The dreaded GACE.
It wasn’t until the moment I thought I failed that I also thought my life was over.
Did I really spend this whole year working my butt off, learning how to be a teacher, and devoting my days and nights to kids to fail a test that doesn’t even measure my ability to teach? I was horrified. Spent my whole weekend drowning in the fact that I have to take this test again, and, to make it even better, spend 123 dollars of money I don’t even have.
I am the worst test taker. That is why I don’t give my students tests, because I know the feeling of test-anxiety and forgetting everything you have ever known once a piece of paper is put in front of you. Unless it is school-mandatory, I will never give a multiple choice exam.
This does not measure what students know. It only measures how well they are able to memorize facts and regurgitate them only to forget those same facts once they turn the test in. That isn’t my purpose as a teacher. My purpose is to make them better thinkers. To teach them how to react to situations in life that might throw them off – through literature. I want them to show me what they know through their creativity or through their explanations. I want them to teach me what they know and what they have learned. Tests, in my opinion, don’t adequately do anything for the student.
All of these emotions were swarming through my mind as I reflected and realized how students feel not for one test, but for the four they might have in one school day.
This is simply too much pressure.
Pressure to perform and excel through proof of a number. Pressure from their parents, their peers around them, and their teachers. It is the worst feeling to fail a test and then get backlash from all of those people. You feel disapproved, unintelligent, and not enough.
Until you realize that you actually didn’t fail the test.
First of all, to have that unclear of scores is insane to me. Why wouldn’t I assume that I have to pass at the professional? I am going to be a professional teacher, after all. The emotions I felt after realizing I actually passed were surprising. If this is what it feels like to pass a test this big, I feel just as annoyed about passing that I do about failing. I didn’t get to experience the bliss of advancing in my degree and having the burden lifted off my shoulders.
But here I am today, alive and well. Just trying to be thankful that it is one less thing I have to worry about now.
Plus, I got an 88-dollar refund back.
Teaching as Storytelling 
Hi, my name is Lesley Sammons and I am and Elementary education major at Eastern Kentucky University. I enjoyed reading your narrative, I was able to connect to it on a personal level. I have also felt this way when taking these large tests in the program. I often question my self if this is right career due to being a poor test taker. What if my students feel the same way? How can I make my students feel confident with their learning, when I can not feel confident in my own learning? I appreciate the adjectives and pronouns you used to describe the way you were feeling during these dreadful tests. I hope to stay as positive as you have through all these tests. I am planing to reassure my self that this one test will not determine how successful my career turns out. I hope the rest of your student teaching goes well!
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Hello, my name is Johna Howdyshell and I am a student at Eastern Kentucky University. Thank you so much for sharing your story about the stress of taking a test that could determine your future as an educator. You had a really good and appealing writing strategy that made me want to keep reading and wanting to read more of your story. You had used such great word choices especially with using adjectives as you described how you felt while taking the test and afterwards. I was really able to connect with what you wrote. All to often I think we put so much pressure on our students as they have to take a test just as we feel that same pressure as we take one of the most important test we will take as a future educator.
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Hello, my name is Brianna Roberts and I am also an elementary education major at Eastern Kentucky University. I related to your story on a personal level. I have had crippling test anxiety my entire life and would never want to impose this on my students. I will be headed into student teaching in a semester which means I will have to take our state teaching test and I can already feel my nerves building up. Once I become a teacher, why would I want to create this sense of nervousness and failure in my students? And why should I have my career determined by a test instead of my capability to teach? It’s unfair to us, it’s unfair to our students. The society we live in is so focused on testing and getting that data to compare students to one another – when in reality, all students are different and learn differently. I love the way you tied in testing for us college students to testing for younger students. Your word choice is wonderful and the way you used fragmented sentences to show your displeasure is great as well. I wish you the best of luck for the rest of your student teaching and future teaching job!
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