Students are rushing around finalizing projects, finding their textbooks that they shoved in their lockers back in August and have forgotten about, filling out checkout forms, and worrying about whether all of their hard work they have put in all year will be negated by the final exam. Questions about what is going to happen over the next several days loom in their heads. What will be on the final exam? What if I have two, or maybe three exams, in one day? What do I do if my family wants to leave to go on vacation early?
While the students are getting close to hitting their panic button, many teachers are scrambling like crazy to get those last tests in before grades are due. Did I get all my content covered? How can I get this covered before the exam? Are my students going to read, do math, work on their Group 4 projects, write their Extended Essay, or are they going to take an SAT prep class? What do I put on the exam? When are grades due? How many comments are "enough"?
Why do we do this to ourselves? What is the point? Why are we stressing out over these minuscule irritations and not focusing on what is really important...How have I made an impact on my students' learning this year? How far have my students progressed in their learning? Have my students truly benefited from our time together this year? How have I grown as an educator this year?
These are the important questions we should be asking. These are the end of year assessment targets we should all be focusing on, not how well do our students remember the information we deem important for them to remember. I am not against end of course assessments. I am against end of course stress and chaos. For nothing. Make the assessment meaningful. Make it useful. Don't make it the ultimate measure of what your students have learned in their time with you. An end of course assessment should be just that, an assessment at the end of the course. It should be no different than any of the other assessments throughout your course. It should measure what your students know at that point in time. It should not "weigh" any more than any other assessment you have given already. It should be included with all of the other assessments the student has already taken so that you can articulate an accurate measure of their learning for the course/year. Not what the student was able to remember or regurgitate back to you on the day of the exam.
So, why do we do this? Why do we concentrate on these assessment tasks and not on our students? Why do we stress our students and not celebrate their learning? Why do we put so much emphasis on a single test at the end of a course and not on ones done throughout the course? If you have an answer, I would love to hear it.
