Maybe we're all being a little harsh on Mrs. Fairburn? (I think that's her name), but I really don't think so. Like Diana said in her blog, she started off the class by making us feel unintelligent when she explained why Prof. Kruse was absent.
She read off of a powerpoint the whole time and had us fill in blanks on copies of the powerpoint that she handed out to us. She didn't really teach us anything other than how to fill in a blank in my opinion. Then both of the activities she had us do she had us work in groups to come up with answers to do nothing but shoot most of our answers down. I know that when she put my groups example of directions for a short answer question on the Elmo she basically crossed out everything we wrote and started over. Why have us waste our time if she was going to do it her way instead?
The thing that really got me about her, though, was the fact that she honestly admitted that she makes tests so that they are easy for her to grade. I was astonished. She didn't even try to beat around the bush about it. I really wish I would have had the guts to say, "So do you think that these matching, T/F, and multiple choice tests are teaching your students anything?"
In a way I'm glad that we have had this experience, because it gave us a concrete example of exactly who we don't want to be when we're teachers. She was everything that Kruse always tells us not to be, so now we know exactly how we don't want to teach our students. So, for that I suppose we owe her a thank you! HA!!
Kayla I too wish I would have the guts to say something about her testing procedures! I was a bit baffled by the idea as well, so to make it easier on her and it was just a suggestion. After she made that comment my mind went to how Professor Kruse mentioned that it took him over 1/2 hour to "grade" each of our papers as he sat down contemplated what we wrote and added remarks. Wow much harder than crossing off the wrong answer.Wow now let's just hope we don't have to have her in a future class.
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