It’s the third grade and we are preparing for the state tests. There are students surrounding me in almost every direction, all of them with notebooks and pencils out. The teacher is going of the structure of the state test and what things we should work on first. The smell of coffee filled the room. While I wasn’t a big fan of it, it did remind me of pancakes for some reason. The lights on the ceiling flickered sometimes. My desk would screech across the floor when I moved even slightly. The sun shined brightly through the window near me, so I remember it being hard to see my paper. All these different things bothered me little by little, but the thing that upset me the most was the state test. The state test seemed like the only thing on everyone’s mind, even the teacher’s. Everything we learned was just thrown out the window just for this one test. Even the other subjects like science and social studies were paused in favor of state test prep. Seeing as science was my favorite subject at the time, that really pissed me off.

The enjoyment of my school life diminished as school shifted its focus to the State Test. All the fun activities that we used to do were replaced with concentrated study on test structure. I never enjoyed learning how to take a test. I would rather just learn about the material on it. It’s not like I don’t get it. Test scores are important for schools, but it’s a different story if you are more concerned with that then the student’s education themselves. Being forced to take countless practice tests while reading and writing everyday fueled my hate for the English subject. I will never forget the stress I felt while preparing for the state tests, asit is stress that I felt every other school year after that. I know all schools don’t do this, but if it is a school that does, then you are going to burn out your students faster than the tests will, especially at a young age. If you want better test scores, then actually teach the children subjects.

I really hate it when schools don’t take the students into consideration. Not everything should be about having good test scores to make yourself look better. I wouldn’t even be surprised if some schools purposefully encourage people to apply so that they can reject them and make their acceptance rate look good so people can think they are a good school. At this point students just seem like tools to better the school instead of the other way around. I can still remember how big the celebration was when my elementary school became a Blue Ribbon school. That is a big achievement, but at the cost of so much stress to children who haven’t even hit their pre-teens yet. I also remember how things were like after the state test. Learning felt so lackluster, like the main story was completed so the rest of it is just filler. I was so bored of just sitting there, listening to unenthusiastic teachers who aren;t even trying to appeal to the students anymore. That time of my life was truly unfortunate.

The whole idea of a test is to evaluate the student, to see what they know and what they’ve learned. You kind of ruin the point of a test when you purposefully teach us its contents and how to pass it. If I get a good score on a test without actually learning anything then what is the point? Im basically just cheating at that point. It won’t even feel like I progressed in school. My elementary school had a great building that looked like a great place to learn, but I feel like I didn’t learn as much as I should have. I feel like most of my learning was outside of school or in my extracurriculars. My middle school wasn’t a good one either, but I feel like I learned way more in that school, like they wanted us to know as much as possible, but in its own way that wasn’t fun either. That one felt more like they were trying to cramp all the information down my throat before I left the school and if I didn’t understand it then there was something wrong with me. But some of the teachers did realize that they were going too fast and did slow down for us, so that was kinda nice. The test scores weren;t the best or anything but it felt like I came out knowing more of what I should have.

I’m not one to go on a tangent like this about school, but I never really had fun with school after the early stages. It just felt boring having to read a lot of boring stories or do homework when I could be doing something much more enjoyable. That mindset turned me into a not ok student. But I believe things could have been different if I had a different learning experience. I’ve had classes that were fun, where we did fun activities or had really fun teachers. it made me want to participate, made me want to interact more so I could have more fun. But most of my learning experience seems to be the same old uninterested teachers either working for the money or just trying to make the school look better. If only things were different, I could be enjoying school and learning way more than I am now. I wouldn’t have this feeling of worry or this growing disinterest for anything related to school. My perspective on education could’ve been a complete 180, and that seems to interest me more than school.