The National Council of the Teachers of English is Helping Students Find Their Voices in Challenging Times. This title stood out as well worth exploring, but it’s also a reminder that since public education became focused on high-stakes standardized testing, public schools’ emphasis has been on scores, not students’ voices.
Student’s thoughts and ideas should be valued and also challenged in school but heard. Public schooling has not been about that for years, if ever. When the focus is on testing, it’s about results, not students.
The focus has been on how students perform, what they prove on a test with narrow questions that have driven what teachers teach, and how they teach it.
Students rotate through grades in packed classes. If they’re lucky, they connect with a teacher who is permitted to add personalized (not online) instruction by finding a way to care how a student thinks or behaves. Journal writing comes to mind.
Public schools were depersonalized by testing, and now computers are doing it more. There’s nothing personal about sitting in front of a screen unless there’s a teacher on the other end that a student knows in person and who will be around for face-to-face CONTINUE READING: 6 Ways High-Stakes Standardized Testing Destroys Student Voice