"
classes. I had a conversation with a friend who'd
attended Columbia and based on how her classes were
taught, if I'd actually gotten into that Ivy League
school, I would have probably gotten all As compared to
my B average at a "normal" state school.
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