Who’s under the most pressure during these days of high-stakes testing—the students, or the teachers? Sure, the kids are the ones who are actually obligated to produce answers under pressure, but TeacherTalk blogger Erica Jacobs writes that testing time is no picnic for the educators, either:
It’s four days until the test. Four days. Each May I suffer from test anxiety. One hundred six of my charges will be sitting for the Advanced Placement Literature exam this Thursday. Ironically, students seem relaxed; I am the basket case... The words every teacher dreads are: “The test was easy.” That means student and teacher alike are doomed.
Her stress is, at least partially, tied up in one student’s practice essay test:
In the “dry run” test last week, one otherwise intelligent student wrote on 1984 when he could have chosen any novel or play. The problem? He couldn’t remember the main character’s name: “For the purposes of this essay, I will just call him Bob.”
Let’s hope that on the real test, “Bob” doesn’t make another appearance.
