Personal Belief and Experiences

Personal Belief and Experiences

Quizzes, tests, presentations, books reports, scantrons, number two pencils, stress, all-nighters, parents quizzing their children, tutors, among other things are all words that the general public associates with tests; but, to delve deeper into the dreaded word "assessment" there are pros and cons that help society realize the importance of assessments in school.

Assessments are imperative to curriculum teaching and are an essential component because students can gather strategies from the assessment taking and utilize those skills in the short- and long-term to achieve success. For instance, important strategies learned when taking an assessment include staying focused and relaxed, "expecting and accepting a little bit of stress," reading and following directions, pacing oneself, not rushing through the assessment, among other things (PBS, 2005). These are important skills to foster through the schooling as these eventually are vital and highly applicable to the "real world" that students join after various levels of graduation. Staying focused and relaxed in personal situations as well as work situations is of value- it allows for an individual to be able to exercise self-control, and the ability to evaluate before acting. The expectation and the accepting of stress associated with assessment is also something that everyone has to live with at one point or another, so the idea of being exposed to it in limited quantities over a period of time helps individuals confront it. Additionally, the other skills mentioned like pacing, following directions and not rushing also have the same broad application in both personal and professional setting, as they are all able to be applied in some way to real situations. Using all of these skills together, skills that are developed and honed, by assessment taking help individuals to become more successful in the future.

Though, with any pro, there always seems to be a con and in this case, there are negatives to assessment taking includes students skipping questions and forgetting to return to them, mainly due to not managing time appropriately. Managing time is something that learned over time and some students take longer than others to grasp this concept completely. To that end, students may suffer from self-esteem issues when they see a lower mark on their assessment because they skipped too many questions and did not have the time to go back. Personally, it is disheartening to be judged and graded by a teacher on an assessment that I know I could have done better but did not because there was a lack of time.