Assessing and Accountability, in the first person

I have been spending the better part of the last week not doing a mid-term exam. The weather hasn't helped. I have been working on other school projects, dying easter eggs and exploring the beautiful city with my family. I have sat down a few times to look it over, even opened a word document and took a few notes, and began, in earnest, working to complete some questions. And now, in the early morning hours of the night before it is due, I am practicing some more avoidance with this post.

Since I became a teacher, every time that I have had to take a test or write a paper, or do any of those things that students do, it has made me think about my own students and the work that they do. When you spend your own time doing this work and (sometimes) evaluating the utility of the efforts and their applicability to other areas of professional or personal life, it makes for a great exercise in thinking about crafting learning environments for students. Teachers demonstrate real care for students by spending the time to ensure that the time students spend on an assignment is in true service to their learning.

Is the assignment what one wonderful professor described as an "autopsy assessment"-- one with no impact on future learning and little correlation with what will endure with the student? (Ironically, that professor never gave us back our final papers.) Is it checking what students know in order to sort them? How it in the service of further learning? How does it promote the values of the school? Of the teacher? Is it collaborative? Does it allow for creativity?

Teachers should be considering these questions, but there is no better way to force the issue than to put them on "the other side of the desk", so to speak.

Enough of this, I have an exam to write.