NAT Review

I was asked to be one of the reviewers of English VI for the National Achievement Test which will be held in the third week of March. I am not complaining but I teach Music  at school, but  I did study teaching English in college as a major (or concentration), obvious from my bad writing.

Now listen to this (or read this): one of the English teachers is a math major; hence, she was asked to be one of the reviewers for math. Now, this is bit confusing but it just goes to show how our former school head ran the school: teachers with math major teaches English while teachers with English major teaches music etc.  Well, if you ask me, I admit that I cannot fathom the wisdom behind this arrangement, but I am just a lowly teacher without any right to question things. Of course, her understanding was that as elementary teachers we were supposed to be generalist which is true, but her thinking is now outdated because even elementary teachers are now specializing (or concentrating).

School heads see things differently from the teachers' viewpoint. They decide things based on what they think is best for the school and sometimes they have to make do with people that are available to them and sometimes that mean assigning people which they think is best for the assignment.

Anyway, reviewing for he NAT is one heck of a boring task. There’s a system we follow:

• .       Pre-test. Pupils are given mock tests. While the test items are being checked, the reviewers monitor the skills that the pupils did poorly with e.g. subject-verb agreement and other grammar stuff, comprehension skills like cause and effect, getting the main idea, etc. After checking and the reviewing the skills, the frequencies of errors are recorded for comparison for the post test.

•     Post-test. Again the same tests are given to the pupils. The test is checked and the frequencies of errors recorded for comparison with the pre-test. The reviewer then checks if there’s a significant change in the frequencies of errors. Attention is paid to skills that the pupils did poorly in the pre-test. Then there’s the final stage:

•     Mastery Test. The same test is given with the aim of reinforcing skills. It is expected that the reviewers will re-teach some of the skills that the pupils did very poorly with and if necessary, remediation classes is to be conducted.

This system is new and was brought in by the new principal and according to him this is the secret why their district remains within the top 5 best performing district in the division. Compared to last year’s system, this is much better. Last year, we were so exhausted from too much activity: Junior JS Prom, Field Day, NAT, etc., plus threats that anytime a supervisor would come to observe on us, I mean, we could hardly let our hair down!

Teachers are thinkers and not manual laborers; they do best when their mind is relaxed.