9th Dasrizal's reflection

Is This a Reflection (9)?

This is the last reflection for this year, 2011! Well, it means that there are many things that I have got in PETA course this year. I don’t remember what meeting last Monday was. The important thing is that last week PETA session discussed about the assessment.

Before college, I was curious when I saw my report book. My teacher gave me A for Discipline, B for Tidiness, etc. I just wanted to know how my teacher gave that A and B letter. Otherwise, in my report book, there was a column Psychomotor. I did not recognize what it was for.

When entering the college, I just recognized that those are Affective and Psychomotor aspects of students beside Cognitive aspect. However, I don’t think that my teacher did not have big consideration for giving the A, B, C, or even D since in a class, usually most of student get same letter.

Then the discussion in the session brought us to a question, “should affective should be scored by letters or numbers?”

To answer the question I only think this simple. As a teacher, when we score a students in Math actually we don’t really know about his/her understanding in Math. Let me clear this! For instance, we are assessing students in topic Limit. Then a student got 50 on the test. We will conclude that this student doesn’t master the topic, but how if he is actually good in another topic. The conclusion is that a score can’t measure students’ brain.

The implication of this example to affective is this. If we can’t ‘really’ assess students’ brain, how we can assess students’ heart (read: affective). Then I think that—again—number is number, letter is letter, but it doesn’t represent many things. I, personally, interpret that score is a form of formalization in a regulation. I do believe that students’ cognitive and affective are not only limited by 7, 8, 9 or A, B, and C.

The new thing that I got from last session was a way to assess students: Anecdotal Report. When my group got this term to figure out, I was so confused since I knew that anecdote meant something related to comedy. However, when we read it, it is actually a report that is written for students to see the students’ progress. I think that it is a really nice thing, but I am sure that it will be really tired since teacher should write ‘story’ for students.

All in all, the session of PETA last week was really useful for preparing me as a teacher one day. Now, I more understand that as a teacher we not only teach the content, but also ‘lead’ students to be people who have good character.

Finally, we will meet again in the new year—new spirit—new topic! Hope this year has given enough knowledge. Happy Holiday!