When I was still in Elementary and High School, I’m very conscious to my grades so when my teacher announce that we have a quiz or exam, I felt pressured and anxious because I want a high grade or else my parents will get mad at me most especially my father, in which I will receive a punishment. There is an instance that I almost receive a failing mark and my teacher called the attention of my parents, my father came to school and my teacher talked to him. My father talked to me and I take this situation as a motivation to study harder. Since then, I study until late at night to prepare for the upcoming periodical exam. I’m worried because if I fail this exam, I will be a repeater next year. I took the exam and my teacher gave to us the result. I got a high grade and I belong to top 10 who got a high score from the exam. I felt proud to myself and I reward myself by playing an online game at home. This instance gave me a positive response to a depressing situation.
Aside from a positive response to a depressing situation, I also have known that his response is negative. It affect his mental health. We took our board exam in 2010 and both of us studied and prepare harder, however he failed the board exam and I passed. After the result came out, I can’t contact him anymore and he deactivated his social media account. It became traumatic experience for him. And after almost a month, we already contacted him and he somehow recovered from failing the board exam. On his second take, he passed the board exam last 2011. And this year 2020, he passed the US board exam for nurses in just one take. Failure won’t define our lives, it will serve as a learning experience and from that situation we will take it as a motivation to succeed in life. However, some people failed to cope from the situation and worst case it lead to suicide.
Assessment is a good indicator of how well our students learned from our discussion. However, graded or data driven assessment create a pressure and anxiety to them. Because for them high grades defines their learning. Some teachers take the grade as the basis of their assessment, maybe we as educators should do a combination of our assessment as graded and non-graded to make it “friendly” and non-threatening to our students. Students, should also see to it that success doesn’t define high grades but how they learn and understand the concept.
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