As Stephen Brookfield points out in his book The Skillful Teacher, teaching can be described at times as white-water rafting. The feelings of going over the rapids and being totally out of control can over take a teacher at anytime during the course. One such white-water trip that I have experienced in the course of teaching that I have been unable to resolve and escape the rapids from is the students that are poor test takers. Although I know the student is knowledgeable in the subject matter and if verbal questions are asked of the student they are able to answer correctly, the student is unable to perform well in the format of multiple choice test questions. Although as the instructor I can change the format of my tests in my courses there is nothing I can do about the national certification exam the student takes at the end of their program. I had one student in particular that will always haunt me; he was a very bright young man with a lot of ambition and drive. This student was one of my top performers at the clinical site where the knowledge he had learned in the classroom was put into hands on action, but in the classroom he always struggled with taking tests. After observing him for some time I came to the conclusion that he had a problem with reading. In my classes I was able to offer him verbal quizzes so that I would read him the questions and he would verbally give me the answers. This worked very well for the student; the problem was that the national certification exam was a computer based multiple choice test that could not be administered in that fashion. Although the exam was not part of his course work and would not affect his grade in my class, it would determine whether or not he became nationally certified in the field he had come to school for. As I feared when the student took his national certification exam he failed, although that was the outcome I expected due to his test taking history it left me feeling inadequate as an instructor. I truly felt that I should have been able to figure out a way to help this student achieve success and was unable to. Since that student I have had others like him and every time I feel as though I am beating my head against the wall unable to help them achieve their goal of certification.
