When I got a job, my first job as a teacher, I didn't have idea what I was doing, I followed my instinct and started to plan classes and design tests and all about primary school English classes; and for doing something without a single technique, just common sense and a lot of reasearch; it resulted in a very nice experience.
So I remember, assessing my little students during the class, observing them, taking notes, giving them feedback, etc. Because I was more concerned whit their learning rather than scores, still I did not know how complicated it was to shed a result.
When the school was preparing the week for assessing students, only through tests, I just entered in panic; I knew that kids tend to feel uncomfortable during tests, so I tried to do it in the best way I could, anyway they were in panic too; some kind of pressure and stress takes possession of tests's takers, and I felt sorry for them.
I used to design the tests, I did not follow any principle, at least I thought that, and there were moments, I felt irresponsible for doing things that should be done with proper preparation.
At the end I tried to combine my notes, my observation during the process, etc, with the test score, to give to the school a final result for each student.
I am sure that it happens to many teachers and in many schools, I mean, feeling that there is a better way to do things, but the problema is that in some cases, they don't do nothing about it. This is how I jumped to this conclusión because our culture revolves around measuring knowledge through a traditional test, even though they have enough knowledge to also design and apply alternatives ways of language assessment, but still they don't do nothing neither.
Now I realize that the key of assessment is to have at least the intention to do it well, in favor of the teaching-learning process. So, I was not as wrong as I thoght, but still there is space for learning a lot of important theories and principles and why not propose new ones, in order to be professionals in our field.
Anyway, the key is the willingness to do so no matter how much knowledge possesses.
