QTC #3

In class Elizabeth posted an interesting question, she asked: How do standardized assessment and teacher evaluation (TVASS) affect your motivation? This left me thinking. I am graduating this year in May and this has been a topic of discussion in most of my classes. As we are about to enter the field as interns how will evaluations affect us? Now we will be facing this challenge but from a different perspective. As an intern I will be subjected under the same microscope as my mentor teacher however I'll simply be an intern. I think this is something that I should give some deep thought about. How will I find motivation within myself to make my curriculum unique as well as standardized in order to receive high scores? I thought about the responses many of my classmates gave during class. They mentioned that teachers don't strive to get high scores because in the long run it will affect them. In a classroom scenario, if I were a student and my evaluators were my teachers, would they want me to get low scores? From a student-teacher perspective I just can't wrap my head around this. My mother works at a private school out of the country and I asked her about teacher evaluations, and her response was completely different than from what I've been hearing from teachers who work in the state of Tennessee. These teachers are subjected to evaluations but not to this extend. In their situation a high score improves their pay role, status, among other things, and low scores are reviewed carefully for job extensions or revisals of curriculum. This question is a really difficult one and honestly as a student right now, I'm sure I could give an answer that would sound perfect in a perfect world, but in reality right now the situations in which teachers are being subjected are unfair. I highly respect teachers now for having the courage to stand up and fight, and I know that if I decide to teach in the state of Tennessee I will also be dealing with this unfortunate situation.